Not to sound ungrateful, but they tend to be exclusively occupied by senior citizens. I do enjoy spending time with the elderly, but it's no replacement for peers in one's own life stage.

> Not to sound ungrateful, but they tend to be exclusively occupied by senior citizens.

One solution to that would be for younger people to join.

Exactly :)

That's a totally fair assessment, and not everyone's into that. I am sure, though, that if you look locally, you'll find a club or group that matches your age range more closely!

Do you know of any clubs that attract younger people? I'd prefer to not be 40 years younger than everyone at these clubs.

I’ve visited a board game club before and there were only a few people over 30. And a lot of younger. Very fun if you like board games. Literally just people there to have fun. Some cute girls too if that’s what you’re looking for.

That's a great idea! I've seen these pop out of local game shops pretty often.

I have tried to participate in dozens of board game and programming clubs in my region, and while sometimes it turns out alright at first (as in I went back several times), every single one of them got derailed by identitarianism; mostly trans[whatever suffix is appropriate] people making the entire thing into drama about themselves, with a small spattering of political ideologues (of all bents) and race. All it takes is one bad apple and a bunch of others desperate to not offend to make a gathering shift from "we were just here to play scrabble" to "everyone needs to sign this petition about drag shows/police brutality/tenants rights/etc. if you want to be welcome in this diverse and inclusive group."

I don't want to go to the geriatric clubs who lament about how woke things are, either.

Just leave your bullshit at home, please.

This is one of the biggest problems I see for getting new friends as a millennial. About a year ago I got my amateur radio license. I started to talking to a few people locally and eventually went to club meetings and lunches. I'm in my mid-30s; almost everybody else involved in amateur radio in my area is old enough to be my parent or grandparent.

Well I'm in my 50s and wouldn't consider a single one of the clubs listed in the GP as I feel like the people in those clubs would all be older than me. (Plus I hate religious and quasi-religious organizations like those.) On the other hand, I've considered going to some meetups and usually don't because I'm sure I'd be the oldest person there. (Plus the few meetups I've gone to were mostly attended by people who were desperate for attention and socialization, or who were trying to sell stuff to the other members. But that may just be where I live.)

Thanks for unlocking the memory I have of getting my radio license in my early 20s. Got a lot of questions about why I was interested in radio, but in the sort of way that you might ask an alien what the purpose for their visit is.

Also if anybody is reading this and interested in radio - take the test! It's cheap and you can cram the material in a day.

Voluntary organisations like the Scouts have been a good choice for me. It's tricky to get into if you're in the US because of all the dogma, but Scouting is an awesome thing to get into as an adult leader.

If not the Scouts, then any voluntary org with a cause at its centre is great for forming connections.

I made a few friends through Reddit and LinkedIn. I build in public and it attracts some people. In other cases I was the one reaching out.

If you consider small online communities as a sort of club, you can make a few friends there.

Otherwise Meetup.com was a good place to find groups of people. Dog owners and parents tend to find their peers at the park. There are WhatsApp and Facebook groups for just about anything else, but many of them spread through word of mouth.

If you're interested in a service organization, Active 20-30 looks pretty cool. It aims to help out kids.

https://www.active20-30.org/Get-involved

At least in my area (SW Michigan), the Jaycees seem to be a fairly big thing. They require member ages to be in [18,40] - so "40 years younger" is not a risk.

What prevents me from going to those clubs is a lock of understanding of the structure. I can understand something like a soccer team, but a “social club” gives me “networking event” vibes which are a huge turnoff.

So I see what you mean -- some clubs definitely have "networking event" vibes. Others have "sit around and chat" vibes, "go have a drink and maybe some fries" vibes, "volunteer at a local org" vibes, etc. It all depends on what you're looking for, and it all depends on what you're interested in. There's no real set agenda that we can apply to all of these clubs -- as similar as they may seem, they do have a diverse set of goals that they try to achieve.

What?

Do you notice a trend in the membership of your named organizations, mainly that they seem filled with old conservative men?

