observations on friend making
Here’s a thought I’ve been noodling on…
If asked I you, “would you like a great new friend”, you’d mostly likely say “hell yeah”.
If I asked you, “are you actively looking to make friends”, you would mostly likely say “um, sure…Ryan” and think I was insulting you. This reaction may be a bit different if you’re completely new to a city.
Everyone is looking to make friends or better said, have more quality friends. Friends that they didn’t inherit from a past time…college, first job or even high school where the rationale is even funnier [both our parents decided to move to this town, have sex and stay here for the next 14 years..thus we are classmates and potential friends]
The post-college world is an interesting place when it comes to meeting new people. The amount of reddit, thought catalog, tumblr, email and dinnertime conversations around “how to meet new people in a new city” is a well documented and discussed dilemma. Typical (and often right advice) → go your neighborhood bar/hangout regularly, get involved in volunteering, go to a club or league for an activity that you’re passionate about, join a book group, etc. ie See Meetup.
Basically the essence of each proposal is 1. do something with a like-minded group 2. on a regular basis 3. amongst a varying but consistent structure. Boom — engineered serendipity. You’ve had fun doing the thing you set out to do and meeting someone that potentially turns into a long lasting friend is icing on the cake.
The real key is here is that there is a 3rd party or activity to focus one’s efforts; it serves as the reason or excuse to showing up to that place full of strangers.
I think the very outgoing and type-A folks potentially scoff (or never give it due thought) at this problem as they’ve never really faced this in day to day life. I was previously in this group until I started to actively acknowledge most folks were not nearly as comfortable and liberal going online →offline.
For a longtime now, I have wondered what the best way to proactively make friends be that didn’t involve me starting a new activity or having to join a club for something. I used to think it was odd that there wasn’t an way to make friends digitally in a very explicit way. A variation of the professional connection making that exists today made sense in my mind. [Weave, Networkr, LETSLUNCH, Wildcard — not my Wildcard]
but…
My thinking has changed a bit.
It appears to me that the social networks and consumer apps focused on self-expression serve as the best contexts to go from interest based activity, conversation and engagement to acquaintances (familiarity) and then potential friends where you can meet offline or where the digital interaction is regular and direct.
A simple feed of photos (Instagram, Instagram for doctors, sneakerheads, etc) around a similar subject provides such a simple and strong reason to comment and have a dialogue with someone regardless of previous history. Funny thing is, your chances of a true friendship are marginally higher (still pretty low) but the important part is that all parties are given repeated swings at bat to reach out and connect. This isn’t the case in the offline world.
It gets interesting when the features or cultural do’s and dont’s of a product change to allow for this direct connection. Instagram DMs, Twitter DMs, Reddit PMs, asking for coffee after being on a few email chains, Swarm comments, etc. They essentially serve as a natural on-ramp to each other’s paths.
Focused but in-direct friend making efforts remind me of the cliche quote that often comes up in tech and vc. Sometimes (for right and wrong) it’s just too awkward or ineffective for both parties to lead with what they truly want.
If you want money, ask for advice, and if you want advice, ask for money.
We are humans after all. We loathe awkwardness and embarrassment and have a fear of failure.
To circle back to the questions above: people don’t want to meet people who also want to make friends, they just want to have good friends and of course there’s only one way to go from 0 to 2, 10, 50…make them. Culturally it almost seems that it’s most socially acceptable to be actively looking for someone romantically or publicly dating than it is to be in “friend seeking” mode.
The way to avoid this has been create a frictionless and inviting way for people to connect over a common pursuit. If things go well, the parallel and isolated paths we tend to live in start to converge on one other. You just have to give a reason to people to answer the question, “so why are you here?”
I’m very interested in seeing what new apps or services start to consciously built this connective tissue horizontally amongst cohorts of like minded people. I have a few ideas…
Recipe for friendship:
Art of Manliness — How to Make New Friends in a City
Related thoughts:
Related readings:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2s71hi/reddit_how_does_one_actually_make_friends_as_an
