[johnnyanmac]

>my only coworker is my spouse and best friend

TBH that's the part that scares me. I feel this is yet another avenue of socialization that is closing down in modern young adult life. People kept saying that the best place post college to meet friends is at work, and now some industries are going the direction where work may not even have coworkers in your area.

So where now if you don't drink? Hope to hit it off in some meetup with a person who shows up once? Community service simply so you aren't stuck in the house 24/7?

[spookieboogie]

There are many institutions for this that have been around for longer than you and I have been alive. Most of which I've been able to contribute at a regional level due to having time not commuting or being drained from being in an office all day

Local meetups, sports clubs, classes, hobby clubs (think board games, chess, ham radio, LARP), conventions, church if you're religiously inclined

And with the advent of the internet, there are forums, if not large social media groups, for all kinds of interests designed around connecting people. For example, I'm really into homebrewing consoles, so I'm in a few discord servers with others who share the same interests, and I like playing certain games online, so I keep contact with a few good people who I play with regularly

If all else fails, I find that most people get at least one acquaintance during their school years or still have family of some sort. Definitely ymmv if they were toxic in any way, but if not, you already have a foot in the door for maintaining a healthy connection to them

I apologize if this post sounds condescending or like I'm just preaching common sense, but sometimes it's easy to take these kinds of social groups for granted or overlook them in our hyperdigital age. There's so much toxic irony growing up as a millenial on the internet that made me think 'I'll never be like those losers' as a teen that evolved into 'Wow, they had it figured out all along' as an adult

[johnnyanmac]

>Local meetups, sports clubs, classes, hobby clubs (think board games, chess, ham radio, LARP), conventions, church if you're religiously inclined

Of course YMMV based on hobby, area, personality, and overall luck but: I haven't had luck with most of these and its not for the lack of trying

- I tried meetups for years pre-pandemic, and I could never quite get a constant connection going. "Flake" culture hit me hard whenever I tried doing something outside of the meetup. Post pandemic I can definitely tell a certain change has happened. I was optimistically hoping that maybe others would be more willing to go out and meet people live, but it seems to have had the opposite effect. Things simply feel more dead than before.

- Conventions theoretically sounded like the perfect situation... and I learned quickly that conventions are very much more "come with friends" sorts of fairs. You can still talk to people in happy hour, but not really expect anything deeper from a con. It seems you'd only go further if expecting a business connection, and I wasn't.

- Not particularly religious so church isn't an option. But after my current ordeals, I "understand" church now. It's not the kind of scene that is for me, though.

Classes are going to be my next faire once I get my finances re-stabilized. I tried a few online classes over the pandemic and they were about what I feared they'd be: go into a class with mostly cameras off, with some sort of discord/slack server that is mostly dead. So maybe live classes can get that feeling back.

>If all else fails, I find that most people get at least one acquaintance during their school years or still have family of some sort.

my old friends and family are fine. just long distance. So not really much option. Parents will contact me once a month but the thing with friends is that they can just pop in/out of chats/calls for months on end. Last non-local friend I talked to was in June? And it was a very brief chat. Time before that must have been in January or so.

>And with the advent of the internet, there are forums, if not large social media groups, for all kinds of interests designed around connecting people.

And to be frank I blame this for it being so hard to locally connect. I don't know how or who are the kinds of people that can talk on Reddit or Instagram or Hacker News and think "this person is someone I want to DM and talk to IRL". Forums just feel like the modern bar scene but online. Nice to share some shallow bonding with but at the end of the day they stay more as a bar friend. Not someone you'd bring around to your house or whatnot.

But at least bars had a face to connect to so I can see how those connections can form. Here, I'm not sure if I'm talking to a teenager or an older person who's well past making friends in lieu of family.

[shortrounddev2]

I've thought about starting a happy hour group for remote workers, but I don't like to drink anymore

[slikrick]

get a local hobby

[johnnyanmac]

That is currently video games and graphics programming... Not a lotta people interested in my area I guess. Or its simply not "local" since you xan do online collaboration/competition these days.