Re: "daughters of the america"

"Council of the Daughters of America, a patriotic fraternity, which seeks to aid in preserving and perpetuating the Public School system; to instill a spirit of patriotism into the youth of our land; to place our flag over every schoolhouse; to promote the reading of the Holy Bible therein; and to protest against the immigration of paupers, criminals, and the enemies of our social order"

Ugh, yeah, my queer self is not really looking for that kind of engagement and I doubt they're looking for me.

It has to be noted that there is absolutely an increasing poverty of community life and hyper individualization. It's kind of incentivized in currently existing systems.

I felt this way after losing my religion. Your situation is different for sure.

But I joined a group workout gym with a local owner and a good community, it’s helped a lot with isolation.

I’m in the process of joining a BNI and, being surrounded by people motivated enough to run their own small business, it’s helping a lot.

I’m going to be meeting up with some folks who run a local hackerspace and do a weekly “coffee and code” - that seems promising and I’m hopeful it’ll help a lot.

All of these have something in common:

* A local business owner decided to start a BNI chapter and get a group of like minded individuals together to talk about business and share referrals

* An employee at a gym was disappointed in how gyms operate and wanted to do better, so started a space to bring people together around their interests.

* A smallish group of local hackers got together to create a shared space where they can geek out together

If you look at that list of social groups and say “I only see spaces for old conservative men” and “there is a poverty of community life” - maybe start a space or group for people like you? Or find people who are already doing that. Unless someone creates that space and brings people in it’s not going to exist.

Having the spaces OP listed isn’t mutually exclusive with the existence of any other social group.

This is awesome, I love to hear about groups like what you've posted.

Maybe he doesn't know enough queer people/isn't queer enough to frequent queer social clubs.

People are different.

Yes, people are different, but you'd imagine that organizations promoting nativist ideology and religious education in schools might also very likely not resonate with a more highly-correlated-with-atheism hackernews crowd, no?

The point being, the offered easy solutions aren't undeserving of critique and we can discuss real reasons people might not be joining these dying institutions. There was an issue in framing and I discussed it.

A la the other conmments around not wanting to hang exclusively with senior citizens, or ham radio not offering the kind of bustling community one might want. Perhaps there's are reasons said organizations are struggling and a reason why people might feel the choice to find meaningful community isn't always easy, when it's disincentivised in society.

Yeah, that's all very fair. I think, though, that there are definitely organizations out there that align with different views. What I was going for in my original post was to give a whole bunch of examples to demonstrate that there are a whole bunch of organizations one might look into -- and there really are, if you look for social clubs, there are loads and loads of them.

I'm hoping that we don't necessarily lump all of these into one category, because social clubs are really very diverse, and I think they're very much worth trying out for those looking for social engagement.

Yeah, some of these clubs have musty old ideals, some are conservative or strictly religious. Then, there are other clubs out there -- perhaps not as wide in size or scale, but still looking for members -- that have ideals that might be more modern, less conservative, secular, etc.

I think a lot of people these days are strictly thinking of grandpa when they hear about these social clubs, or group organizations, so they immediately write them off. But there are good organizations out there, and it might be worth a second look.

> disincentivised in society

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/society

You are society when you bring people together. You are isolated when you stay away.

I mean this literally: start a society that shares common values with yourself but is broad enough to include the values of others so you’re not standing on an island alone.

I might be wrong here, but generally when I’ve felt alone and tried to start a society for people like me, other existing societies that overlap shake out of the woodwork and I realize there was a rich network of people to join up with.

>highly-correlated-with-atheism hackernews crowd

For what it's worth, I've definitely noticed an uptick in respect for religion in our type of crowd, often but not always channeling Jordan Peterson's ideas.

I think after losing the last culture war, religion has had to do some real soul searching and is beginning to adapt to the new, hyper-scientific world.

These were just some examples. There are hundreds of social clubs to be sifted through, and I'm sure that there are some that would love to have you / align with your personality better than the ones which I've posted! Take a look around your town and see what might be available, you might be surprised at what you see.

