Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Intentionally making close friends

neelnanda.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 323 posts

Re: Intentionally making close friends

#261

Post by Rediscover »

gammabetadelta wrote: post #153
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you can make it easy* for the other person (by handling the approach, scheduling, etc). They'll be as willing as in uni days* That's definitely not true, or at least not my experience. Everyone I ask out to join me for various activities, has an excuse, usually busy or other plans with someone else, and they never follow up for a rain check. People over 30, even single/child-free, seem to be very busy with their…

new relationships = low commitment never ask a new friend to hang in X, where X is days away. instead just do, i'm heading to this arcade want to join? or i'm at coffee shop now, want to stop by and catch up. this is how you can turn casual associates into friends. if someone cool i knew asked me to spend 2 hours with them i'd get nervous. plus, if they know that you are cool even without them they are far more likel…

Bingo

Re: Intentionally making close friends

#262

Post by Guidii »

nier wrote: post #69
Xcelerate wrote: post #11

I fortunately have close friends, but not through any of my own doing. Over the years, there were a lot of friendly extroverts that encouraged me to hang out and join them for burger night, or they’d message me when they were in town. Everyone I dated took the initiative to ask me out, including my wife. I always feel awkward when I reach out to people, as though I’m bothering them somehow, so I tend to avoid doing s…

NPC as in non-playable character? One of the first search results reads: «[…] slang used by millenials to denote people who act as if they are being told by someone to act in a specific manner, although that may not be the case. Using this abbreviation, the commentator or the creator is poking fun at the other person for acting in a certain manner.»

Origin predates computer RPG's. It's from tabletop role playing games, and stands for "non player characters".

NPCs are the characters that the Dungeon Master (DM) creates to guide and influence the story, but the player characters (PCs) are the focus of the story. It's collaborative storytelling about the PCs adventure. An NPC is, by definition, not the hero.

Re: Intentionally making close friends

#263

Post by aabceh »

throwaway_4ever wrote: post #131
gruez wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right word, wrong meaning. In the result you quoted, a person's intelligence is being compared to that of a NPC, implying that the person can't think for themselves and does whatever they're told like how NPCs in games act. The gp seems to imply a slightly different meaning, where a person is thought of as being not being a real person, and is only someone you go to for transactional work related stuff.

Whichever meaning, NPC is a recent insidious method of dehumanizing people that ranks right up there with labels like "pigs," "rats," and "cockroaches." This tactic is essentially a first prerequisite for mass violence. It's sure to increase incidences of mentally ill shooters viewing everyone around them as bots in a video game. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/26330024209169... https://www.npr.org/2011…

Do you see the irony in having the meaning of words being completely preprogrammed by what someone else want you to think and feel in a discussion about the word NPC? You know, context matters.

Re: Intentionally making close friends

#264

Post by balaji1 »

aeturnum wrote: post #51

IMO this is the #1 takeaway: > I was trapped in a ‘normal’ mode of conversation - making small talk, being inoffensive, feeling aversion to being weird, respecting where I thought other people’s boundaries were. If you want something else, you gotta let others know somehow! Everyone's life is different and has differently shaped spaces for relationships, interaction, etc. It's very common for people to be open to gro…

> work and attention

Attention is such a good choice of word. Attention with memory is key. I feel memory/remembering is the work, because we are constantly flooded with new things all day. Otherwise, once I am out of a conversation, I am into another app or meeting.

> accidentally leading others to believe they want a deeper relationship than they have the capacity to maintain.

Damn that's true. Though I think our instinct is to try to connect on a deeper level, and with just good intentions. We can be good friends with a lot of people. And be close to very few. That's ok, and better to be clear.

