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.

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.

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...

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.

I'm kind of a maven, except all of my friends end up disliking each other.

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.

I don't meet people through groups, I just go up to them in public