I posted asking for advice on looking for work and lot of suggestions said I should try networking. Well that hard to do at 46 and have no true friends or colleagues to reach out to. Now we all know about dating sites, but is there a open source site that is for meeting for friends, or even networking like LinkedIn but not so much bullshit?
If not how would one go about creating such a space?
When I was 18, networking was hard because I didn’t know anyone in the industry I was trying to enter. Apparently at 46, it is hard because no one wants to make friends anymore (or something).
But no - networking, regardless of the stage you are at in life, is always as hard or as easy as you make it. If you have a genuine interest in the work you do and the people around you, it will be easy almost effortless. You’ll show up to something and see someone you want to talk to, and you’ll talk to them about what interested you. And soon you’ll talk to them about what you do for work, and what you are really excited about. And then, purely because you will find something else interesting about another person, you will start another conversation, and the cycle repeats. By the end of the day, you’ve met a dozen new people and shared your passion with them. Do this every day for a month, and you will probably have some people talking to you about a new job.
Potential problems with this strategy:
This is BY FAR your biggest problem. Not so much that you don’t have these people in your life as a simple fact, but the underlying issue of Why don’t you have these people in your life? Step number 1 isn’t that you need friends to ask for professional recommendations, it is that you need friends. Luckily, it isnt terribly difficult to make friends if you simply think of some things you are interested in, find gatherings of people interested in those same things, and show up! It doesnt matter if you are interested in fly fishing or olympic lifting or Magic the Gathering or collecting insects - in a sufficiently large metro area, you will be able to find your people. Then you can see that they are doing a thing, and show up! And then the next time they do a thing, show up again! Even if you feel like you didnt make a good first impression or that you weren’t greeted very warmly, it is typically straightforward to build relationships if you just keep showing up again and again. If you can’t do that due to something like agorophobia or social anxiety or physical limitations, then you need to find a way to solve that problem or work around it, because it will impact your ability to professionally network tenfold. Humans are social animals, and in order to emotionally function properly, you need a social support system - not people who will give you job opportunities (though that can be a nice side benefit) - but people who will emotionally support you when you are in the shit.
As far as I know, there is no such site. People I know have had success building social networks via facebook groups, meetup.com, and bumblebff. Ymmv based on your location. But I do not know of any open source alternatives to these that actually have a large enough userbase to be good replacements. Yes, these are evil big tech companies that are destroying the world and stealing your data - I suggest you get over it and join them anyway. If you want, you can isolate them on a burner phone running a vpn, adding on whatever other privacy features you can think of to suit your particular level of paranoia. But that’s the thing about networking - the value of a space is determined almost entirely by the value of the people inhabiting it. It doesnt matter if you have the best social network in the world if it has a total of 3 users. Just like caring about your appearance, not only does not joining these networks have a direct impact on your ability to make a good impression (or any impression at all) on the people you would like to know, but it also signals an unwillingness or inability to accept reality (people care about appearance; facebook is where you can find groups of people) and appropriately react to it (so I will put effort into my appearance; so I will join facebook groups to know what is going on in my area).
I have a friend who has been making/maintaining/running a small website that would be a decent replacement for Meetup for I think more than a decade now. As Meetup has been enshittifying for a while now, I’m considering hitting him up with an idea to improve the site and promote it to become a direct competitor.
Some harsh but true advice there, I had to learn most of this the hard way. So far have managed without any mainstream social media (whatsapp aside), but it does make things trickier, I’ll admit.
Another thing I’ll add, and I might get downvoted to hell for this one, sometimes in life you just gotta be a cunt. Ya gotta realise that the vast, vast majority of humans are selfish and only think of themselves. For the longest time I was constantly treading on eggshells around people afraid of even looking at someone the wrong way.
Sometimes you just gotta do something for yourself. Think for yourself. Speak your mind at risk of upsetting someone else. Put yourself first for once. Make a rash decision or two. No one is perfect, it’s what makes us human. I’m not saying you should be a cunt 100% of the time, but don’t let people walk all over you. This is advice which helped me actually GAIN a huge number of friends. I came to realise people respect honesty, confidence, and people who speak their mind. And you’ll often find things you build up in your head, people forget about quickly and may never remember - whilst you are sat worrying about it.
