Comment by unsupp0rted
3 days ago
My hobby is organizing in-person meetups for random people to get together, chat and make friends. Barely structured, if at all. I've found this rewarding and ended up making friends this way.
You have to accept that 5-15% of the people who would show up to something like this are genuine weirdos you probably don't want to be around. And another 10% at any given meetup are autistic or neuro-divergent but well-meaning, kind and full of interesting insights and hobbies, although perhaps difficult to socialize with, at least until they get to know you're well-meaning too.
These challenges come with the territory. You end up talking to people you'd otherwise never meet in the normal course of your life, and it's neutral at worst and wonderful at best.
I'm on the other side of this, in that I attend a lot of these.
I made a big effort about 12 years ago to go to a bunch of these (like three meetups a week and trying out a variety of different meetups), but now I mostly stick to a couple of them as I don't have as much time or energy for it anymore. But I've met most of my current friends through those meetups.
Find one you like and keep showing up until you're a regular, and get to know people slowly, and if they like you they start inviting you to things outside of the meetup, and then eventually you end up being friends.
I've done this with three different groups over the years and despite naturally being shy and an introvert I've ended up making friends at each one.
At the height of me doing this (like ten years ago), it got to the point where I'd go about my daily life and about once every other month I'd run into random people I've met at meetups also out and about. Like go out to dinner and spot someone I knew from a meetup also showing up to the same place, or run into them shopping at a Best Buy or something.
Meetups where you do a shared activity seems to be the best, like hikes or movies (+ dinner afterwards) or board games, since you can always focus on the activity if you don't feel like being social, and you have that activity you can always talk about as a subject.
Between the genuine weirdos, the autistic and/or the neuro-divergent, is there anyone left, really? Do the "normies" genuinely exist? Happy-go-lucky, knows a bit about everything but doesn't nerd out on anything, picks up every conversation subject and listens and holds their own in a manner that is just right? I am genuinely curious about the existence of these "superhumans".
There are many many of these socially-skilled normies. But, by virtue of being socially skilled, most have already pretty much filled up their social capacity and don't tend to show up at the kind of venues dedicated to helping under-socialized people meet up.
> Between the genuine weirdos, the autistic and/or the neuro-divergent, is there anyone left, really?
Heh this has a total “nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded” vibe.
that describes me but i would never say i'm a "superhuman". I feel like i'm a boring glue guy.
While there is often a "normal" (bell-curve fitting) distribution for individual factors, putting them together can be counter-intuitive.
> Even when considering just three dimensions, fewer than 5% of pilots were “average” in all. [1]
I would guess many/most people probably think they fall into either (1) the normal bucket or (変) the weird/fringe bucket. Either "I am pretty normal" or "I am an outsider". How many think "We're all fairly different once you cluster in any 3 interesting dimensions!"?
But people feel that dichotomy, which makes me think it is largely about perception relative to a dominant culture: the in-group versus out-group feeling. For example, atheists might feel like outsiders in many parts of the U.S., but less so in big cities and in other countries. In dense urban walkable cities (like NYC), people see diversity more directly and more often. Seeing a bunch of people is different than seeing a bunch of cars.
[1]: From "Curse of Dimensionality: Lessons from the U.S. Air Force Cockpit Design" by Maciej Nasinski (2025): https://polkas.github.io/posts/cursedim/
Sounds like a really cool idea. How do you organize the meetup and promote it to people if it ends up being random people? Do you set it up on meetup.com and have a theme at the minimum?
I've been to a lot of meetups and it's definitely hit or miss and obviously depends on the sociability of the people that show up. The better ones I've attended are generally ones where people aren't trying to network for work purposes and are there literally to just socialize. The networking ones I find very dull as it's people just talking shop and career and if you've nothing to offer them on the career front, they move on quickly.
> ones where people aren't trying to network
I have literally never been to any kind of organized gathering where this wasn't the objective of most of the people there. Family and children's events excluded (sometimes).
That’s crazy, you’ve never been to a party?
