re: the loneliness epidemic post, it's genuinely so so so hard right now as someone whose Job is organizing events for LGBT university students. our whole goal is to help them find peers to connect with, but it often feels like they're working against us.
not on purpose, of course, and I never want to sound like I'm blaming students for their own feelings of isolation. there are a lot of factors that make it hard to socialize, ranging from a very full class/work schedule to various neurodivergences to the majority white attendance at many campus activities to the fact that many of these students spent some formative years in quarantine.
but man, it's hard when students talk about feeling hated and unwanted by a club because no one there talks to them, only to drop that they never even try to initiate any conversation themselves. or when a student complains that they're not making any friends on campus, but when asked where they're going to meet people outside of class they seem confused and say they hardly leave their dorm for anything but class. we're currently administering an anonymous survey to assess student satisfaction with our programs, and one person wrote that they'd like to attend more of our events but don't because they don't know anyone there and don't know what the vibe will be. the solution to both of those problems feels very obvious, to me, and it's frustrating to see mild uncertainty be such a hurdle.
especially given that, again, these are queer young people, who a.) have a lot of reasons to despair right now and b.) have a lot of awful online spaces they could be spending time in instead of touching grass, it's a fucking bummer to see them so wary of hanging out in physical space with real people.
A skill i've been working to get better at when I go to conferences and conventions is to basically approach tables of interesting looking people and going "May I join you?" and listening to their conversation and joining in
And it is a skill! You are approaching strangers, you are making a bid for connection and interaction that may end in rejection, or just not clicking fully, or anything similar, and that can be scary!
But I think a problem that a lot of younger people have in how harshly regimented many schools and then colleges are, and ditto how little free time they're likely to have outside of their workplace and commute, made worse by isolated housing and lack of free or even affordable third spaces
Is that there's very little development of the skill of seeking out the people who look interesting or otherwise compatible with yourself, approaching them, and beginning the process of connecting with them
People are very used to only making new friends and connections when circumstances, and especially an authority, force them into proximity with one another
Esp in a surveillance state where there's anxieties about meeting new people in case they're bad or incompatible with your beliefs, sometimes people only want to connect with new people when they can scope them out on socials first, and that only adds to this anxiety of meeting people as a social skill!
tbh if i was chilling at a table talking with my friends and some rando walked up and said "may i join you?" i would be offended and creeped out
i do empathize with and agree with a lot of OP here but at the same time so much of that post and especially the reblog are placing all the onus on the lonely people. all the work of seeking out connection is being placed at the feet of the people with the least social power and wherewithal. why should that be how it works
if there's a cool group of people talking, i'm never going to walk up and bother them. they're the ones with a solid social footing and comfortable position, they're the ones who can afford to invite me in to what they're doing if they want to.
if i'm new at college and I go to a club meeting, it's not my job as the newcomer to start conversations! I've got no social capital, if I try to start conversations I'm being intrusive and rude! It's their club and I'm some rando who wandered in! If I'm the newcomer it's their job to be welcoming if they want new people. I should be humble and wait, and they should be inviting me in and making me part of what's going on.
all of this follows from the basic fact that our society is structured to reward pushiness and arrogance, and expects people to "assert themselves" and "put themselves out there" and look after their own interests. that's what we admire and that's what we expect, and even OP, firmly goodhearted and wanting to help these people, is seeing it as a failure on their parts that they're not pushy and rude enough to make friends. that's just a bad way to structure a society! the work of fixing loneliness should be done by people who aren't lonely; they're the ones with the power to do so.
I'm going to take this line by line, because there's a lot to unpack here. "if i was chilling at a table talking with my friends and some rando walked up and said "may i join you?" i would be offended and creeped out" So, look: given that the rest of your post situates you as a lonely person struggling to find connection - and given, crucially, your subsequent comment that "if there's a cool group of people talking, i'm never going to walk up and bother them" - I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that, rather than being a statement of personal intent, this comment expresses what you assume strangers think of you. Which... I don't know how old you are, but this smacks of high school logic. Yes, adults can also be assholes, but we're expressly talking about events like conferences, conventions and university club events, where the entire point is to meet people. Kill the cop in your head that says you can't approach the Cool Kids! You absolutely can! so much of that post and especially the reblog are placing all the onus on the lonely people. all the work of seeking out connection is being placed at the feet of the people with the least social power and wherewithal. why should that be how it works I'm going to come back to "people with the least social power and wherewithal" in a moment, because there's a lot of very wrong assumptions encoded in this language, but to put it simply: if you're lonely and want friends, the onus is on you to seek out connection for the same reason that, if you're hungry and want food, the onus is on you to find something to eat. In terms of both food and companionship, the job of a healthy community is to provide you with opportunities to meet your needs, and as far as our stated example goes - attending something like a university club - the existence of the event itself is the provision of opportunity. That being so, expecting strangers to do all the work of befriending you at an open event is like walking into a supermarket and expecting someone else to put groceries in your basket. You're still responsible for your own needs! if there's a cool group of people talking, i'm never going to walk up and bother them. they're the ones with a solid social footing and comfortable position, they're the ones who can afford to invite me in to what they're doing if they want to. Again, the logic you're deploying here smacks of high school. Why are you assigning strangers a context-specific social status simply because they're talking in a group? They could've met five minutes ago! But even if they are established friends, socialization is a mutual affair. For all they know, you're perfectly happy on your own and any social overture on their part would be unwelcome. Your loneliness has not magically become their responsibility just because they arrived before you! if i'm new at college and I go to a club meeting, it's not my job as the newcomer to start conversations! I've got no social capital, if I try to start conversations I'm being intrusive and rude! It's their club and I'm some rando who wandered in! If I'm the newcomer it's their job to be welcoming if they want new people. I should be humble and wait, and they should be inviting me in and making me part of what's going on.