I'm going to be transparent: I'm interested in a structural analysis as to why there's a crisis of loneliness.

Humans are wired for sociality and interdependence. Our brains pretty much literally wither away, in ways, without meaningful social stimulus.

Given this, I can't immediately simply lay the blame at the feet of individuals as to why people seem increasingly lonely and thirsty for meaningful connection. So what might be some other causes for this type of isolation that seems increasingly common?

TL;DR: I was stuck in a local optimum where the screen provided so much relative value, and leaving the screen required so much relative energy and vulnerability, that I’d opt for screen time.

I can only share my experience, can’t do a structural analysis.

For me, it was screens. Not anything in particular about the screen being bad in and of itself, but that the screen was so easy and efficient.

I can do my work better on a screen. I can create more value on a screen. I can have a meeting more efficiently on a screen. I can communicate more efficiently on a screen. I can entertain myself more efficiently on a screen.

Going out requires effort. I have to “get ready.” I have to go somewhere. I might not know people so I have to be vulnerable to cross a threshold of familiarity. I have to either be comfortable with myself and how others see me or I have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. These things pretty much aren’t a problem for me on a screen.

So my default is to wake up, go to a screen to work (I WFH because it’s more efficient), get done with work and find entertainment on another screen. Go to bed and start over again. I just bounced from screen to screen.

Being social. Taking care of my body. Taking care of my mind. These all require effort above that baseline.

It took me a long time to realize and appreciate that I was stuck in a local optimum and being inefficient in the short term was necessary to break out of it.

Why is loneliness more common? Look at the work week. Everyone is working long hours, doesn't get time off, or is too broke to spend it doing social stuff in America or other countries. Lots of fear increases this too, with people working too much social skills go down and mental health issues become an issue. And lack of interactions with others increases fear in general.

Now if you are lucky enough to be well off enough not to have that issue then the second thing is tech replaces people in a lot of areas - food, entertainment, health, ways we connect with others etc. If you had to rely on others more I bet most people would be less lonely in general. Isolation becomes easier the more tech you have available - be it cars or computers it can easily isolate you if you don't purposely avoid isolation. Now tech can bring people together, I'm in a long distance relationship and tech makes it very easy nowadays but it's still not the same, as in person face to face experiences.

But I also think people will always face loneliness in every generation, it just might go by other names.

But people worked a lot more in the past. The 5 day work week is a relatively recent invention. The 8 day work hour is also relatively recent. Why are we having a crisis of loneliness now and not when 18 hour workdays 7 days a week was the norm in a factory somewhere?

I think it mostly boils down to how trivial it is to entertain yourself these days with a smartphone.

I was just on a weekend beach trip with friends and, at the end of the day, we considered playing some card games, but frankly we all wanted to just chill on our phones in bed for the last hour of the day, and we chuckled that we would have opted for the card games back in the days without smartphones.

It’s hard for going out and socializing to compete with solitary smartphone time. And it’s easy to avoid ever doing the former, especially once you need it the most.

Agree.

This is chilling to hear. Sometimes I really hate the industry I work on. We're really destroying mankind, and it's not in the ways most people predicted. Even Huxley's Brave New World looks optimistic compared to what we're doing.

Smartphones are just the final nail to the coffin. Before smartphones, TV had already killed a of people's sociability (and radio did a lot of damage before TV as well). The book "Bowling Alone" was written well before the era of smartphones.

The 5 day workweek and 8-hour workday weren't won that long after unvarying (same job every day, same amount every day, no seasonal variation) optimized cog-in-a-machine industrial wage labor started to not just exist, but be common.

Incidentally, a ton of early cinema (1900-1930, say) is very concerned about the dehumanizing effects of industrial (and office!) work, and the anti-social lost-in-the-crowd effects of cities (usually contrasted with rural or small town living) which nonetheless draw the masses with promises of money and glamor. Those seem to have been their major anxieties, in this realm of thinking.

