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

I rebooted my social life

takes.jamesomalley.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 433 posts

Re: I rebooted my social life

#311

Post by jrowen »

legerdemain wrote: post #279
yesfitz wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience, here's the general lowest-effort way to find community: Make a list of public places that you like (bars, coffee shops, game shops, etc.) and go to them at the same time on the same day every week. You'll shortly start seeing the same people regularly, even if it's just the staff. Then you can greet those people, introduce yourself, and talk with them. By asking questions about their day, their pl…

This has absolutely never worked for me in cafes, not in decades of trying across multiple states. Cafe regulars either bring their own company or "laptops open, headphones on, heads down." Amusingly, the rec league pinball people are absolutely ferocious about promotion. Pretty much every thread in r/bayarea about looking for friends gets a pitch from a pinball person.

Yeah I don't think bumping into random people in public places is a great strategy. It's not a social situation, and it's a complete crapshoot.

I think the best thing is to have a hobby or interest that has a local place where you can find other people that like it. Music is a good one, go to some shows by yourself and talk to people. Or tennis courts, a makerspace, some kind of special event, etc. You will already have something in common and something to talk about with the people there.

Re: I rebooted my social life

#312

Post by ropable »

Working fully remote during the COVID times taught me one thing quite well: that I am nowhere near the introvert I thought I was. Turns out that I really missed hanging out with friends in the same location (albeit a bit less often than some other people).

These days I treat active IRL socialisation similar to other health-promoting activities such as physical exercise. Even when it feels like a chore, it has a benefit. It's worth maintaining that practice, too; socialising in person is a skill like any other, which you can get better at.

Maintaining a good social circle is a bit like maintaining a garden. It rewards consistent low-level effort over a long period.

Re: I rebooted my social life

#313

Post by Animats »

legerdemain wrote: post #281
cjdell wrote: post #117

Joining a hackspace/makerspace suddenly introduced me to a high quality real-life social network. It's an excuse to engage with your hobbies but also hangout with like minds and pick up new skills. This won't be an option for everyone. I have to travel for an hour each way to get to mine, but it's worth it. If I had more energy I would start one in the city where I live.

A different take: joining one of these spaces (in the bay area) has exposed me to a weird and unpleasant underbelly of society that I barely knew existed. It's like the worst of Reddit, but in real life. People who want you to work on their projects "for the exposure," crypto scammers and people who are very naive and enthusiastic about crypto, depressed unemployable people, people who secretly live on the lobby couc…

Maker spaces declined over time. When I first started going to TechShop, it was people making nozzles for X-Prize rockets, Stanford grad students who needed better machine tools, Burning Man people making props, steampunks making props, and very serious model railroaders making model locomotives. Four milling machines in use all the time, CNC mills, plasma cutters, water jet cutters - heavy equipment. All the usual woodworking stuff. A paint shop with proper ventilation. Autodesk Inventor on all the computers. Lots of very smart people with interesting skill sets. The serious maker spaces were descended from the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT.[1]

By the time the maker movement collapsed, it was people grinding out crap to sell on Etsy, "hand made" on a CNC laser cutter. High school students doing the maker thing to get it on their college resume. Printing trinkets with a 3D printer. Classes for teenagers where everybody built kits. Arts and crafts at the advanced kindergarten paper folding level.

[1] https://cba.mit.edu/

Re: I rebooted my social life

#314

Post by stroebs »

This resonated hugely with me, with the grand addition that I moved to a different country a week before COVID lockdown. I’ve since reached a lot of pretty big life milestones (house, career, spouse, kid (soon)) and realised my life was still pretty empty because I’m not the introvert I once thought I was.

What I’m personally missing is the social capital. “Just invite people to stuff” doesn’t work, because my prior in-person social network is fragmented over 3 continents and many more countries and time zones. Minting new social capital is difficult - joining social events requires an invite to a social event to meet other people to start the process.

