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How to make a friend fast

happyturtlethings.net

191–200 of 260 posts

Re: How to make a friend fast

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think we underestimate how much all of these contribute to what we call 'personality'. I agree. But there are still people who are not changed much in important qualities despite big changes in their circumstances (e.g. from poor to rich, or from obscurity to fame or power, or vise versa) and others who change behavior totally with the subtlest of life changes. (E.g. now got a more high paying job, let me dump my…

Just watch out that they dropped their poor friends for the reason everyone expects. I don't give a fuck if someone is rich or not, and I have a number of poor friends[1], but I made the conscious decision to cut out friends that I wouldn't befriend if I met them today. Many of the people I cut were poor, but it's not why I cut them. I cut them because they stopped growing after or during highschool. When I talk abou…

> I cut them because they stopped growing after or during highschool. When I talk about politics or society I don't want to feel constrained. I don't want to have to explain things like the catch up effect. I don't want come over with an expensive scotch and have people mix it with Coca Cola.

What you care about is class, not wealth. It's a learned set of knowledge, behaviors, and taste that's very hard to fake or change past childhood. Wealth matters mostly not for its own sake but because keeping up with some class behaviors takes money (or a patron). See also: the trope of the impoverished noble houseguest. Caring more about class than wealth is normal. Mistaking one for the other is itself a class marker.

Re: How to make a friend fast

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think we underestimate how much all of these contribute to what we call 'personality'. I agree. But there are still people who are not changed much in important qualities despite big changes in their circumstances (e.g. from poor to rich, or from obscurity to fame or power, or vise versa) and others who change behavior totally with the subtlest of life changes. (E.g. now got a more high paying job, let me dump my…

Just watch out that they dropped their poor friends for the reason everyone expects. I don't give a fuck if someone is rich or not, and I have a number of poor friends[1], but I made the conscious decision to cut out friends that I wouldn't befriend if I met them today. Many of the people I cut were poor, but it's not why I cut them. I cut them because they stopped growing after or during highschool. When I talk abou…

"Most of them are either PhD candidates or in a profession that they love that just generally doesn't pay well, like Singer Songwriter."

I don't think your definition of "poor" matches most other people's one.

Re: How to make a friend fast

#194
post #86

Maybe it's because I find this research area intriguing, but I did not think that this summary adequately captured the efforts of the original paper [0]. I think it was unfortunate that this piece did not begin by conveying that the original study's authors specifically state their goal "was to develop a temporary feeling of closeness, not an actual ongoing relationship". Additionally, like many social psychology stu…

>I think it was unfortunate that this piece did not begin by conveying that the original study's authors specifically state their goal

Except that they began the piece by conveying exactly that:

>But it's a far stretch to say that such an accomplishment truly creates reliably long-lasting relationships, regardless of the immense immediate effect.

Re: How to make a friend fast

#195
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just watch out that they dropped their poor friends for the reason everyone expects. I don't give a fuck if someone is rich or not, and I have a number of poor friends[1], but I made the conscious decision to cut out friends that I wouldn't befriend if I met them today. Many of the people I cut were poor, but it's not why I cut them. I cut them because they stopped growing after or during highschool. When I talk abou…

> I cut them because they stopped growing after or during highschool. When I talk about politics or society I don't want to feel constrained. I don't want to have to explain things like the catch up effect. I don't want come over with an expensive scotch and have people mix it with Coca Cola. What you care about is class, not wealth. It's a learned set of knowledge, behaviors, and taste that's very hard to fake or ch…

>What you care about is class, not wealth. It's a learned set of knowledge, behaviors, and taste that's very hard to fake or change past childhood.

And it's also superficial. One can have "class" and be a class-A a-hole.

Re: How to make a friend fast

#196
post #57
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works really well in Germany as well, if you do it right. Also Germans are human, after all.

Would love to know an example of an inoffensive way to do this in Germany. That's one culture gap I have trouble crossing.

It's pretty hard and depend on the context a lot. I'm not a native, but I'm European. I still have a lot to learn.

Re: How to make a friend fast

#197
post #154

Things like this are why people laugh at Silicon Valley, this is a very aspie/robotic approach to this topic.

What's interesting to note is that no matter how you dress it up, human beings are indeed biological machines and respond in surprisingly predictable ways. The companies which specialize in data gathering and analysis are increasingly able to corroborate this observation with concrete examples and algorithms. It's of course a tautology, but "normal" social interactions are just that: a set of arbitrary norms. Normal…

The thing that freaks us out about statements like "Normal human behavior is surprisingly robotic" is that they carry with them the idea that human behavior can be hacked. But that's just a question of competence. I mean, are we talking Roomba-robotic, or HK-47 robotic(without the bloodlust)?

Practically, as soon as someone starts "hacking" social norms---most often with either sales or scams in mind---then the norms adjust. That's why city folk are more standoffish than country folk, why your inbox is full and mostly unread, and why women at bars are closed-off.

I mean, OK, we're robots. But we're pretty good robots.

Re: How to make a friend fast

#198
post #77

You can see this played out every day in designated smoking areas. I've observed smokers tend to become friends quickly. As smoking is increasingly frowned upon, everybody who shows up in the smoking area is sort of opening up and sharing a weakness with the other smokers just by being there.

So that one Friends episode with Rachel and her smoker boss (played by Joanna Gleason) was on point?

try working in Southern Europe. If you don't smoke, you miss out on hourly breaks where everything social happens.

Re: How to make a friend fast

#199
This reminds me of that scene in Silicon Valley where Bertram tells Dinesh he can make a friend just as good as his friend. Someone told me a while ago if you want to have a personal connection you have to be personable yourself and tell someone something honest and truthful. I've had much better luck since then. The middle box on this diagram is good advice.

Re: How to make a friend fast

#200
post #173

Word of warning: This is a social psychology study from 1997. There's been a lot of evidence lately that social psychology the way it's been done in the past is a huge mess and calling it pseudoscience isn't that far off. The field is only at the beginning of cleaning up that mess. Any study that old that hasn't been replicated with rigorous scientific standards is about as valuable as a magazine horoscope.

Hi, can you point us to some up to date research ?
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