[tokyolights2]

I spend so much of my time intentionally trying to cultivate community. In some respects, it is the over-arching theme of my adult life. I find community is very hard to come by so if I have to be the one to make it, so be it. I pay a pretty penny to be a member of a coworking space so I don't spend my workday alone. Three times per week I go to regularly-scheduled events (a game night, running club, and roller-skating night). I'm every week I try to coordinate events between friends that I have made through these groups. I've learned to be an even planner, match maker, (second rate) therapist, baby sitter, and referee. I definitely spend more mental cycles on my friends than I do on work.

The amount of work that I needed to put in was enormous. It was hard and scary at first. I was a wall-flower. Inviting people I don't know well to do something fun is not a skill that I was born with (quite the opposite). But with all this effort put in, I am finding that after multiple years of effort the value is starting to really pay dividends.

I guess the over-all point that I am making is that the American Dream is that you can live how you want, so if you want community, make that your Dream and go do it. Looking back, I really feel like I am an entrepreneur of friendship, and I think that at the end of my life I am not going to regret it.

[valianteffort]

Greatest decision I ever made was getting a remote gig, leaving the big city, and moving to a small town. There is enough going on here to keep busy, and everyone knows eachother.

Would never dream of raising my kids somewhere like SF. If you want community, go somewhere it's valued. Everyone in the big city is a transient, only there to make money and find love before it's time to head for the suburbs.

[flatline]

I live in a mid-sized US city and it’s hell. Seven years in, my friend group is small - but present - and there are very few activities I enjoy. It is a sleepy kind of place. Community here forms in small pockets of people who have known each other their entire lives and are not welcoming to newcomers. I have eyed a move to SF and when I last traveled there my Airbnb host commented, “this is where you come to find community.”

If a smaller town works for you then great, but for most people it’s quite the opposite, or people would not have consistently migrated to cities over the last century. There are real drawbacks to the population density but it affords so many more opportunities for…everything.

[t-3]

There's a big difference between a medium city and a small town, like an order of magnitude or three.

[bradlys]

The biggest issue is that community doesn’t always find you wherever you are. You can be outgoing, well liked, and so forth but sometimes wherever you live just isn’t going to work. We have a finite lifespan - so we can’t try every sized city and multiples of each.

My experience of living in small towns (100-20,000) was miserable. Extremely racist, homophobic, xenophobic, conservative, and so forth. Could I find a small town where that’s not an issue? Maybe but they tend to be this way. If you’re already someone who doesn’t fit into most crowds - you’re not always gonna find a welcoming scene in a small town.

My experience of big cities has also not been perfect either and I’ve lived in a few. (500k-8m) But the drawbacks of small towns are mostly gone. They’re replaced with other issues like insane competition on every front. (You’re always competing for someone’s attention and time - regardless of who they are) Cities segregate heavily even if they act like melting pots. The truth is - very little intermixing happens relative to how it should theoretically be. The upside of cities though is that there are likely more pockets of people to find a community to belong to. The downside is that it brings a lot of tribalism and exclusionary behavior. (Thus the segregation)

Overall, the USA sucks. It lacks community because we’ve decided to embrace late stage capitalism and the American identity is centered around getting fucked by the feds and capitalists. It’s no surprise that rich slave owners were writing the original rules the country would be founded on - when viewing how things are now.

[jltsiren]

Cities have traditionally been about two things: opportunities and freedom. For many the freedom is more important of the two. It means the freedom to be anonymous, the freedom to choose your own community, and the freedom to live your own life.

Small towns come with a default community, because everyone knows everyone. It's great if you fit in, and terrible if you don't. Many people move to cities primarily to escape that community.

[kitsunesoba]

And to some extent that freedom and opportunity scales with the size of the city.

I don't think I've ever felt as liberated as I did while living in Tokyo, where everybody is a number and if you want to check out for a bit and steer clear of your usual circles, it's easy to do so. At the same time though, for practically anything I could possibly imagine wanting to do, there were people I could seek out to do it with.

[taurath]

This works unless you can't find a large enough group of people that share your goals, values, etc. Those are the people that end up staying in cities regardless, and there are plenty of active communities for those folks.

[BizarreByte]

Those small towns are good if you conform and don't stick out, but it can be really, really hard if you do.

[marssaxman]

Experiences certainly differ! My family recently moved away from a small town, back to the heart of a big coastal city, in part because we were all lonely there; everyone in town may know each other, but the culture there was uncomfortably different from ours, and it was difficult to make friends. We fit in much better in a big cosmopolitan city, and there's so much more to do here - both for us and for our eleven-year old - that it's easier to find ways of spending time with people.

[supportengineer]

Wow - I moved to SF, found love, and moved to the suburbs… but I’m still working on that money part :)

[nocoiner]

LOL, support group anyone???

[lubujackson]

Counterpoint: grew up in a small town and now have kids in SF. Moved to the small town before kindergarten and always felt like an outsider there - other kids knew each other because their parents went to school together and my parents invested 0 in socializing me when I was little.

In SF, if you seek it there is a strong parent community that feels like the other side of the fence to me - welcoming and inclusive. Everyone has different styles of parenting but we converge on keeping kids safe and supporting their play. The groups are far more diverse ethnically, economically and even politically here and I think that is healthy exposure for kids.

