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Re:Americans Are a Lonely Lot, and Young People Bear the Hea... by arthurmerlin on Tuesday May 01, 2018 @06:32PM (#16972348)
What do you do when your friends don't pick up, or if they aren't willing to go on outings with you? I think the biggest contributor to my loneliness is that no one seems to like me. I reach out to hang out, and usually, get rejected.
Re:Americans Are a Lonely Lot, and Young People Bear the Hea... by stillsut on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @12:58AM (#16974170)
This will seem counter-intuitive but work on opening up strangers in public places, and your friends will end up gravitating towards you.

Gladwell observed in Tipping Point that most peoples' social circle is usually created by one high connection "maven" who connects many low connection end nodes. You want to try to move closer to how that maven operates.

Concretely: If you go out with a friend, and end up becoming buddies with the waitress, and then also know of an after party you can bring the friend to, by virtue of your network, you will constantly be getting solicited to hang out. Even more quantitatively: if you can average +2 casual connections per day when you try, you'll be doing very well. But two connections in a day is very difficult for most people on HN; you'll have to work and experiment on how to achieve that.

Re:Americans Are a Lonely Lot, and Young People Bear the Hea... by taurath on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @02:16AM (#16974540)
I call those social connectors - one of the biggest differences I’ve seen having moved from California to the PNW is that they have large groups with absolutely no connectors. Having usually been one (but between groups), it’s signifcantly detracted from the quality of relationships here - it takes so much effort to get “into” a group because there is no front door, just a long slow osmosis by proximity.
Re:Americans Are a Lonely Lot, and Young People Bear the Hea... by meej on Saturday May 05, 2018 @05:02PM (#17003797)
I lived in Seattle for seven years, and what I observed there was that people there are shy (not snobby or cliquish, as the "Seattle Freeze" stereotype implies), which means you need to approach them because they will never approach you. When I put energy into introducing myself to people, I always got good results and I made a lot of friends that way. In contexts where a conversation started before names were exchanged (like hanging out with the smokers outside), I noticed that people seemed relieved once I introduced myself. I've shared this with friends, some who have tried it with similar good results.

Another interesting dynamic in Seattle is that people seem to assume all the people they know already know each other, which means nobody tries to introduce people. I have an old friend up there who used to insist I already knew people I hadn't met, which was frustrating. The result of this tendency is a social network with a highly connected center and a lot of poorly connected leaves. This structure really revealed itself when my social network was struck by a tragedy where several people were victims of a shooting -- there was a group of people who all had direct connections to at least one victim, and another group who didn't know any of the victims personally but a majority of their friends had. I was in the latter group and I found it very strange.

It was a huge contrast when I moved to the Bay Area, where people assumed everyone was a transplant and went out of their way to do introductions. I was at a party once where I was reintroduced to the same person four times -- someone who I had already met years earlier.

Re:Americans Are a Lonely Lot, and Young People Bear the Hea... by stillsut on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @02:31AM (#16974605)
Reminds me of the parable of the two shoe salesmen in Africa [0]. The point being, if there's all these isolated, lonely cliques, there's actually a huge opportunity for someone who can consistently connect with others starting out as a stranger.

[0]:http://johnassaraf.com/goal-achieving-2/a-tale-of-two-shoe-s...

Re:Americans Are a Lonely Lot, and Young People Bear the Hea... by taurath on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @01:14PM (#16979058)
The opportunity is there but in seattle you definitely have a huge barrier - people will instantly mistrust you if you do anything other than the slow and steady route.
Re:Americans Are a Lonely Lot, and Young People Bear the Hea... by xor1 on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @01:31AM (#16974311)
I'm kind of a maven, except all of my friends end up disliking each other.
Re:Americans Are a Lonely Lot, and Young People Bear the Hea... by stillsut on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @02:19AM (#16974546)
Common misconception: having your finger in a lot of different pies is not being a Maven. If you joined an improv group, a church group, a softball team, and an MMA gym, you're at best a conglomerate, but more likely an overextended end node.
Re:Americans Are a Lonely Lot, and Young People Bear the Hea... by xor1 on Thursday May 03, 2018 @09:36AM (#16985869)
I don't meet people through groups, I just go up to them in public
Re:Americans Are a Lonely Lot, and Young People Bear the Hea... by forapurpose on Tuesday May 01, 2018 @09:39PM (#16973413)
That can be really tough; I've had similar experiences and I'm sorry to see what you're going through. You are not the only one (there's an article above with the data!). I hope some of this helps; f some is way off base, ignore that part:

Most of all, have compassion for and care about yourself. It doesn't solve every problem, but it's the most important relationship you have by far. Without it, you'll always be lonely no matter who is around. With it, how others respond won't matter so much.

Have compassion for the other people too, especially those who don't respond. They have their own problems which have nothing to do with you, which, like everyone else's problems, might make them a*holes at times. The reasons they don't respond likely have nothing to do with you. Don't objectify them - don't make them characters in your narrative of your social life; they have their own narratives independently of everyone else.

Another reason to have compassion for them is that people in your situation tend to adopt a perspective where all the power is in the hands of others: They respond or they don't. It's not a healthy (or realistic) perspective; you have power too and they are flawed, vulnerable human beings too.

And more practically, instead of worrying about people who don't seem to respond, keep trying until you find some who do - it can be hard to motivate yourself but it's worth the effort. For everyone, there are plenty of both kinds and it's no shame if it doesn't work out with some - that's inevitable given the odds - or if the ones that will respond are hard to find. You don't need many successes to have a social life and you are worth the effort no matter how bad your experiences so far.

Finally, many people find themselves lonely at times in their life, and find they need only one really close relationship, a life partner. If you have yourself (see above) and a life partner, then the other relationships become much less significant. Maybe that's the real goal; it can take a lot of looking, but once you find the person you both have it made (with plenty of work!).

Good luck!

Re:Americans Are a Lonely Lot, and Young People Bear the Hea... by majormajor on Tuesday May 01, 2018 @06:35PM (#16972366)
The only answer I ever found to this was "find different friends" - or, more directly, "find real friends who do like you more."

But it's very, very hard.

Re:Americans Are a Lonely Lot, and Young People Bear the Hea... by sli on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @12:22PM (#16978539)
My biggest issue is similar. My friends and I can hang out together easily, but we don't really just hang out anymore, they always want to go to bars and I'm not really into that.
Re:Americans Are a Lonely Lot, and Young People Bear the Hea... by ctchocula on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @04:06AM (#16974982)
I usually try to find out what passions the other person has. If somebody is passionate about something (no matter what), then they have experienced depth in that topic. I want that depth; it is the underlying treasure of this world. That's why I will steer the conversation in that direction. If somebody I talk to wants to have a shallow pretentious chat, we can safely depart after 3 minutes, him thinking: "ok, that's one of the weird ones, that doesn't believe in the value of a high society chat". I celebrate being different and open-minded and non-elitist (in the sense that I don't feel that I'm better than anybody else) and all my close friends do too.

You probably have a reason for liking those Japanese bands. They excite you somehow. Find out why. If you can articulate it, then people will be able to understand your passion.

Re:Americans Are a Lonely Lot, and Young People Bear the Hea... by cryptozeus on Tuesday May 01, 2018 @07:27PM (#16972696)
or it could be that they are all busy and lonely too. Do they hang out without you ? As another person said, just find your tribe.
Re:Americans Are a Lonely Lot, and Young People Bear the Hea... by sudouser on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @12:43AM (#16974112)
personal experience: moving towns I made friendship initially with a group, but didn’t fit, so I changed to a group of friends where I truly fitted