You make friends *HERE*?!

Tildoes.

I've seen the same conversation on niche subreddits. Fact is, like minded people congregate, and you can make friends anywhere. It's just a matter of engaging those people.

Ever joined the Minecraft server? I haven't, but I've been tempted.

The name for a group of people who use Tildes is deliberately unclear, to the point that it's an injoke to use a different name every time.

But I'm in the same boat as you. I've recently taken a hybrid position, so I do have people I see in person, but for practical reasons coworkers can't be real friends while you work together. The common answer is to have hobbies away from your computer that involve interacting with people in person. Proximity, time, and familiarity are the ingredients that lead to friendship, and it's harder to bake a friendship pie online.

Yip, met one of my best friends here because she saw one of my posts on ~lgbt, found it relatable, dm'd me, and then invited me to a discord server. Then after a few months of being there we started dm'ing a lot more about whatever we had in common that we talked about on the discord with the others there. To be fair, it's a lot easier to get to know people in the LGBT community since we know from the get-go that there are going to be a lot of shared life experiences without having even talked by just knowing the other person is queer.. because it's the same story for nearly everyone - a confusing youth, a coming into your own, and maybe some delayed, if any, milestones.

We have now visited each other 3 times for a week each time across 2 countries (about 1 Texas to be fair), and it's surprisingly cheap. Cost me only €100 to go from Copenhagen to Amsterdam, and Odense to Groningen the other time was about €80. Takes like upwards of 10 hours though that's alright for some good times and seeing tons of things every day.

Shoutout to @x08 for being a great person and messaging me first back then..!

Anyway I've also had some chats with people based on posts on ~health.mental too, with very gracious help or offers of listening to me or the other way around. As well as just relatable experiences. However, I will say that trauma bonding isn't exactly an ideal way to get to know someone.

There's also a huge age span on Tildes though. I think I'm on the younger end at 31. Seems like most are 40+ here? So it might be difficult to find someone at the approximately appropriate age with whom you have chemistry I guess. So my advice has already kind of been posted in other comments, but yeah consistently engaging in subtildes' is the way to go. That way you start to recognize usernames and eventually you find out that you vibe particularly well with a certain user. Maybe someone then dm's you or you dm them ^^ But it's a time and patience thing.

I find it fascinating too.

I grew up during the first wave of social media, back in the MySpace and bebo days. Even back then, the idea of putting so much of your personality on the intenet that you could make friends seemed really weird to me.

But today, even some of my meat friends have met their online friends, yet I'm in a limbo of wanting to make online friends yet too private a person to invest enough into it.

Gurl, you have to slide into those DMs.

But seriously. Go send some private messages. If you want personal relationships you need to have private conversations. I literally came to this topic from one of them where I asked for some advice.

I also stand by an earlier statement I made this month; realtime conversations are a lot better for building relationships. Maybe try MMOs for a change?

I think here communities passionate about some niche topic are not really around like some small subreddits would be. Everything is on the front page basically, at least for me. So it’s like a big train station with people coming and coming from all over the place and it’s not easy to really get a lot of continued interactions with the same people over a period of time. I think that’s the key to making friends. Or at least one of the best ways to do it. Personally it’s very hard to make friends without have some unique shared experience to relate over. Like an inside joke. I also feel like the community here is very proper. Comments are generally well thought out and rarely do I see even attempts at jokes. That tone is infectious as a lot of people here are precious about this community.

I've made friends online elsewhere, so the being online isn't the problem, but I definitely agree that it seems difficult to get tildists to actually dialogue, as in, exchange a series of comments, when compared to other platforms. There is a deeply entrenched culture of frontloading the whole thing, which results in really good long posts, but there are a lot of things that can benefit from a more dynamic style of conversation. Outing myself here but I'm pretty sure I mentioned this (in far fewer words) in my survey response.

I don't disagree with those who mentioned shared interests but I can't help but think interests like Minecraft are most helpful because they move the conversation to a more dynamic, fast-paced, quick-turnaround platform. There are a lot of subjects on Tildes on whose threads you often meet the same people, but since those discussions can't lead to anything more dynamic than the thread itself, there's nowhere to go from there.

I mostly lurk here and have been doing so for a couple of years. Over time, I’ve developed the impression that this community is fantastic and refreshing. I can’t say how much moderative effort goes into it, but what I frequently see is kindness, tolerance, and a sufficiently diverse range of opinions that I never feel echo-chambered.

I really miss the forum communities from my late teens and early adulthood. I’m 33 now, and as I’ve shifted toward working more and building leisure activities away from technology, I often find myself dissatisfied with how little I do at my PC these days—aside from checking investments and reading a few blog posts.

I used to be a *nix geek and tinkerer, as well as an avid MUD player. Through those hobbies, especially the latter, I formed many ephemeral friendships over the years. Yet somehow, I’ve become a lizard-brained “net-life recluse.” I rarely go out of my way to interact with people online, refrain from posting or participating in discussions here or elsewhere, and when I do, I often end up deleting my posts.

I suppose my point is: be less like my late self. Open up a little, as the rewards might be more enriching than you expect, and there is ultimetely nothing to lose much more often than not.

I've met a few tildesians who were willing to meet a traveler in their region, or were traveling to mine. All of those were pleasant meetings. One seems to be shaping up into a friendship that is moving offline.

Edit, you are more than welcome to join us at tildes book club

my advice is maybe counter-intuitively to find interest in activities, things, places, etc first, not people. Then you join discussion spaces where you can bond over a shared interest. Generally when I am seeking out interaction it's because I'm interested in talking about {speculative fiction, broadway musicals, some other hobby, etc} or doing {escape rooms, bookbinding class, recently contra dancing, etc}. Then I make friends through these avenues. Also be willing to treat internet friendships equally to IRL friendships, most of my closest friends are people I've never met in person (or if I have, it's because we decided to meet up after knowing each other online for a long time)

I was pretty young when Facebook was taking off, and connected with some friends of friends along the way that I basically only ever knew online. I was pretty close to a few, but as adults we've all kind of drifted apart. But there were a few folks I connected with in forms that I connected with by email and eventually added on Facebook. It's kind of terrifying to look back on, but I think after talking to someone for months you get a pretty good sense of if they're some kind of pervert or genuinely who they say they are. And honestly a Facebook history provided better verification than anything else.

So this idea isn't super foreign, but as an adult (though similar to u/smoontjes, I feel pretty young here on Tildes at least) I find I spend a lot less time in online spaces connecting with folks than I do IRL in part because of the time demands and being in an environment with lots of people my age. Still, I think of any current spaces, places like Tildes without all the spam and bloat are probably one of the few places it's still kind of easy to make meaningful connections with strangers online and to be able to eventually become friends. I'm hoping as Tildes grows a bit more, conversations here maybe take on longer life's and it feels more connected.

I am in a similar situation, although I'm in my mid 30's. There is a certain excitement to being able to communicate with strangers so easily and share your perspective, but taking the leap to message someone feels daunting. Maybe we need something like a discord server for people interested in this.