Talking to strangers
Throwing my own two cents on the loneliness epidemic thing.
Similar to ava and absurd pirate, my social life was fairly stunted. I had sort of a frenemies situation going on in elementary with these girls, where their parents thought I was bullying them but my parents thought they were bullying me, and I thought we got along great. No idea what they thought, but they sure invited me to their houses a lot so it can’t have been that bad.
As an adult, though, I think the thing now is just that everyone is kind of terrified of each other. Covid didn’t help. I mean, three years of “any random stranger could give me a horrible incurable illness” does terrible things to even the most outgoing personalities. Anyway, here are my sort of unorganized observations since I’m supposed to be packing right now and don’t have time to write properly:
- I made small talk with an old-ish woman while waiting for the bus once. We ended up talking for 30 minutes. It was awkward for me at times because she would just ramble, but she seemed to be enjoying the conversation. Net win
- My first year in uni, I never ate alone unless I was in a hurry. If I didn’t have someone to eat with, I would sit across from any random person who was eating alone and make small talk, and I made a lot of my friends that way
- You don’t really have to worry about that polite. I met one of my closest friends when I sat across from her and said “Why are you eating french fries with a fork?!”
- I met another one of my closest friends when I happened to sit next to her in class, asked her to explain a graph she drew, and was so confused that she thought I was making fun of her
- I post my phone number on the campus forum all the time in response to things. You need someone to help you find out why your car is making that weird noise? Text me. You’re trying to start a dnd group? I’ll join, text me. You need someone to help you move, or clean, or bring you food because you broke your ankle? Literally just text me. People act like I’m reckless for this, but it’s a private forum, and nothing bad has ever happened so far.
On the internet things are more difficult because you don’t know anything about each other. There’s no real first impression. So things tend to fizzle out because you don’t know enough about the other person to guess what conversation topics will work. Not to mention you’re both wondering if you’re going be ideologically incompatible. But introducing yourself with your political alignment/ demographic information feels weird, even if 90% of it could be inferred by anyone that actually saw you in real life.
I feel like 99% of hangouts fail during the planning stage because someone says “so where are we having lunch?” and everyone says “oh I’m fine with whatever” and it never gets arranged. Same for “so what day should we meet”. Generally you can always get away with being the person who says “Okay then let’s go here on this day at this time”, and if anyone has a problem they can say so. But also, yes, people are extremely flakey and always late. So bring a book or something and don’t take it too serious.
And, not to shill for religion again, but I do think part of the loneliness epidemic is caused by people not being into religion anymore. I once drove a woman I had never met from Boston to the Bronx in a rental car with another woman who I had also never met because she asked for help in our religious organization’s groupchat and I wasn’t doing anything that night. Myself and the other driver didn’t get home until 4am, and we drove half the way back with the side mirror flapping against the window because we hit a parked car and it came off. It was a bonding experience. Which is not to say that atheists can’t have bonding experiences, but again, you have to work for it more.