111–120 of 453 posts
You are not asking how to meet people, you are asking how to meet the perfect people for you who will be available only when you want them. you are turning down all opportunities to actually meet people.
I need a brand new friend who doesn't trouble me
I need someone, yeah, who doesn't need me
I stated this in a sub thread, but: Get in the practice of getting in debt to other people (not necessarily monetary). Asking for favors, or help. If you read Debt: The Last 5000 years, debts are the glue that held society together for milennia. It sounds like you have done a lot of work making yourself independent. But if you want to be social and have friends, you have to do exactly the opposite, and find a way to…
Managing/balancing debt might play a role in friendships, but friendships are not about debt. They are about people who care about each other's lives. I'd much rather have a friendship rooted in love/care than in manufactured debts. I wouldn't see the latter as much of a friendship.
First, it's normal that people don't want to be with someone that is lonely and desperate. Being lonely and desperate is very unattractive, thus leading to more loneliness. It's a vicious cycle. If you want to break out of it, here is my advice: Work on yourself. Develop your skills, take up new hobbies, new challenges in life, travel, learn to take care of yourself,.. etc. Become someone you respect. Then you won't have to do anything special, people will feel attracted to you.
I stated this in a sub thread, but: Get in the practice of getting in debt to other people (not necessarily monetary). Asking for favors, or help. If you read Debt: The Last 5000 years, debts are the glue that held society together for milennia. It sounds like you have done a lot of work making yourself independent. But if you want to be social and have friends, you have to do exactly the opposite, and find a way to…
Managing/balancing debt might play a role in friendships, but friendships are not about debt. They are about people who care about each other's lives. I'd much rather have a friendship rooted in love/care than in manufactured debts. I wouldn't see the latter as much of a friendship.
There's always the guy that just keeps bumming rides, forgetting his wallet or whatever. That's an extreme and he's probably not well liked (if he has friends they likely pity him because they know how he ended up this way).
The other form is: I didn't have a car in college. I didn't set out to find someone with a car and befriend them, but someone I knew happened to have one. He'd drive the lot of us around, we'd occassionally buy his meal or fuel. We became good friends but the circumstance of our need and his ability to satisfy it certainly enabled or encouraged our social contact. The debt, then, can be a pretext of sorts. You want friends, you're not good at it. You can either provide a resource to others (running the risk of being the guy that gets used all the time) or seek resources from others, and repay them in some fashion. It's not the only way, but looking back on a number of my friendships, many (not deliberately) started off in this manner.
EDIT: Examples of debt-enabled friendships:
The car situation above with a couple friends in college.
The reverse, I was the top student in a few classes and ended up with a circle of friends that came out of people wanting to study with me.
I was in need of a job, someone helped me out and we became good friends. And the reverse again, I turned down a job offer but referred a peripheral friend (friends, but not close) and we became much better friends afterward.
I didn't have cable for a couple years, met a guy first week of grad school who was also a Stargate SG-1 fan and did have cable. Neither of us knew anyone there, we used this as an excuse to hang out with each other. I had extra furniture, so I loaned him a couple chairs. This is probably the best example, it was a minor debt (I loaned him a couple $40 chairs, he let me hang out in his apartment on Friday nights). Neither of us really owed the other anything in return for this, we both just wanted a friend in a place where we were otherwise alone.
Also, you're a techie so getting into a conversation at your local shop might be a bit of a drag. Get online, find your local Linux user group, programmer's meetings, hacker meetings, and similar events. Go there and start talking to people. "How did you end up here?" is a great way to break the ice.
Finally, if you want to meet people outside your field that are interested in the same things as you then try MeetUp.com for hobbies, OKCupid.com for dating, and Craigslist for performing satanic rituals in the woods. Okay, maybe I'm kidding about that one, but try it. Friday night you go on one of these pages and find a MeetUp event the next day and go to it. After seeing the same people a few times you can ask them for drinks or food after your meeting. If you're brave, ask them the first time. Should be easy.
Also, your written English is fine and because English is spoken by such a large number of non-native speakers you will find that most people will forgive small mistakes. And the ones that don't are usually not worth your friendship in the first place.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> One last thing... I'm not sure that this will help any, but language is really tricky. I'm an American living in New Zealand. I'm sure my language issues pale in comparison, but I am constantly second-guessing myself. It's not that I'm worried that people won't understand me, it's that I'd rather communicate in a way that's natural to the people who are listening to me -- I'm sure you can relate. What I'd say is th…
> Have you run into this? Yes. I have two examples. One glaring, and one subtle. First the glaring one: the word "cunt." In the US it's quite offensive to call someone a cunt, and even using the word in conversation is considered quite "low." Here it's also an offensive thing to call somebody, but it's not quite as ghastly as we'd make it out to be back home. You certainly wouldn't use the word in a professional sett…
Oh yeah, and saying something is "all right" is high praise.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Managing/balancing debt might play a role in friendships, but friendships are not about debt. They are about people who care about each other's lives. I'd much rather have a friendship rooted in love/care than in manufactured debts. I wouldn't see the latter as much of a friendship.
I could be wrong, but I understood this to be a way of getting yourself in the door. Bonds created by the "indebtedness" are I think starting points to spending time with people and getting to know them, rather than a friendship in and of themselves.
This reminds me of what pickup artists teach. They teach tactics for how to get in the door, and forget about the fundamentals of actually building a real relationship.
Hey, I feel you. I'm not Asian, but I'm introvert. I'm a tad younger, at 20 years old. I'm also unemployed (yay!). Anyway, I've never have tons of friends, but after finishing high school, I've cut almost every relations that I've had with others (on one side, I've never had a friendship outside school, on the other side, it's my fault since I'm not good at maintaining relations). So you could say that I'm currently…
I am a 1st year CS student and I can't find a coding buddy. By that I mean someone to study new technologies with, to work on learning-focused projects together and exchange ideas. Most of my schoolmates are overwhelmed with classes and don't have time or desire for partnering up.
So, HN, if you are up for some node.js/javascript or C++ learning, it would be awesome to get in touch. I've even posted a thread[1] on reddit, but so far no luck.
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingBuddies/comments/27zn0i/n...
My advice is to focus on the things that really interest you. If you are passionate about something, you'll get good at it and with skill you will gain a quiet confidence.
Join a club (non tech/engineering related), if you suck at whatever it is, people will be there to help you and teach you, you'll make friends!! And as you get better, you can then help the other newbies that join up.
Quiet confidence is the critical success factor in the lady front. If you are focusing on you and doing things that interest you, you will meet the right kind of woman. If she's put off the fact you don't have a car - she's the wrong woman for you anyway.
As previously said, 'How to Win Friends and Influence People is a must read'... a must!
Once you have read it, THEN talk to a stranger everyday. Treat it as an iterative process, split test approaches, track responses etc. You will learn through failing forward, it's the only way.
Best of luck!