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Building friend catchers

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Re: Building friend catchers

#31

Post by otikik »

giantg2 wrote: post #25

I don't think I've ever met someone online and later met them in person. Except for dating sites. It seems more difficult to make friends the older I get. I think at least part of it is that everyone is so busy.

Hi, I clicked on your recent comments (they are public, btw) and saw that you worry about low human interaction and also are interested into killing hornets as well.

I couldn't help but pattern-match to this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUlxth701GM

I am not that into killing hornets right now, but I will be moving to the countryside soon. I might hit you up later this month to talk about killing them, if that's alright.

Re: Building friend catchers

#32

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

dewey wrote: post #7
meowtastic wrote: post #6

I really want to believe in this, but from personal experience it hasn't worked out. I used to spend a lot of time posting frequently on LinkedIn, nothing came out of it. Maybe I didn't try hard enough, maybe there's survivor bias in the success stories, who knows.

> I used to spend a lot of time posting frequently on LinkedIn Maybe it's just the people I have added on LinkedIn but it always strikes me as a very superficial place and not the one for deeper connections or discussions about projects. Twitter on the other side seems to be more promising (at least in my case).

I would not consider LI to be a place to make "new" friends. I consider it a place to help tell people, who already know who I am, from elsewhere, more about myself.

In my case, doing nonprofit/volunteer work has been a great place to make new friends (and the occasional enemy).

Re: Building friend catchers

#33

Post by dncornholio »

I've been in multiple communities under a fake name. Every birthdate I entered online is always 01-01-1970. I don't think you were being rebellious, you were the complete opposite!

I've met people IRL from Finland, Lebanon, South Africa, basically all over the world, who I met online. Sometimes I would introduce my real name only when we met IRL.

Not using my real name has not held me back from meeting new people, online or IRL.

Re: Building friend catchers

#34

Post by whywhywhywhy »

meowtastic wrote: post #6

I really want to believe in this, but from personal experience it hasn't worked out. I used to spend a lot of time posting frequently on LinkedIn, nothing came out of it. Maybe I didn't try hard enough, maybe there's survivor bias in the success stories, who knows.

What did you post though? A lot of LinkedIn writing is very generic. Think the point of this article is that being honest and maybe a little provocative can be used as a filter, not things that come to mind with LinkedIn posts.

Re: Building friend catchers

#35

Post by saiya-jin »

giantg2 wrote: post #25

I don't think I've ever met someone online and later met them in person. Except for dating sites. It seems more difficult to make friends the older I get. I think at least part of it is that everyone is so busy.

Moving to a new location triggers interesting effect in many people - they shed their social fears and laziness and try to socialize more. Living in a hub that attracts many such folks gives one an endless stream of people that are looking for friendship, consciously or sub-consciously.

The drawback is, long term retention is not high in such a location. Its not nice to see people with whom you connected so well leave. But its endlessly better than some stale rural place where you either have really close people from childhood/school years, or you are pretty lonely.

Re: Building friend catchers

#36

Post by meowtastic »

dewey wrote: post #7
meowtastic wrote: post #6

I really want to believe in this, but from personal experience it hasn't worked out. I used to spend a lot of time posting frequently on LinkedIn, nothing came out of it. Maybe I didn't try hard enough, maybe there's survivor bias in the success stories, who knows.

> I used to spend a lot of time posting frequently on LinkedIn Maybe it's just the people I have added on LinkedIn but it always strikes me as a very superficial place and not the one for deeper connections or discussions about projects. Twitter on the other side seems to be more promising (at least in my case).

I find Twitter conversations are just as shallow unfortunately. I do follow a couple of people there - Benedict Evans and patio11, but comments on their tweets aren't any better.

Re: Building friend catchers

#37

Post by meowtastic »

hobofan wrote: post #17
dewey wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I used to spend a lot of time posting frequently on LinkedIn Maybe it's just the people I have added on LinkedIn but it always strikes me as a very superficial place and not the one for deeper connections or discussions about projects. Twitter on the other side seems to be more promising (at least in my case).

I'll throw in Reddit into the mix. For deeper discussions about projects, it has a way better interface than Twitter, and also as a "newcomer" you have way better chances if you pick out the right communities. One other factor is probably also frequency of posting. While my posting cadence of "something interesting" every few months works well for Reddit, that's not something that gets people to follow and engage wit…

I got a few really good exchanges on Reddit. But I always feel weird reaching out to people directly afterwards, I feel the platform isn't made for that.

Re: Building friend catchers

#38

Post by meowtastic »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #32
dewey wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I used to spend a lot of time posting frequently on LinkedIn Maybe it's just the people I have added on LinkedIn but it always strikes me as a very superficial place and not the one for deeper connections or discussions about projects. Twitter on the other side seems to be more promising (at least in my case).

I would not consider LI to be a place to make "new" friends. I consider it a place to help tell people, who already know who I am, from elsewhere, more about myself. In my case, doing nonprofit/volunteer work has been a great place to make new friends (and the occasional enemy).

I agree, it's more for reminding existing connections that you exist.

Sadly not interested in nonprofit volunteering at the moment, too worried just making ends meet. London’s very expensive these days and wages aren't great.

Re: Building friend catchers

#39

Post by meowtastic »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #34
meowtastic wrote: post #6

I really want to believe in this, but from personal experience it hasn't worked out. I used to spend a lot of time posting frequently on LinkedIn, nothing came out of it. Maybe I didn't try hard enough, maybe there's survivor bias in the success stories, who knows.

What did you post though? A lot of LinkedIn writing is very generic. Think the point of this article is that being honest and maybe a little provocative can be used as a filter, not things that come to mind with LinkedIn posts.

Those were the kind of posts I was writing, and they didn't work. A lot more effective to do a low quality outrage-economy style post. My most successful one by 100x was a generic complaint about tech recruiters.

Re: Building friend catchers

#40

Post by meowtastic »

CalRobert wrote: post #10
meowtastic wrote: post #6

I really want to believe in this, but from personal experience it hasn't worked out. I used to spend a lot of time posting frequently on LinkedIn, nothing came out of it. Maybe I didn't try hard enough, maybe there's survivor bias in the success stories, who knows.

LinkedIn probably isn't a great choice. Randomly, have you looked for local groups that share an interest on Slack or Discord? There's an Irish Tech Community slack, for instance, where I've made many friends (real life ones too!)

I tried Slack and Discord groups, but they had too much noise.
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