Framing this in terms of whose job it is to talk first entirely misses the point of socializing for fun, which is that none of you have to do anything. If you show up to an open event that's expressly intended to bring strangers together, then politely approaching people isn't being "intrusive and rude" - it's participating. Similarly, if you show up to your regular social event and only talk to your existing friends, that's also participating! You're not obliged to talk to strangers, just as strangers aren't obliged to talk to you. Friendship requires both parties to make an effort, and if you decline to make any beyond simply being a body in a room, then while it might hurt your feelings to be excluded, you cannot rightly get mad at strangers for failing to take the extra step you refused to take yourself. Which doesn't mean we have no communal responsibility to one other. Ideally, we should always strive to be welcoming! But community, by definition, goes both ways, and if you're thinking foremost about what you need or want from strangers, and not what they might need or want from you, then you likely won't get very far. all of this follows from the basic fact that our society is structured to reward pushiness and arrogance, and expects people to "assert themselves" and "put themselves out there" and look after their own interests. that's what we admire and that's what we expect, and even OP, firmly goodhearted and wanting to help these people, is seeing it as a failure on their parts that they're not pushy and rude enough to make friends. Here's the thing: if it's fundamentally pushy/arrogant/rude to approach a stranger for potential friendship purposes, then that holds true regardless of whether they're part of a group or standing by themselves. Right? You're framing this as though there's some profound difference between you, a solo person, daring to talk to a group of strangers, and a group of strangers daring to talk to you, a solo person, but there's not. Regardless of who initiates things, in order for a conversation to take place, someone has to take that first step! Someone has to submit themselves to the mortifying ordeal! You're assigning a negative moral value to the act of talking to strangers to explain why you shouldn't have to do it, but your strategy ultimately depends on strangers talking to you. You've attempted to justify this contradiction by saying "well, those Cool Kids have social capital and I don't," but this literally just something you've made up in your head, not because social capital doesn't exist, but because you're assigning it equally to these hypothetical strangers based purely on the fact that they're already talking to each other, and not because you've got any actual insight into the social dynamics at play. For all you know, these people just met and are equally new to the space you're in; alternatively, they might be its founders, possessed of complex, deeply internecine relationships that it'd take three hours, a box of wine and a string board to unpack - but just by looking, at the moment you first walk in, you don't know which is which. the work of fixing loneliness should be done by people who aren't lonely; they're the ones with the power to do so. Wrong: you also have this power! You're an autonomous human being! I'm not saying it's never difficult or scary or that nobody can ever face specific challenges that make socialization harder for them than others, but to insist as a general point that lonely people don't or shouldn't bear the lion's share of responsibility for making themselves un-lonely is the voice of learned helplessness talking. You can be made a friend by someone proactive, but you can also make friends, too. There's no shame in preferring the former, but there's no moral dimension to the preference, and it's not the same as being incapable of the latter. And at a certain point, if just waiting for someone to notice you isn't working and you're unhappy with the outcome, then the onus is indeed on you to make a change - because it's your life.
Reinforcing prev: I am one of those people who often invites other people into a social interaction. It's low stress for me, and it's served me very well in life.
But.
I am not going to do that unless you give me some indication of who you are, what you're like, and that you want in.
You've got to give me some glimmer of interest or I am not gonna ping that you want to interact with me. Standing around looking awkward is not sufficient. Plenty of lonely awkward people just freak out at just being approached out of the blue. Probably because they're following a weird rulebook about social interactions that has trapped them in a lonely little box. Your misery is not a clear invitation for me to include you.
And you gotta give me a hint about who you are if I'm gonna assume you're not gonna be miserable to interact with. Give me something to work with! Otherwise I am stuck trying to interact with someone that I know nothing about. If I'm chatting with someone else, you have the chance to observe me and what I'm talking about- that gives you info to work off of! Use it!
Like sure. I wont go up to people sitting together in a restaurant and join the conversation. But there are loads of situations where I'll exchange at least a few words with total strangers. And if I enjoy it, it can be more. That is a totally normal and important way to build social connections.
And unfortunately, that remains true, even when it's hard for you.
Also gonna point out: this is what icebreakers and activities and all that stuff that we make fun of is FOR.
It might not be cool to play two truths and a lie, or never have I ever, or find at least one person in the room from the same state as you/the same age as you/whose favorite superhero is wonder woman/whatever, but it's a common way to get a bunch of strangers talking.
Person who believes it is the established group's job to welcome you: this is that. The organizer is trying to help people make connections! Now you all know things about each other that anyone can use to start conversations and make overtures of friendship. I also like Wonder Woman! Let's talk superheroes!
If you're shy this can be mortifying, but please please please, join in at least a little if you can.
Plus, you might find out really weird things about people. Seriously. Sometimes there's one person who has a bonkers fact locked and loaded, and that's always fun!