It kinda sucks that as a society we don’t value kind-hearted people nearly as much as we should, but I’ve found it’s okay to be brutally honest, as long as you make a positive impact on that person (e.g. help them have a laugh). Theres nothing stopping you being kind-hearted whilst putting yourself out there when you need to.
My thoughts anyway.
I think you are correct to a certain extent that sometimes being a cunt is useful. But also, I think a the vast majority of times that you are describing “cuntiness” as being useful are not actually instances of being a cunt, and the vast majority of the time, there is no dissonance between being kind and advocating for yourself.
Instead what is happening is that you have social anxiety, with a intrinsic emotional belief that friends or social groups will reject you if you ever cause anyone to feel bad, or annoyed, or bored. And this results in you hiding your thoughts and feelings from others in order to avoid rejection. But what actually happens is that you project Big NPC energy, and people will generally find you to be boring and not worth the effort of interacting with. Or else they will subconsciously notice that you are hiding yourself, and get the intrinsic feeling that you are untrustworthy.
The default belief of the world is that if you want or need something, you need to ask for it. This makes sense - different people have different needs, and trying to anticipate everyone’s every need at all times is time consuming, inefficient, and exhausting. If you are constantly asking someone if they are thirsty, hungry, tired, bored, etc, because you are concerned for their well-being since they don’t know that they should try to anticipate and advocate for their own needs… that is the pattern of behavior you adopt with a child. We expect adults to advocate for their own interest. If the group decides to go to a Chinese restaurant, but you hate Chinese food, then it is your responsibility to say “I don’t wanna eat there - I don’t like Chinese food”. No one wants to try to discern from your subtle facial expressions how you feel about any given restaurant selection. And, again, humans are masters of subconsciously reading people, and if you are consistently wearing an expression of “I’m unhappy about this but need someone else to be the adult and advocate for me” or “My opinion is unimportant and if I express it people will reject me”, then others will read that expression and subconsciously assume the truth of it, and will then treat you accordingly.
And then, for the socially anxious person, cognitive dissonance takes hold. The brain’s top priority is to avoid coming to any conclusion that would require it to do something it considers scary, or difficult, or to change its existing beliefs. And the easiest way to do this is by moralizing. Thus, not speaking up, not expressing thoughts or opinions others might not agree with, never saying anything that might disrupt the social harmony, are things that make you a “good person”. And when other people say things that upset you, or do things you don’t like, or exclude you from things they don’t think you’d be a good fit for, or make plans for things you disagree with, that makes them “bad people”. And since socially anxious people tend to be very self aware, this means they must - as you said - constantly walk on eggshells to avoid becoming a “bad person” by their own definition.
And with this moralizing, the social anxiety has effectively entrenched itself. Since any action, suggestion, opinion, or feeling could potentially make someone upset, and therefore make you a Bad Person, the only moral thing to do is essentially nothing. Never voice an opinion - someone might disagree with it. Never say hello to a stranger - it might make them uncomfortable. Never go for a hug - they might not like physical contact. Never make eye contact - they might not want to talk. Never invite friends to do something - they might have something else to do, or have some objection to it, or you might have to exclude someone. Never tell someone they are pissing you off - your feelings shouldnt make them feel bad. Etc, etc, etc. And so what remains? Showing up (maybe), saying almost nothing, agreeing with almost everything people say, and occasionally voicing an opinion that no one could possibly disagree with, so everyone there will know you are a Good Person.
And while you go about your life, you see everyone else doing all these Bad things now - saying things that might upset others. Asking for pay raises and promotions when others deserve them more. Persuading the group to go to the football game even though not everyone likes football, and the stadium is a waste of taxpayer money. Excluding others from doing cool things, which will make them feel bad. And this makes you feel like almost everyone is a Bad Person, and that the world is terribly unfair, and the only way to get anything you want in life is to do Bad Things. And once again, these feelings of bitterness and unfairness and cynicism and helplessness will unevitably seep into your face, and others will pick up on these emotions and react in kind - seeing that you are an angry, pessimistic misanthrope, and avoiding you, excluding you, or pushing you away, since no one wants to spend time with someone who thinks everyone and everything sucks.
