331–340 of 522 posts
This is extremely common. In their 30s, people get married, have kids, and move to the suburbs. Finding and keeping friends in your 30s is quite a challenge. Some tips: - move to a city - things are much much easier in a city as people are more transient, groups aren't as established, and new people arrive all the time - it sounds like you have some friends - ask them if they have any friends in your area you should…
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RE: activity This may sound crazy, but join a Crossfit gym. Look on google maps, find one that is convenient, show up, talk to the coach, and sign up for a month. Crossfit is instant community. And you will get fit and feel better about yourself while you do it. Will it solve everything? Maybe not. But there's it's SUCH a simple way to make real progress on isolation, health, and self esteem. There are a million othe…
There's a 1000 similar options. Ballroom dancing, martial arts, bird watching, D&D. Most are happy to have new recruits.
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That might be a step further than is necessary. I don’t think you have to like yourself, and it’s much easier to like yourself if someone else likes you first. However, I do agree that you need to get past self-loathing to at least self-acceptance of some kind. Mostly because self-loathing means putting your attention on yourself, and that is what makes it hard to connect with other people. It’s ok to not have a high…
tolerate then. You have you not actively dislike yourself.
I was in a similar rut 'round about 2013. I won't go into details, but sans a very small number of solid-as-granite people, my group of friends disintegrated for various reasons, including everyone I know getting married off, having kids, and being absorbed by one or the other. I got off of my ass. I moved to a completely new geographic area. I sampled every aspect, every neighborhood of my target area, and I looked…
Before the pandemic I was super into renfairs and live action roleplay and met a lot of my best friends through that.
I also have a few friends I know from various places I've worked, but... not many in traditional software development.
I really think that software development got "too easy" for them, and now all the fun logic challenges are in super abstract stuff and constant fussing, and that somehow leads devs down a hole of isolation.
Random Code blogs basically tell you to constantly rewrite and refactor and perfect and to always be trying new code katas.
The whole culture revolves around tinkering with random small toy projects. Which is extremely isolating because.... nobody cares all that much. Anyone who would care has their own random toy projects.
It's hard to make friends when you are encouraged to spend your free time on things that, almost by design, nobody else will care about.
Programmers seem to hate software. It's always bloat this, insecurity that, all day. That's also isolating, when the whole industry feels so negative about their own work.
Some of it is legitimately crap, but I feel like even some of the people doing amazing world changing stuff probably enjoy playing with Vim plugins more than their job.
Nobody wants to be social when they feel like shit, or be around other people who visibly are depressed.
Not that that's how I think it should be, of course, but it seems to be true.
It seems like there is a cloud of darkness over software culture, and the whole "nerd scene" in general gets sucked into it.
Something is also wrong with video games too but I'm not sure what. They are no longer ultra exciting. Nobody camps out in line for a Wii. LAN parties are mostly gone.
Something happened to the tech industry and everything "Nerd related".
Maybe it's just because I've only ever worked tech and it's like this everywhere... but software seems uniquely isolating.
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you dont give a depression diagnostic based on comments on the internet. and asking oneself questions about their future is not a sign of illness, its what conscious beings usually do.
Agree that depression diagnosis might be wrong. But the therapy is incredibly effective against all the symptoms he has described in details. Therapy is not just for depressed people. I have met different therapists and I was never diagnosed of clinical depression. However, I have faced many of the symptoms that he has described. It makes sense to meet a therapist (if he can afford it) and take their help. Also, in m…
"Professional help" is not always positive. If you have internal issues to fix, external help may or may not be the right thing for you. There's absolutely no standard approach for this kind of things.
> a therapist (a good one)
So what they end up with a bad one, was that good advice?
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There's a 1000 similar options. Ballroom dancing, martial arts, bird watching, D&D. Most are happy to have new recruits.
Bird watching? Ballroom dancing? This has to be a joke, I’ve never met a single person under 60 that does either of these
As far as I understand it, software engineers in the Bay Area have two common hobbies: indoor rock-climbing at Planet Granite and ballroom dancing. I would never have guessed how common they are, but it is what it is. D&D is a distant third.
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To veer a little off track, I used to be a huge fan of Richard Dawkins back in college until I realized his approach just creates friction and polarization. The opposite of what he crusades for. The astrophysicists have a way better approach than the biologists. It's non-confrontational. But my point is that I don't think it's impossible for atheists and religious folks to be friends. Or even date and get married. Mu…
Yeah I don't think on HN I'm actually talking to very many people who would for example, not believe that species evolved via natural selection, that there was global flood that killed everyone except one family, that the earth is 6000 years old, that all the inhabitants of the new world before 1492 were sent to hell by a Mesopotamian sky-god, or that gay men and disobedient children should be stoned to death. No, I…
I suggested this and my relationship with the church is openly agnostic. I have no qualms about discussing my opinions of religion as it relates to my belief. I don't feel the need to bend to their world view, change my beliefs, etc.
Regarding the people that get sucked into those types of churches. The ones you say they're actively recruiting (I would not disagree). But, this may be controversial, but I believe those folks typically have some void in their life to begin with. They're going to fill that void with something eventually and probably at an unhealthy dosage. It might be drugs, religion, politics, sex, abusive relationship, etc. They may not realize it, but they have a desire to be in a "cult". So, I don't fully believe the cult is to blame. There simply is a market for cults and demand will get met.
I think especially for our HN audience here, it's more about not falling into that trap. Doing your due diligence. Stay true to yourself and avoid any of this BS cult stuff you bring up as a valid concern. Honestly it sounds like you just live in a very racist part of the country where the KKK's never disappeared they just moved the meetings to church. That or you're very much indoctrinated in the bad parts of religion while ignoring the healthy parts.
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> […] I don’t want to meet people like me How do you know they’re like you? How do you know all the single guys there are just looking to hook up or find girlfriends? How do you know all the aging, unattractive women are just looking for a husband? Feels like you are projecting. To give a different perspective - I also took dance classes before COVID. I went into it with the mindset that I wanted to learn how to danc…
>Did you try meetup.com? So this is a bit offtopic (but maybe ontopic for HN), did meetup go through some change in ownership, revenue model etc. ? I can agree with the observation that meetup.com doesn't have as many fun/cheap/random/hobby based meetups any more. Everything feels a lot more commercial compared to a few years ago. Maybe it's area specific, maybe it's COVID, maybe it's a bunch of different factors. I…
> did meetup go through some change in ownership, revenue model etc. ?