> Lots of fear increases this too, with people working too much social skills go down and mental health issues become an issue. And lack of interactions with others increases fear in general.

I think fear is an important thing to bring in here, because it's easier than ever to go down a path of "only the specific subculture on this subreddit/discord/whatever understands and accepts you, if you go to the Elks lodge the elderly crypto-nazis will literally murder you. Best to stay inside and post more about how scary those other people probably are"

It's the modern stuff we have.

People prefer binge watching a 10 episode Netflix show on a weekend rather than hanging out. Or playing video games. Or Youtube. I know some streamers and some people spend 5 hours a day watching them play video games on Twitch. Others spend 2, 3 hours an evening on TikTok or Instagram. Or are on Twitter all day, that's their hang. Or Reddit and 4chan. Or Hacker News!

Even older generations are spending an awful amount time on messaging apps. My father isn't much into that but he's all day on news websites looking for whatever important thing. I know some Guitar web-forums where the average age is between 50 and 60 and they complain all day about kids these days and they Polyphia guitars.

Back when TV was king I remember only going out when the boring stuff started. Whenever I hear the Full House theme song I get the urge to go hang out with my friends.

I also remember a teacher answering why he had 10 or so siblings to a classmate when we were in our teens: "well my parent's didn't have TV".

I remember going to random shops with friends as a teenager to play guitars we couldn't afford, think of video games we wanted to buy, or which anime figures were cool. If we were kicked out, we would go hang in a park, or at the front of a specific building that had stairs. I can still do this stuff, but as an adult it seems that this is only possible with my significant other.

We need more boredom. Not you and me, but society.

That but I would also add:

We feel that it is taboo to approach others, rather than try and start a conversation and seem weird we all stare at our phones.

We are also hesitant to try something new, when we were young we had parents who would push us but now when we are independent we no longer have that push.

The thread started gave a list of social clubs, the reply is that all of them are old white men who would not be accepting. Perhaps they had visited each club and experienced rejection but the Eagles and the Odd Fellows don't strike me as particularly conservative organizations. Neither do the Optimists, Kiwanis and Active 20-30.

In order to meet people, you must step out of your comfort zone!

Yeah, I strongly agree. These factors you mention are probably bigger than than the ones in my post, haha.

This. Somebody I read noted that streets in Polish villages started becoming empty in the evenings in the same period of time when the windows of houses there began to glow with the light of the TV screens. TV is just easy companionship and entertainment (even if ultimately unsatisfying), and we're a huge sucker for easy.

The current economic system - capitalism - and the philosophy and behavior patterns that it enforces on people. I saw how the system changes a society first hand when the free market ideology took over the society I grew up. People started to compete with each other, everybody was pushed to make more money, a 'good' career, the youth were pushed to study hard for getting good jobs to acquire such good careers, even as the society started to prioritize monetary/wealth gain before everything else. Social relations, from friends to relatives get loosened as everybody was immersed in his or her own survival and self gain. Worst impacted were the youth, who were pushed to drop social concerns and work harder to secure their future. It caught the youth in their early teenage years by them being pushed to prioritize studying and success over any social relation.

So, in such a society, you enter a rat race very early in your life by starting to study hard for qualifying for a good college, and it chains forward from there on while destroying any social connections that you might have built. You already move to another city when going to college. Then the college itself quite short, merely 4 years, without enough time to create and solidify bonds. That is if the students can even find enough time to socialize in between the classes. Whatever bond was forged gets immediately broken by people moving to different cities, regions or even countries after graduation, to maximize their income and career chances.

By this point the person is already hampered in the social department. Not only he or she was not able to socialize with his or her peers and the system already forced him to isolation and alienation from the peers to compete, but also because his peers have been brought up and educated with the same competitive mentality, the human social traits that our species have developed are already hampered or repressed. The peers are competition, not people to cooperate, collaborate, less, live together to support each other. The co-workers or acquaintances frequently leaving their jobs for a better opportunity somewhere does not help - you know that even if you hit it off with some person you met in your job or locale, that person can move away tomorrow in a flash. Which makes you further wary of creating any social bond that can be broken by next week.

