Must be something in the air: From yesterday, 275 comments.
"One way to fight loneliness: Germans call it a Stammtisch"
Why making friends as an adult is harder
51–60 of 250 posts
Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder
#52Get a dog, show up regularly to the local dog park. You will quickly meet people.
Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder
#53This is the first time I heard of Dupe photos: https://dupephotos.com/ , they look more amateur but feel more human.
I couldn't understand why you were talking about this, I actually thought your account was hacked, but I see now all the photos in the article are provided by them. Clicked through and spent some time there, an interesting community, it seems like people's random "decent enough" photos, kinda a good idea imo. If I want random stock these days I typically use AI, but this would save me having to think up a prompt and then do 15 minutes of prompt engineering. I like it!
Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder
#54maybe this is a projection, but it always seems like the people struggling to make new friends also tend to never put themselves in the bare minimum situation to be able to make said friends. i personally rarely go outside outside of anything related to work. maybe for others it is the same?
Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder
#55It's not!
You just need a shared interest or objective in as close to 'real life' as you can get it, and you need to dedicate time to it that you would otherwise give to TV and doom-scrolling.
Gamers make real friends. Open source enthusiasts can make real friends. Music fans can make real friends (though your local scene is considerably better for this).
It does take management and maintenance, and if you're a single person then covid lockdowns will have broken many ties; I am definitely a more insular person than I was before.
But stop wasting your time watching TV, make a plan to make your social media more focussed on local activities and less focussed on personal drama, and try to be part of something a bit bigger than yourself. Get a dog, maybe.
Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder
#56[deleted]
Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder
#57I've made more friends more easily in my 40s than any other time in my life, and I'm a relatively quiet and disagreeable person. Making connections with people you're around frequently is easy. The problem is that adult life doesn't throw you into those situations post-college outside of work. Now it's on you. Find a group. Sports are the easiest. You will absolutely make strong, long lasting friendships if you play…
> Find a group. This is obviously great advice, but most groups don't organically sprout around interests. Sports, especially, are something that I have a very difficult time imagining enjoying. And with the slow enshittification of meetup, where do you find these groups? Your local library?
With websites and social media accounts being simple to create, just search google and instagram for “ club/meetup/group”. Lots of small groups make one for this purpose. It’s worked for me!
Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder
#58For me a huge challenge is that I grew older (college years) in an environment where people were strongly convinced that opinions and tastes can only be right or wrong. If someone liked something else than the group, they just didn't see the truth. It was exhausting and also meant that "finding friends" basically meant trying to find someone who likes and values exactly the same things as you.
I learned pretty late that you can get along very well with people who have vastly different taste and as long as your ideals are not directly contradicting, it still works.
So I guess my suggestion is: don't artificially limit your pool of potential friends by looking for the perfect match. No need to find your soul-copy. Someone with whom concersation flows is just fine.
Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder
#59This is the first time I heard of Dupe photos: https://dupephotos.com/ , they look more amateur but feel more human.
I couldn't understand why you were talking about this, I actually thought your account was hacked, but I see now all the photos in the article are provided by them. Clicked through and spent some time there, an interesting community, it seems like people's random "decent enough" photos, kinda a good idea imo. If I want random stock these days I typically use AI, but this would save me having to think up a prompt and…
Yeah, I was quite happy it wasn't AI. Glad I wasn't alone. Merry Christmas. :)
Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder
#60I came to California, in part, because my family in the Midwest is a bunch of Jesus freaks - not the "love thy neighbor" kind, more like the "God hates fags" kind. So when a girlfriend (in California) invited me to her church for some volunteer work, I went prepared to hate on everyone. However, I was blown away, as they were the nicest people I'd ever met in my life. They all went out of their way to help one anothe…
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