It never really occurred to me I might just not have those specific social skills nailed down. 😅 Because irl, I have plenty of ease chatting people up and making new friends. Same with dating or professional networking, it all comes naturally in person.

But online, in writing, it’s so awkward for me. I see folks make long term friendships just hanging out in group chats or discord servers. Meanwhile, I manage to just get into arguments and not really manage to share anything interesting about myself otherwise. I might just not be finding my people, but who knows where that is right?

Anyone got pro tips for making friends in text chats or forums?

  • cRazi_man@europe.pub
    5·
    3 days ago

    I’ve only managed to make it work a handful of times.

    There needs to be a connection to something IRL from the online community. Maybe you like the same music, hobby or even playing games (that might be online but it is a “doing” action in person). It should also be something positive. You aren’t going to make healthy connections from “anti-something” communities.

    Communities like Lemmy/Reddit are particularly bad for this since they’re predicated on anonymous sharing and not really keeping you in touch with a group of repeat contacts.

    You must have enough free time to end up online and shoot the shit in a direct conversation. Maybe an online chat or voice chat or Discord or something. You can’t really make friends easily with asynchronous contact.

    I saw a comment about friendship long ago and I have never been able to find it again. It said something like: to be friends you must share at least two things out of this list: stage in life, physical proximity, common interest, shared predicament (e.g. job)… There were a couple of other factors I can’t remember, but the more I think about it this seems to hold true.

    Eventually the connection you make needs to be bigger than how you meet. If you meet while playing DotA, and then you stop playing DotA, is there still any glue that holds you together that would push you to keeping connected through a different medium?

    I’ve tried to make efforts to make friends a few times online. It has never worked from trying. People on Lemmy even express interest in a social chat group and I made one. No one ever joined. Well, one person did but lost interest in a couple of days. Good luck in your endevours. Share tips if you succeed.