How To Make Friends and Hang Out With People

The Washington Post takes a look at some web -based ways to meet friends and go do stuff. I've never engaged in any formal online activities explicitly oriented around friend-making, but I do owe several of my friends to the quasi-social online activity known as blogging, and when you add in friends of friends in various degrees, blogging is probably the biggest avenue through which I know anyone.

This is, I think, an under-recognized aspect of the internet. Since typing away is a solitary activity, time spent on the web is often conceptualized as a substitute for interacting with people. More realistically, though, the internet actually substantially decreases the search costs associated with getting to know people and facilities meatspace interactions.

Comments

"More realistically, though, the internet actually substantially decreases the search costs associated with getting to know people and facilities meatspace interactions."

Yup. As the WP piece notes, the net is an excellent resource for losers to create a social network.

(And I use the word "losers" here lovingly. Even the best folks can be losers at some point of their lives.)

But if you've already got a decent social network, the web is more than slightly useless for such purposes. Extending an existing social network is far easier and far more reliable than turning to the web.

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The best description of social networking on the web I've heard is that it's a great resource for shy guys who like blowjobs to meet lonely girls who like to give blowjobs.

Posted by Petey | June 16, 2007 4:16 PM

The best description of social networking on the web I've heard is that it's a great resource for shy guys who like blowjobs to meet lonely girls who like to give blowjobs.

Which are you again?

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | June 16, 2007 4:24 PM

And loads of great sex. That's probably what those nerds invented the internet for. Hell, that's prob what all the guys on this blog are here for.

Posted by Kate | June 16, 2007 5:12 PM

I agree - at this point, when I travel to a country in the Middle East, I always already know people there because of blogging. (The exception, ironically, was the highly developed UAE.)

Posted by Brian Ulrich | June 16, 2007 5:14 PM

the internet actually substantially decreases the search costs associated with getting to know people and facilities meatspace interactions

if you want it to. it can also be exactly the opposite.

Posted by cleek | June 16, 2007 5:24 PM

I hate when people trash talk social networking sites by saying that they're for people with no friends. I never use the Intertron to meet new people; I use it to facilitate staying in touch with people I already now from real life. Facebook is great for casual communication and touching base. It isn't a replacement for anything and for me, it isn't mean to be.

Posted by Freddie | June 16, 2007 5:31 PM

Please tell me you meant "meetspace" not "meatspace".

I don't see the Internet as any more sick in bringing people together than the rest of the ways and reasons for meeting people.

From what I've seen, the Internet allows people to get together quicker and for safer, and often for saner reasons than prowling the streets hoping to meet some meat.

People are getting engaged in serious political activism, sports talk, or even just gossip swapping.

They are leaving aside the absurd notion that every meeting has to lead to sex.

Women who still do most of the housework from what I've seen can pop on, get some information, participate in a discussion all without having to get dressed up and find a meeting somewhere for the purpose, if she can find the time for such a big deal after work, kids, dinner, and chores. I can't count how many women have mentioned that the Internet has helped them do something about the problems in this country. These are women with families already.

But mainstream news is still pining for the days when they could control everyone's brains by excluding the information they didn't want us to know, and by excluding us regular folks.

Posted by Bill Lenner | June 16, 2007 7:20 PM

This is, I think, an under-recognized aspect of the internet. . . More realistically, though, the internet actually substantially decreases the search costs associated with getting to know people and facilities meatspace interactions.

Actually, there's an entire research subfield of human-computer interaction that's devoted to this and related topics: computer supported collaborative work, which has been around for a couple of decades. What's described above is captured in some models of what's called social navigation.

Posted by RSA | June 16, 2007 7:31 PM

I think that if you can use the word 'meatspace' to refer to the physical world, without irony, then you may be just a little too at home in the virtual world.

Posted by charles parr | June 16, 2007 8:29 PM

My entire group of "close" friends, about 12 people, were all met online first either trading music, or talking about music before hooking up at a show. I've never had issues socially and am happy to strike up conversation, but I've found online networking to be a much better way to get to know someone first as people are more likely to open up and just chat online upon first meeting than they are at a club or a show or a bar, etc.

Posted by Fred F. | June 16, 2007 9:17 PM

I don't know--call me weird, but I still vastly prefer the old-fashioned methods of face-to-face social networking (e.g., going to bars).

So much of social interaction (sexual or non-sexual), for me, is about inherently "non-internettable" qualities (body language, voice, and the way a person behaves in another person's physical presence, among a long list of other intangibles) that I just find it really difficult trying to get any meaningful sense of who a person is from anything they might put online.

Posted by James Gary | June 16, 2007 9:27 PM

I haven't made any friends online, though I've certainly made some enemies. On the other hand, my acceptance into the "Camp Scotmar Friends" (my groovie late '70s Jew camp) yahoo group is still pending.

Posted by godoggo | June 17, 2007 12:25 AM

Speaking of which, what the fuck's up with that? Maybe I need to write something friendlier.

Posted by godoggo | June 17, 2007 12:30 AM

Meatspace. Don't get me wrong, I'm an inveterate (even semi-professional) William Gibson fan, but isn't that term, like, so over?

Posted by DrBB | June 17, 2007 1:16 PM

"The history of the movies is the history of boys photographing girls."

That's my mangled remembrance of something Goddard said about movies. Most things a guy does is done to increase the number of girls he gets to meet. (Until he has a daughter. Then, things change.)

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 17, 2007 6:58 PM