Instead, the social consensus on what makes someone a worthwhile friend or acquaintence is far more balanced. Someone who brings people together, makes people happy, and makes cool, fun, or valuable things happen is going to be more appreciated than someone who simply shows up. And someone who makes social faux pas or sometimes pisses off people is usually easily forgiven - including by the people they offended or pissed off. The default social consensus is that most people are good people, who might sometimes have some flaws, or be a bit abrasive, or say things we disagree with.
The defining feature of a healthy social group is that they believe that most people are good and that mistakes or disagreements are no big deal - and so the most unattractive thing a person can do is believe the opposite. And so, the cycle completes again - social anxiety will make a person a judgemental misanthrope, which will cause them to be rejected by others, which will reinforce their social anxiety, which will reinforce their judgemental misanthropy. And the way to break the cycle is to simply assume that most people are good people who are flawed and make mistakes and have disagreements sometimes, and also assume that you are a good person who is flawed and will make mistakes and will create disagreements sometimes.
Btw, none of the above should be taken as particularly being pointed at any specific individual. These are just trends I’ve noticed among populations of socially anxious people, myself included.
Nail on the head. Couldn’t have said it better myself, think we’re both getting at the same thing, though you’ve worded it far more eloquently. 👏
So what link to your friends site? And suggest Facebook is nonstarter that place utter garbage. Sorry you wrote so much text just insult me at least the way most of that reads. Insulting me is helpful.
Not OP but it didnt read like an insult to me. Idk anyone who would go to all that trouble just to say “get friends”. Some genuinly good advice there, not to say that any of it is relevant to you, but it can be useful to some regardless. I myself have struggled with friends/social networking for most of my life, fuck, still do to some degree now. A lot of what they said struck a nerve with me, but I find a lot of it to be true.
See my reply to him for my take on it.
I just perused some of my facebook groups, and in the local groups I am part of, I found lots of recent posts organizing activities and advertising local gatherings. For my specific interests, I found people wanting new climbing partners, organizing canyoneering trips, discussing cycling advocacy, advertising local musicians playing, and boosting a local town’s annual festival. I found these things by looking through a few random groups I subscribed to a while ago over the course of about 30s. So if you are saying that Facebook is garbage because no one is there open to making connections, then at least in my area you are objectively wrong.
If you are saying something about how Facebook is an evil corporation and you don’t want to participate on some kind of ideological grounds, then I will refer to my recommendation in my previous comment: I strongly suggest that you get over it. Facebook has over 1 billion users, and your participation or lack thereof will have no impact on their bottom line. If you hate them, then you can advocate for the government to ban Zuck from getting invited to fun parties and work on an open source alternative. But it your goal is to get a job or make friends right now, then avoiding facebook or any other privately owned social media platform is simply counterproductive. Facebook and its ilk are where people are - so if your goal is to meet people, then you should be there.
It isn’t my intention to insult you, but to plainly show you your blind spots. If you were to ask “how do I climb Mt Everest? I was told I need to train cardio, because I get out of breath going up a flight of stairs. Btw, I refuse to walk or run,” then it would be reasonable to point out that you have a serious problem in trying to achieve your goal, and not walking or running will be a major issue in getting where you want to be.
Similarly, the way you framed your question implies some serious blind spots. Being recommended networking, then turning around and asking for an open source LinkedIn because you have no friends brings up some immediate questions:
Similar to the Everest climber who doesn’t want to walk or run, it seems obvious to me that you need to take a step back and look at the big picture of what the source of your problems is. So, I attempted to lay out a set of common problems that are possible to apply, along with their solutions. If I could have framed it more nicely, then, well, sorry. But you should strongly consider if you are simply offended because I told you that you should start walking and running more if you want to climb Everest.
I will absolutely not share this with Lemmy, lest it become infested with Lemmings.