Re: I rebooted my social life

#315

Post by nprateem »

robocat wrote: post #178
2f0ja wrote: post #97

Lovely read. Social health is my number one 2026 priority. I moved into a new city in 2025 and this hits home. I'm lucky to have a great and active group of online friends but it's no replacement for something local. Some things that I've picked up last year that are a good starting point: - timeleft dinners. I get dinner with 5 strangers every few weeks. Tons of fun and you meet a lot of interesting people. - swing…

> dancing A "screwing club for men" was the scene at the Salsa dancing which I joined (with female friends). I really loved the salsa and really enjoyed everything with the rest of the learners, and with my friends. Unfortunately it took me too long to realize that the "top" men were more interested in fucking beginner women than in real socializing. Too predator vibe for me so we quit - I probably should have looked…

Thanks for the heads up, I might give salsa a try this year.

Re: I rebooted my social life

#316

Post by steve_adams_86 »

lumost wrote: post #291
physicles wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s something about cold plunges. My group started when some of us started meeting for drinks and a swim after work during the summer, and we just kept doing it every week through the winter. Some joined the group during the winter. Those people became my closest friends: - We see each other every week, almost without fail - I suspect the invitation to a cold plunge pre-selects for people with very high openness,…

> Doing something hard and a little bit scary together strengthens the bond This can’t be underestimated. Most of my adult friends come from my trekking hobby. Everyone struggles during a trek, group dynamics form, you stay surprisingly close with the people you trekked with.

I used to do long distance cycling with a few friends. We have a ridiculously tight bond around that suffering. So many hours asking each other what the hell we were thinking, and so many hours planning the next trips. We'd do 300, 400, 600km in a go. I miss it, and I miss them.

Re: I rebooted my social life

#318

Post by johnfn »

urban_strike wrote: post #282
tootie wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These kind of findings are probably accurate on average, but not to a person. Some people are wired differently. Some (presumably most) require community and extensive social connection. I really think that some of us just need much, much less. I don't get much sense of reward from social interactions. It really does just feel like a dull chore most of the time. Even with people I genuinely like and respect.

Yeah, I've been trying to wrap my head around this recently. I always get a bit irked by the inevitable comments confidently asserting things like "humans are social animals, if you think you don't need tight social connections you're just hurting yourself". And then pointing to these results averaged out over the entire population as "proof". It seems like there's got to be some statistical fallacy being made, like…

If it helps you understand the other side - very many people, and I consider myself one of them, went through a long part of life without realizing that "humans are social animals". In my case I was very unhappy for a very long time until I realized that socialization was the missing ingredient. Worse, I didn't even realize I was unhappy, and I had persuaded myself I was fine.

When you have this sort of a revelation, it's difficult to hold it in. You want to shout it from the rooftops. You want to grab every single person you can find who has a life remotely like yours years ago when you were unhappy, and save them, in the same way that you yourself needed saving.

I try not to do this any more because I understand it's annoying, and the message is unlikely to successfully transmit anyways. But I suspect this is the phenomenon you are observing.

Re: I rebooted my social life

#319

Post by ares623 »

lelandbatey wrote: post #306
levocardia wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of it is the uncomfortable fact that it is not very much fun to spend time with people who have small children -- it's hard to have a real conversation for more than a few minutes, and if you yourself don't have kids, what their life revolves around right now (daycare, finding a kindergarten, etc) is just not going to be very interesting.

Kids are at least as interesting as having to take care of any other living things. As strange as it may seem, if you can ask questions about someone's multiple aquariums, their cats or dogs, their horses or cows, then there's at least, probably more to ask about their children. I don't understand how raising a child can be anything but interesting. Every parent I speak to about having kids has such different philoso…

Totally. If you find LLMs interesting imagine how interesting actual growing and developing intelligence is.

Re: I rebooted my social life

#320

Post by capisce »

mettamage wrote: post #136

> I’ve got no idea, I’m too busy gaming on my Playstation 5 and living a life of selfish consumption. This is in another article of his about not having kids. But I think just focusing on enjoyment in life is a poor human experience. Life has much more to offer that is equally interesting. Enjoyment isn't the only game in town. And the other things that life has to offer, can be fucking painful. But I'd still say it'…

> But I think just focusing on enjoyment in life is a poor human experience. Life has much more to offer that is equally interesting. Enjoyment isn't the only game in town.

I assume this person is employed, so they're probably already doing quite a lot more than just hedonistic enjoyment.

Post reply on HN