When the entire society is taken over by this mentality that enforces its behavior patterns, there is no escape - everybody is in a fight for survival or bettering his or her circumstances. Its a societal level alienation of people from each other and from what makes us humans a social species.

You hit the nail right on the head

> It should be noted that, empirically, all other economic systems that have been tried are even worse than capitalism as far as people's perceptions of their existence.

That's patently false. Socialist implementations like the USSR's lifted people from mud huts and being barefood to apartments and space age within the same generation. The only reason that it ran out of steam was because the US, who controlled 75% of world's resources at the time, started an all encompassing economic warfare and arms race to starve it of GDP by forcing it to allocate all to defense. Which is not something hypothetical or anything interpreted by historians - we have the Kennedy administration' internal memos and planning that envisaged this plan and implemented it. If ANYone did even a fraction of that to the US, the US would initiate a nuclear war as can be seen from the various examples during the Cold War. That the Soviets were way too less aggressive and they let themselves to be starved out of GDP has been a fortune for the human civilization for averting nuclear war.

> Socialist countries have border guards to keep their own people from escaping.

That's also a flat out lie that the system propagates to protect itself: Castro opened the doors of Cuba and told anyone who didnt want to stay to f... off in mid 1980. Yet the Cubans are there, except from a few who still think that the Muriel boatlift law is still in effect and they will be getting tens of thousands of dollars in US taxpayer money if they step into US soil from a boat. Otherwise they could just fly in. All the immigration from Cuba has been a few hundred thousand people, most of them people who had a good time during Batista and their relatives. Thanks to US taxpayer money, of course.

You could also leave the USSR at any time by paying back the free education and other services that the state, therefore the society, has given you for free. Which is not even an option in the US, for example - if you are born poor you just stay poor instead of someone giving you anything free.

> Capitalism does not enforce behavior patterns. You are free to opt out and be poor and not compete with others, if you want. You can be homeless, or subsist on minimum wage, or go on welfare benefits, and many do.

First, welfare benefits dont exist in capitalism. They are part of social democracy, first advocated by the socialists in the First Socialist International. So that's not the argument you want.

Second, all that you said do sound like enforcing of behavior. "You dont have to participate - you can just starve". Sounds utterly sociopathic.

> "Being unemployed" is a felony that gets you ten years in a forced labor camp.

There is no such thing anywhere. Don't make up falsities for argument. Doing the same in any country during wartime gets you the same kind of repercussion, including the 'democratic' ones who have all those written in as 'emergency laws'. If any rando like you ever knew what the 'emergency laws' in the most democratic countries involve, you would swiftly lose all the farcical illusions that you had about 'democracy'. Unfortunately such knowledge requires either special interest, or doing service in any NATO country's military or paramilitary tasked with enforcement of such laws. So that the masses like you can remain in blissful ignorance about the legal system that they live in...

...

So basically capitalism is the best system solely because people like you believe in a lot of falsities and lies. Which is of course the only way to sustain a system that kills people when they cant pay for healthcare etc...

You prefer Holodomor?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

It should be noted that, empirically, all other economic systems that have been tried are even worse than capitalism as far as people's perceptions of their existence.

Capitalist countries have border guards to keep foreigners from coming in illegally. Socialist countries have border guards to keep their own people from escaping.

Capitalism does not enforce behavior patterns. You are free to opt out and be poor and not compete with others, if you want. You can be homeless, or subsist on minimum wage, or go on welfare benefits, and many do.

Compare this to socialist economic systems, where opting out is illegal and classifies you as a social parasite. "Being unemployed" is a felony that gets you ten years in a forced labor camp. "Complaining about how it is unfair that you are not allowed opt out" is also illegal, and also gets you a stint in the labor camp. That's "enforced behavior patterns."

> It should be noted that, empirically, all other economic systems that have been tried are even worse than capitalism as far as people’s perceptions of their existence.

