Hi, i thought here is the bestplace to ask about this, is it possible to make new friends on here, what is the most effective way, tell me your experience
Hi, i thought here is the bestplace to ask about this, is it possible to make new friends on here, what is the most effective way, tell me your experience
Overall, it’s easy to find lemmy friends. People that you’ll recognize, have conversations with, come to enjoy talking to on lemmy/the fediverse.
But, like any online community, there’s a barrier to cross if you expect to be friends elsewhere. It’s relatively easy to run across folks that will chat on discord or matrix. Harder to find people willing to deanonymize any more than that.
As an example, I’m on the paranoid end of things. I haven’t given my real name out online since maybe 2003? Ish. Since then there’s exactly two people that have crossed from a forum to a full friend. One was from here, lemmy in specific. The other is my wife now, and even that took a year or so to become a friendship back in the mid aughts where I disclosed more than name and general location.
But! There’s been plenty of people on the fediverse that I consider friends to some degree or another. Folks that, even when we disagree, I respect and look forward to interacting with.
My whole recipe for making friends at all, in any context, applies here. Be open to people. Extend trust carefully, but with hope. Accept people for who they are within a given range of acceptability (I ain’t hanging with a Nazi, as an extreme example). The rest is just staying chill, being yourself, and letting things develop naturally.
It’s kinda funny though. My friend I met here? Feels like I’ve known him forever, but it’s only been over a year and a half or so. He went from this rando in a fun conversation to one of the best friends I’ve ever had. Dude knows my wife’s name, my address, my kid’s name. I’ve sent him pictures of me, and I don’t even do that with relatives (though, in honesty it was a temporary thing because I don’t trust any messaging service enough to not delete such things).
So it’s possible for sure. Thing with friendship is that you can never force it if you want it to be real and last. Online or meatspace.
Hey,
It’s been a while I haven’t replied under one of your comment, hope everything is well on your side!
Good enough :)
How you been?
All good, thanks! A bit busy with life (in a good way), but now trying to get back to the Fedi for a bit
I thought I’d been seeing you around less. It really wouldn’t be the same without you :)
Thank you for the kind words!
How do you even start this on lemmy? You have an interesting conversation with someone in a thread and then just send them a message to keep talking? It feels like most people would think you’re a bot.
Well, generally you’d want to have a couple of interactions in comments before sending a dm, or a fairly lengthy one.
It’s really similar to meatspace tbh. You wouldn’t really give your number to a rando in the checkout line, but if you ended up having a really good conversation, you might ask if they want to exchange numbers. Otherwise, you’d wait until you’d had a few conversations before suggesting a get together.
There’s a degree of vibe reading necessary though. It’s a lot harder for folks that haven’t had a lot of social experience, or have some kind of difficulties reading cues. Unfortunately, you can’t see someone checking their watch or shuffling their feet online, but there’s the benefit that nobody is really obligated to respond the way in person interaction tends to feel s pressure to make a polite exit.
I’d say that as long as you approach it right, even a short interaction is okay to build from via DM for the same reason. If you lead with something making it clear you’re not looking to apply social pressure, the worst that’ll happen is a lack of response 99/100. You know, the usual “hope it’s okay to message, feel free to ignore this if it isn’t” kind of thing.
Makes sense I guess. I tend to see comment threads as one-off things and don’t pay much attention to usernames. Maybe when you comment more you end up interacting with the same people eventually and if you’re lucky they’ll remember you too.
It’s a bit hard to compare this to outside life as I don’t tend to have conversations with strangers. But some people do, so it must work well sometimes.
Yeah, talking to strangers is difficult, for some people, and it kinda is for me. I’m one of those weird introverts that can be extroverted in some ways some times. My mom used to say I could charm anyone and make friends anywhere when I was a kid. I didn’t do well in groups, and still don’t really like them. But one on one? I get nervous and worry about what can go wrong, but I’m strangely good at it, and always have been.
Since I was in home health for decades, I developed actual skill at smoothing first meetings as well.
But I’m actually an introvert. It takes a lot out of me, and I’d almost always prefer to be alone or just with my closest people (and even that in small groups at most).
Comment chains are right up my alley because of that. I only passively notice user names until my subconscious sees the same ones a good bit, or if it’s a really engaging thread. Comment convos are almost always one on one, engaging with a structured start, but with freedom to really talk if things go there.
Since I’m a long winded sort, and use the fediverse a lot ( retired due to disability, nothing but time), I seem to have met almost all the other heavy users dozens of times, and get along with damn near everyone. I mean, I have had bad experiences with individuals, but on average the frequent flyers are easy to digitally hang with. And, you know, sometimes I’m an asshole, so I can be the bad experience, but I try not to.
Hell, I have to actively ignore user names sometimes, like on the PTB community, so I don’t let personal bias interfere with the purpose of the community because I tend to get along with most of the heavy users, who can also be mods of bigger communities as well. There’s a couple that get raked over the coals there, and deserved it some, but are really just human beings doing their best and having a bad day.
And I think that’s maybe why I spend so much of my time here. It really feels like a community, a digital neighborhood.
I would probably stick to comments at first. If you regularly come to a community, you’ll probably see the same people in most of the posts.
Yeah, sometimes you just see a person often enough you just start talking in the comments. Dont need to force it :)