Yes, a few families move out each year but my son has a group of kids he has hung out with since he was 3 (8 now). The kids all go to different schools but as I have learned from people who grew up in SF, kids tend to make cross school connections and friendships pollinate across schools so high school parties can turn into big group hangs.

All this may be easier and more stable in the burbs, but the community/village mindset does exist in SF if you seek it. It's not that there isn't crime and some troubled kids here, but there are some incredible benefits to the city as well.

This may be specific to SF as we have an insanely low kid % in SF (like 5% vs. 14% most other cities).

[graedus]

> Everyone in the big city is a transient, only there to make money and find love before it's time to head for the suburbs.

I might be taking this bit of hyperbole(?) too literally, but while this might be a common trajectory for young professionals, it obviously doesn't cover everyone.

[granshaw]

> Everyone in the big city is a transient, only there to make money and find love before it's time to head for the suburbs.

Definitely stealing this!

[nocoiner]

I think this is a brilliant and healthy way to look at how to build meaning in modern American life. I came to a similar conclusion a few years back - it’s hard work, but so is everything else worth doing. I’m not particularly good at it though, but hey, always good to have some areas of self-improvement.

[atak1]

Love your response to this :) came to the same conclusion. I do think friendships are getting "faster" and community "easier" to build - hopefully the next wave of friendships can be made faster & with fewer mental cycles.

[hiatus]

This comment reminded me of how quickly children can become friends. It's funny what we can do when we come to the table without any expectation of one another.

[12907835202]

Its not just children. If you travel by yourself you often make friends who 7 days later are your "best friends", just like children.

We just need a way to foster those situations in real life.

The biggest issue I find with things like meetup.com initially there can be alot of talk about meetup, oh how often do you do this, bit weird isn't it, bonding over the mild awkwardness of the situation.

After that you form genuine friendships but then can't be bothered with those conversations anymore and either duck out of the group with your friends or become cliquey within the group.

The people who are always there and enthusiastically meeting new people every single week for years I always find a little odd and struggle to form a genuine deep connection with, because they're doing the surface level stuff on auto pilot and you have to regularly do it too if you're going to spend alot of time with them (because they're doing it with others even if not you).

It's an interesting situation to navigate and I understand why some struggle or don't bother.

[cobertos]

Do you ever struggle with giving more time to specific friendships/relationships you want to cultivate more, at the expense of others?

I find when I focus on a group, usually it also comes at the expense of focus on the individuals, and the people feel less close. Unless I put a lot of focus on the group over time, then I usually get to know the individuals depthful enough, but not as deep if I had spent that time with just two or three of them instead.

[tokyolights2]

The best part about introducing your friends to each other is that then they can hang out with each other without you having to do anything at all! I definitely have some close friends I expect to see multiple times per week. Others I'm perfectly happy to see once per month. Others who have moved away and I won't see until I visit their city.

Friends and community are not a zero-sum game. The more interconnected and inter-dependent people are, the more likely that everyone is going to have deep and meaningful relationships.

I used to feel much more like you when I was regularly hanging out with friends almost exclusively 1:1. I thought I was doing that because I was introverted, but realistically I was doing it because I had social anxiety. Looking back, hanging mostly 1:1 made me feel like my friends were more distant because there were so many people I didn't see for months that I always felt like I didn't really know my friends.

[cobertos]

Interesting, I can see how interconnectedness could make everything feel deeper. Experiences would be a shorter distance for everyone in the community. It echos something I've discussed with my therapist I think as well.

I feel similarly though. Social anxiety (though I understand it more now) and hanging out exclusively 1:1. Part of it is maybe I don't put a lot of time towards friends (my best friend I see once a month, the most I will see someone is maybe twice a week) and code a lot instead. Part of it is my friends just end up pretty far flung (one online, the others in person but in a 2 hour radius). I do feel like I know most of my friends well though, even when I don't talk for months. Catching up is fun.

Sometimes I'm happy with it, other times I wish to make more friends but realize it would end up destabilizing what I already have to some extent. Communities feel nice because the don't feel like a particularly "sticky" investment, and the ratio of people to time is greater, but I get less satisfaction from it initially and it takes time to build (I think, hypothesis not well tested).

[sharadov]

Kudos to you for doing it - it's all the more important now that so many of us are WFH. I took my past social life for granted - one that was built for over a decade and when going into office was normal.

It's been hard to make new friends - after moving to a new city and remote working.

I have not tried as hard as you did, but I am inspired by your post!

[tomtheelder]

This felt like reading my own words. It has been and continues to be an enormous amount of effort to try to foster that sort of community, but truly nothing else I have invested into in my life- save my relationship with my partner- has been worth even a _fraction_ of what my community building efforts have been worth.

[AndrewKemendo]

You’re not alone so hang in there cause I feel like there’s a wave of others coming!

We need a way to coordinate local mutual aid groups that isn’t just some backwater forum but doesnt just default to a corporate slack or something. I guess Mastodon would be good here?

[EGreg]

https://qbix.com/investors/articles

[theaussiestew]

You sound like you live such a rich life, I love it!

[j3s]

> I am an entrepreneur of friendship

love that for u. where do i invest?

[toomanyrichies]

"Entrepreneur of friendship"... love that.

[121watts]

logged in to say the exact same thing!