The modern mixed economy, which has displaced the system for which the name “capitalism” was coined during the early to middle 20th century in virtually every place that it existed at the time the term “capitalism” was coined for the dominant economic system of the industrialized portion of the West in the mid-19th century, has, empirically, not been worse than capitalism as far as people’s perceptions.

If you compare only precapitalist systems and Leninism and its derivatives, you’d be right.

> Compare this to socialist economic systems, where opting out is illegal and classifies you as a social parasite.

The modern mixed economy is the closest (though not a very close) thing to a socialist economy system that has been tried on any large scale basis (its even the closest thing – though again not a very close thing – to a Marxist system, despite Leninists trying to claim the name.)

Vanguardist elite authoritarian state capitalist command economies are not socialist, and not (despite the aspirational claims originally made for them) empirically an effective way of bypassing the need Marx identified to go through a period of private capitalist development on the way to a socialist system.

> By this point the person is already hampered in the social department. Not only he or she was not able to socialize with his or her peers and the system already forced him to isolation and alienation from the peers to compete, but also because his peers have been brought up and educated with the same competitive mentality, the human social traits that our species have developed are already hampered or repressed. The peers are competition, not people to cooperate, collaborate, less, live together to support each other.

Students did the same in the Soviet Union. Graduation exams sorted not just who got which universities (if any at all) but which subjects they would spend their time in. Competition didn't disappear behind the iron curtain.

> The co-workers or acquaintances frequently leaving their jobs for a better opportunity somewhere does not help - you know that even if you hit it off with some person you met in your job or locale, that person can move away tomorrow in a flash. Which makes you further wary of creating any social bond that can be broken by next week.

In the Soviet Union, you never knew when your friends and family would "disappear" either. Many Soviet citizens lived in a state of fear that they'd be next. That also makes you wary about who you associate with.

Marketing.

If you recognize my user name at all then you've heard me bang this drum a few times before, but marketing is among the top reasons Everything Sucks in modern society.

Your attention is constantly being assaulted by people who want to sell you something. In order to sell you something, they have to convince you that you need it, but chances are you don't need it, so they exploit your insecurities.

You're not manly enough, buy our pickup truck.

You're not pretty enough, buy our makeup.

You're not working hard enough, buy our productivity enhancement programme.

You're not healthy enough, buy our fad diet.

You're entitled to money because of a minor screw up, join our class action.

Everything sucks because of that other political party, vote for us instead.

We're encouraged to treat each other as competitors and seek the material above all, because that makes it easier for companies to sell us shit.

We're encouraged to be entitled, because that makes us get angry when we don't get things, like the stuff they're trying to sell us.

Carl's Junior: Fuck you, I'm eating.

The side effect is we isolate ourselves, but that's just fine by them because they are selling us the junk we try to fill the hole in our lives with anyway.

The message fucks us up on a personal level, and that radiates out to the sociological level. It forces us to be defensive with the systems we put in place to keep people connected (email, phone calls, the web, search results, etc.) because they will exploit any opportunity to hijack your attention. Is it any wonder we're wary of connecting with people too?

Additionally:

We don't email with friends because our inboxes are overflowing with marketing so we don't use it to communicate anymore.

We don't answer phone calls because most of the time it's just marketing calls (or scams)

And so on.

I'm gonna trot this one out again: I read somewhere that people reflexively choose convenience over happiness, and I don't have a source for that but I find that it explains nearly everything about modern life. Sitting at home watching Netflix fails to fulfill all kinds of basic needs, but it's _easy_. Similar patterns are everywhere; our lives are so filled up with the path to least resistance, there's very little room for intentional effort to do things that are actually fulfilling.

The commodification of social spaces? If you can’t spend time in places without paying (in the cost of coffee, beer, gym fees, etc ) then that excludes big chunks of people, or they alert ration their social times to some extent

So a conservative organization is not for you!

Perhaps you could join the local Democratic party? Participate in the process and help candidates campaign!

