• sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago

    I’m talking about pretty “safe” settings, like:

    • game night with mutual friends - your and their friends will help keep things on the level
    • co-ed sports (again, with mutual friends)
    • community events, such as at a local library or whatever
    • meetups for interests - often hosted at some local business that does something related to the thing (I’m a dev, so I go to local Rust, Go, Python, and JS meetups on occasion)

    In other words, places where people are “forced” to interact doing something that interests them, while around other people that could come to your aid if someone is being creepy. The goal shouldn’t be to find a SO (that attracts the wrong type), but to interact with people that share an interest. You should be looking to make friends, and if that blossoms into something more, I guess that’s cool too. Don’t go into it looking for an SO, go into it looking to engage about something you enjoy.

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      anything with mutual friends

      I don’t have any of those, they all knocked each other up in their 20’s, their personalities died and now they’re all underpaid zombies with diaper bags and minivans who never text, and in car-centric America there is no mechanism for meeting more.

      co-ed sports

      Illegal in the South for the same reasons that you can’t buy beer on Sunday morning.

      Community events such as at a local library or whatever

      My town hosts regular community events and distributes a list of upcoming ones every month as part of a newsletter included with our water bills. 100% of them are for ages 6-12 or 65+; About the only event I’m aware of that might allow normal no adjective adults to attend is the occasional First Friday event, which plays music you could hear from geostationary orbit. I mean seriously the music will rattle my windows about as hard as a freight train and the stage gets set up 4 blocks further away than the tracks. Should I call OSHA or something?

      Meetups for interests

      All of my interests are some combination of near total sausage fests, have no support/community in my area, or any support for them died during the pandemic.

      often hosted at some local business

      Buy shit! Buy shit buy shit buy shit!

      • Entropywins@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I mean, if all you see are obstacles, that’s all you’ll ever encounter, friend… you can be a victim of circumstance or adapt and overcome.

        • Icaria@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          I don’t agree with everything the guy above you said, but my circumstances are very similar to his.

          I have friends, but they don’t know anyone they can introduce me to.

          Sports are off the table due to both health problems and a lack of interest (do you really want group activities to be full of disinterested guys just there to chat up chicks?), never mind that they’re all heavily male-dominated around here.

          Local councils put on events, but they are either for children, for mothers, or for seniors.

          Everything has been turned into a product to be sold to you, almost every event costs money, and when you do pony up the events are somewhere between borderline scams and actual scams.

          This is a recurring issue with this subject. Someone offers advice, someone points out why that advice isn’t very applicable, and the first person makes no attempt to “adapt and overcome” themselves and either a) offer better advice, or b) admit that they don’t have any better suggestions.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        anything with mutual friends

        I don’t have any of those

        Hence the goal here of expanding friend network with people who actually have time and shared interests.

        Illegal in the South for the same reasons that you can’t buy beer on Sunday morning.

        That’s incredibly stupid… Then again, my area also restricts buying beer on Sundays.

        100% of them are for ages 6-12 or 65+

        Maybe try the nearest big city? Or maybe the next closest one?

        local business

        I mean bigger companies, companies that are looking to hire people, not sell you stuff. For example, I’m in tech, and most of the companies that host events are just looking to attract applicants in whatever their tech stack is, their target market is something entirely different (e.g. they’re B2B).

        I’m not talking about things like sewing classes at the local crafting store, though if you’re going to buy from them anyway, I guess I don’t see the harm.

        And yeah, the meetups I’ve attended are largely male dominated (that’s the nature of my interests). But that’s 100% okay because the goal is to find people with share interests, not find a romantic partner. Finding a romantic partner should come naturally from making friends. Friend may introduce you to a romantic partner, or they could become one. If you’re making finding romance the goal, you’re going to get burned by abusive partners because they’re attracted to such platforms as well.

        So that’s my advice. If your friends are all married and boring (I’m now one of those), make new ones. That’s hard, I know, but it’s a lot safer to do that than try to hook up on dating services IMO.

        • Icaria@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Finding a romantic partner should come naturally from making friends. Friend may introduce you to a romantic partner, or they could become one.

          That’s a lovely idea, unfortunately a lot of us are growing old waiting for this bullshit.