Re: Intentionally making close friends

#266

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

Denzel wrote: post #118
legerdemain wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author's primary advice for making more friends is that you will have conversations with lots of people and you should iterate through them quickly by making more intimate conversation and revealing something about yourself to deepen the relationship. This makes sense if the author is a student at a school of any meaningful size in a popular major. But it doesn't make sense for adults struggling to make connectio…

You captured two of the author's points well: 1) more vulnerable, intimate conversations that eschew social norms can lead to more and deeper friendships; and 2) to grow deeper connections you should cast a wide net and filter down based upon compatibility. The author makes other points about taking initiative and following up as well. Your critique of point #2 is that a middle-aged adult has less opportunities for c…

In my experience, there are only two reasons why a middle-aged adult would approach someone in 80% of those scenarios. One is that they're trying to sell me something or solicit donations to some cause, and the other is that they're literally insane and are about to start telling me why 5G towers shoot mind-control rays.

Re: Intentionally making close friends

#267

Post by FeistySkink »

deltaseventhree wrote: post #233
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no shortage of people hoping and dreaming about relationships. The number of people willing to move out of their comfort zone to make a good relationship possible - of any type - is much smaller.

Hook up culture is made up of lots of woman and a few men. The women are desperately searching for a relationship. The few men involved with hook up culture have too many options are unwilling to commit due to overwhelming supply. There are two reasons for why it's like this. The first reason is dating apps. Dating apps make it very easy for women to be even more selective then they already are. The second reason is…

Perhaps you can share the data?

Re: Intentionally making close friends

#268

Post by bgroat »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #195
rchaud wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's so much DEMAND for friends, that people will gobble up your supply if you offer it (so long as you're not a total monster) This really doesn't ring true outside of school/university years. Back then, you are constantly meeting new people, and seeing them regularly in class and on campus. People that age don't have a "max occupancy" number when it comes to making friends. As an adult in the working world, th…

> a new person is going to have to knock your socks off with their personality, for you to even consider meeting up with them again I’ve had serendipitous conversations which were just fun. Nothing knocking my socks off. Just good conversation; we share numbers and I try to remember when we’re in the same area again. > people are busy with daily life, and far less likely to chat with strangers Couldn’t disagree more.…

This is a big part of my "So hard it's easy" philosophy.

Most people are so bad at conversation (waiting patiently for their turn to tell a completely unrelated anecdote), that just being able to have an organic chat is pretty "knock your socks off behavior"

Re: Intentionally making close friends

#269

Post by bgroat »

sitkack wrote: post #186
bgroat wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luck is an interesting element. My best friend for 20 years (we've since fallen out of touch), was someone I met in kindergarten? How did we become friends? My surname starts with a "G" and his starts with an "H" so we were seated next to each other

I met someone at Strangeloop because they were a doppelganger of an acquaintance from some years previously. I now realize that I had this attitude like we already friends because of that unrealized similarity. Attitude and any alignment in interests is more than enough, or alphabetical. :)

"Uncommon Commonalities" are wild.

There was a girl who I couldn't stand in high school... but we bumped into each other in a train station on the opposite side of the country... and hung out all afternoon.

Just being from the same small town made an immediate (but brief) connection

Re: Intentionally making close friends

#270

Post by necovek »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #244
cycomanic wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience both of you are right. There are many people who are very "desperate" for friendships, especially if they have not lived in the same place for 20+ years. On the other hand there are a bunch of people who are so much in their routines they are not open to do anything out of the ordinary. The ironic thing is that even those are often desperate for friends, they just struggle to break their routines (so…

>There are many people who are very "desperate" for friendships Being desperate for friendships, in my experience, usually has the opposite effect of making people avoid you even more. Especially if you're over 30. People seem to be wired to think that "if you're a grown adult and have no friends by now, then it's probably because there's something wrong with you, and is risky for me to be the first one to take a lea…

Perhaps you can consider moving to a country other than the UK?

Just kidding, I've met plenty of wonderful and sociable UK people, and the joke could work (or not work, depending on what you make of my lousy humour) on almost any country.

Edit: seeing your other comment about "German speaking parts of Europe", my next guess to use in a joke would be Germany, but similarly, I've met a ton of very sociable Germans.

Post reply on HN