[dandellion]

That matches my experience, since for me "what interests do I have that will facilitate this repeat interaction" is an empty set. The last time I made a friend was in an online game more than ten years ago, and it was before most games dropped private servers for random matchmaking. I've made "casual friends" with a couple people at work, but since the pandemic we've only been meeting two or three times a year so it's a very shallow relationship.

[0_____0]

Do LAN parties still exist? There used to be actual physical community around gaming and it's a shame it's died off.

[officeplant]

I'm part of a local community trying to keep them alive here. It's both sad to see a bunch of college kids completely new to the LAN concept, but encouraging to hear their remarks about how much fun they had. We used to have a few "LAN Centers" that shutdown around 5 or 6 years ago, but were dying since 2010.

My friends and I are all in our 30s enjoy bringing Quake3, UT2k4, Age of Empires II, Warcraft 2 / 3, Red Alert 2, Soldat and other LAN favorites to a new generation. Although I'm still struggling to convince them to let me destroy everyone in DOOM2/Quake1.

[dandellion]

As far as I know there were only a couple serious ones in my country. I went a few times to one that stopped 12 years ago or so. The other one has one last tweet announcing it was getting cancelled due to covid.