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This reminds me of [0], basically just inviting the most interesting people I know (also transitively the most interesting people they know), and just getting to meet people. I would really like to do this, but half the most interesting people I know are PhD professors I rant with because I'm next to them in a lab. Maybe once my network gets bigger. But I would still like to know more about how you do this, as other people doing this accidentally made me some good friendships, and I'd like to repay this favor to others
[0] https://takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/this-might-be-oversharing
Easy two-part process: First part is putting our "feelers", ask/tell a bunch of people "You know, I'm thinking of maybe hosting a dinner party/barbecue/beach day" and see what reaction you get from people. If sufficient people (sometimes just 2) give somewhat interested vibes, ask again what dates people could do it at, then you send out an invite.
You'd get a bunch of people who say yes but then don't show, this is normal and don't take it personally. Secondly, maybe the first 2-3 times it'd be hard to get people to commit, but once you do it more regularly, people will find it easier to commit to something they know you're already committed to.
How I do it is context-specific. I used to live in a place where it's undoable and I was very lonely there. I moved to a place where people are much more open to it culturally and there's enough population to +/- bring in a constant flow of 4:1 regulars to newbies.
I advertise on local meetup platforms and in local social media. And I go to so many meetups myself that when people ask me what my hobbies are and I tell them, they get curious and self-invite.
> You have to accept that 5-15% of the people who would show up to something like this are genuine weirdos you probably don't want to be around.
How have you handled this in past meetups?
Be courteous, kind, don't accept invites, tell them you're not interested if they're making unwanted advances, and treat them as humans. If they seem receptive and able to handle constructive feedback, tell them what sticks out to you, otherwise just ignore it and move on.
Basically the same way you handle the exact same situation outside of organizing meetups, but maybe a bit extra on the friendly-and-try-to-not-traumatize-people-who-might-be-trying side of things.
Have you done any write ups about how best to go about doing something like this?
I'd love to organize something like this in my local community but somehow am not sure where or how to start really.
I use Blood on the Clocktower to do this, it's a social deduction game (that's just not randomly accusing each other) so it gets everyone talking easily
It has been my experience that social deduction games are very attractive to folks who have problems socializing in day-to-day life. You can see them almost come alive when they are given the permission.
Yes and the reverse is also true. I don’t like to play social games at my meetups because that’s a framework that seems to stifle genuine conversation. I do sometimes provide hypothetical questions as a bit of scaffolding.
> You can receive $1 million immediately for every 1 year of your life you are willing to give up (taken off the end of your life). How many years, if any, do you sell?
> You get to ask a "Cosmic Google" one single question about any mystery in history (e.g., "Who was Jack the Ripper?" or "Are we alone in the universe?") and get the absolute truth. What are you asking?
> If everyone in the world had a floating stat above their head (like "lies told" or "pizzas eaten"), which stat would you want to be able to see?
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I think a lot of people need prompting for something to talk about. They have no confidence that topics they bring up will be interesting to anyone else. So any kind of gathering that takes that pressure off will be attractive.
What locations do you recommend to emulate this? Coffee shops / libraries / your home?
I organise events as well and I'm wondering if you ever charged for them. I used to do them for free but so many people signed up and didn't attend later that it was hard to put numbers to book a venue to meet. How did you solve this?
i would do free venues only. usually restaurants are free because you consume food. if that is not an option, it depends on the cost. i have seen events where people were asked to contribute something when they arrive. you can usually announce the cost of the venue and ask everyone to contribute appropriately. if you fall short then next time ask people to contribute more. or keep a running tally during the event until the venue cost is met. from my personal feeling, if it costs more than $1-2 per person the venue is too expensive. find a cheaper one.
Great idea - a lot of the problems in the world are from social isolation, and people finding silos online
I think the 10% neuro-divergent is a positive as it being ND can be very isolating for people
Makes me think a focus around ND alone would be a great idea
What are the meetup themes? What brings the interesting people in?
How do you do this? And do you find people within tech industry or just random-people, I am sort of curious to know!
Just random people, but because of where I post my events I tend to get about 30% ~ 50% tech-adjacent people
> You have to accept that 5-15% of the people who would show up to something like this are genuine weirdos you probably don't want to be around.
Yep, thats me.
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Write explicit rules about dogs. Many "weirdos" just like their boundaries and basic hygiene. It is hard to socialize, over barking contest and rar dog humpimg your leg.
It will save both sides a lot of time.