Or if that is not for you, you could volunteer as a poll worker. While not strictly a club, it is generally the same people very time and the goal is very noble.

Some gyms are great for meeting people. I would say independent bookstores as well!

Good luck!

I’m quite sure those clubs are focused around community activity and do not restrict membership by a member’s political alignment or religion.

Clubs that do revolve around members’ politics and identity, honestly aren’t all that much fun.

Whoa. I had no idea so I looked them up.

The bigger obstacle to joining the "Daughters of America" might be that Wikipedia calls it "almost nonexistent" due to dwindling membership. [1] Lol.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daughters_of_America

Conservatives want to dismantle the public school system, not preserve and perpetuate it.

Many of our local clubs include, in their charter, a requirement that the members be religious.

Now, I'm sure they don't check. They probably don't pray, they won't quiz me about what church I go to. I could lie.

But I don't want to. I don't want to have to.

And there are some that don't! There're options for everyone.

Specifically the membership-based fraternal private societies, like the ones you mentioned? They were started at the same period of American history, and I only know of one exception that doesn't have "faith in a higher power" as a tenet of good citizenship. Heck, even the Jaycees, who explicitly target younger people.

The exception is the Rotary Society. The average Rotarian is male, white, and 58 years old.

Rotary has been open to women since 1989, and it welcomes anyone who fits the membership requirements - "adult persons who demonstrate good character, integrity, and leadership; possess good reputation within their business, profession, occupation, and/or community".

I was actively involved in Rotary in the 90s/00s via a Rotaract Club (for 18-30yos), and even then, there were many women, many non-white members, and plenty of people under 50 in the Rotary clubs I visited.

If some clubs/areas are still dominated by white, older males, it is mostly due to the difficulty in attracting any new members into volunteer organisations these days (mostly as it's unfashionable and people have other things to do), not due to any exclusionist policies.

Fancier (more expensive) versions of this are country clubs, private clubs of various sorts (fictional example: The Diogenes Club in Sherlock Holmes stories—but these are real things, see also "gentleman's club" when that's not being used as a euphemism for "strip club"), and rich-people service organizations—this latter sort is typically dominated by women.

Another mention here is Sailing Clubs. There are expensive and cheap Yacht Clubs. Many smaller clubs are entirely volunteer run. Sailing is an awesome social scene that’s surprisingly welcoming to beginners. Obviously there are the New York Yacht Club’s of the world, but also clubs like Chicago Corinthian Yacht Club which has a volunteer-run bar with prices set to just cover costs as well as catered casual food. Membership is under $1000 a year.

Oof, right, big miss there. Good call.

I was looking into a bunch of these recently. Many of them were white, male, Christian-only affairs within living memory. Took some of the sheen off.

Sure, I get that. There are many out there that aren't, though, and I definitely encourage you to keep digging to look for clubs and groups near you that more closely align to the kind of social environment you're looking to engage in -- it's worth the effort, in my opinion. I think you'll be surprised by what you find!

If the history of an organization(and not it's current goals and practices) is going to be prevent you for being able to join, then life must be very difficult.

Meetup can be this for younger folks, but you have to be willing to put in the work to organize and be the first-mover. Find things you want to do, then make open events, effectively inviting random people to them. Bar trivias, karaoke, hikes, etc. are all fairly easy to coordinate and they will attract other people who are also wondering “how do I even make friends now?”

EDIT: Also, always make an effort to talk to the new people that join your events, because other people in the group will tend to mostly talk with those they feel comfortable with. It makes new folks feel welcome and they’ll want to come back :)

I've really enjoyed joining a local volunteer fire company.

Otherwise I'll just sit at home working remote on solo projects all day, so responding to a call or two a day gets me (running) out of the house, and after the call we usually sit around the station and shoot the breeze for a while which is fun. When I get bored of that, I walk back home and get back to work. Sure it's hard work, but that really helps balance the tedium of just pushing tiny plastic buttons for 12+ hours a day.

That's really awesome!