Summarized:
“[1.] follow people you resonate with.
[2.] engage with bigger accounts, support smaller accounts.
[3.] ask questions, offer suggestions, share learnings.
[4.] pay attention to who keeps popping up.
[5.] use the algorithms to your advantage.
[6.] attend virtual events. participate!
[7.] attend offline events! Be adventerous.
[8.] send that dm / email / offer to connect.
[9.] if they don’t respond, try again in a few months.
[10.] put your thoughts out there.“
-Jonathan Borichevskiy, “Making Friends on the Internet.” jon.bo. May 2, 2022.
Open question: How do you make new friends that will help you move in the direction you want your life to move and be fellow travelers?
The thrust is correct. If you want to make offline friends, you need to orient your online presence to make offline connections. However, there’s a bit of an age-bias. When you are 25 and single, it’s a lot easier to go to meeting on a lark. As you get older, it gets more difficult. You have to arrange a babysitter. There’s also the time to consider. Here’s a rough chart of time and quantities of friends a human brain tends to top out at:
- 5 intimate friends (+200 hours)
- 15 close friends (80-100 hours)
- 50 general friends (40-60 hours)
- 150 acquaintances (10-20 hours)
The problem, as you get older, is: how do you find those hours to spend with someone? The easiest method is some social institution, such as a church. Over a year, it should be possible to pick up a few friends and acquaintances from a church.
So, the above is how to make an initial connection with someone, and it assumes that you bridge these hours in some way. This is much harder, as you get older. But, perhaps something to think about when you start new chapters of your life.
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