Friends

In all honesty, I just want friends. I am incredibly lonely and I don't talk to anyone in person anymore. My job is online and nobody ever reaches out to me anymore. Since I was younger, I have always wanted to find my little place on the Internet. Maybe this is it? I don't know anymore... Can anyone else relate here?

Can't trust people. You like the idea of friendship, reality is difficult. We don't live in a society where you can be safe from other people.

>>31768 certain people will have your best interests at heart and not sleight you even when given the chance. It may be hard to determine who those people are but its not impossible

>>31769 Yeah, these people exist. It's not the easiest thing to find them, I pretty much stumbled on them by accident after long periods of only having """friends""" in my life, but sometimes, someone wonderful comes into your life. I don't think you can rush it though OP. These people just come by accidents. It's not really a friendship if it's forced. What I would suggest if you are looking for someone online is find someone with similar interests to you and just contact them for something. Can be anything really. Maybe you like their work or you saw something fun about them. You would be surprised how many respond back. Most of them will lead nothing, but sometimes you meet someone cool.

>>31766 yeah, I relate. I mainly want real life friends. my tastes in both friends and lovers are pretty much impossible to meet naturally in real life - i like the company of other shut-ins. so I've ended up focusing on meeting people online. maybe one day I can move in with the girl I like irl

>>31766 I'm past the loneliness. Don't care too much about other people, they're mostly not compatible with sentient beings anyway. I know there are people that think kind of like me somewhere, because media creators often reference the things I think about in the symbolic sub-textual language... I like the idea of friends, and I once had some while growing up. Looking back, we were just kind of in the same 'social outcast' group - not that we were actually outcasts or anti-social, but the manufactured cultural cliques didn't contain us, so we kind of stuck together and did things. They were more associates than friends - it's not like I bonded with anyone enough to be called friends. They were still mostly asleep fools, regurgitating cultural artifacts, what we now call memes, with little thought of their own. I'm actually pretty fun at parties. People call me "funny" because of the (obvious) oddities and contradictions of life I point out, and humorous stories I sometimes tell (with or w/o embellishments to make the story more fun/tellable). People enjoy my company but I don't enjoy theirs. It's the tryhard one-upmanship of group interactions that is the worst. I'm not into the lizard brained social competition for who is most X. It's interesting to watch. Just approach anyone on any topic that they consider to be their domain of knowledge, esp. online. State some rare insight or make some minor correction. Their lizard brained fight or flight instinct engages, you have violated their [intellectual] territory and they will never cede an inch of it to admit you might have a point. Whelp, that connection is not going to result in a friendship. Honestly, I think the idea of a friend is new, not actually something that human culture naturally has for males anyway. History is mostly rubbish, but some of it has some on-point ideas. Such as: In 'ancient' Greece/Rome 'friend' implied 'with benefits'. Marriage was more of a contractual thing to create a legacy, it was expected that the craving for romance would be sated by 'friends' not necessarily monopolized by the spouse. I take a look at most male mammals and see something similar in humans. Male lions, for instance, have no friends. They exist to defend the pride from other male lions -- an usurper would kill the cubs to sire his offspring sooner, and reduce competition with his new cubs. The females, however, are far more sociable with each other. Female lions jockey for social rank amongst themselves much like females in cliques do. The male human is a natural loner, and treated like a defective girl if he has no friends. Males have a natural affinity for intense focus and 'nerding out' over model machines, erector sets, computers, etc. intricate & elaborate things. Women are being socially engineered into the position of partaking in the profitable manufactured 'nerd/geek' culture, whether they want to or not - they will typically adopt any group activity or niche hobby as soon as it is socially acceptable, but not before. I'm speaking of trends here, not outliers. In the aggregate we should be allowed to generalize and understand culture, while admitting and allowing that the individual may not follow the graph of general trends... even this is a controversial idea today, which irks me: "You're generalizing all X" no soykaf, sherlock, that's the beginning of wisdom, fool. "Buh-buh-but! You're discriminating!" Yes, without discrimination there is no wisdom, experience or time, all would be a nebulous chaos indeterminable from any other moment or thing. The alchemical knife of separations exists as discriminating between all the rest of the universe, and this object or subject that has been 'cut away' from all others for the purpose of comparison and contrast. It's obvious that the neutral word 'discrimination' itself has been given negative connotation as a PSYOP to make make the average idiots of the world even more stupid. I think collaborators and/or conspirators are a better goal than friends. The world is too corrupt and consumed by the "great delusion" that anyone versed in a little Mysteries Babylon will know exists for a settled science - (inb4 'Science itself can't be settled': That word literally means Knowledge, and it can be settled, that's the nature of reality: The Past is a Fact, it's settled / dead / data). Now I'm reliving the tired old arguments of the past interactions with stupids... Don't bother replying if you felt any strong reaction to anything I've written herein.

>>31826 "hah, look at these fools, trying to feel superior. Little do they know that I feel superior to them!"

>>31826 >Looking back, we were just kind of in the same 'social outcast' group - not that we were actually outcasts or anti-social, but the manufactured cultural cliques didn't contain us, so we kind of stuck together and did things. They were more associates than friends - it's not like I bonded with anyone enough to be called friends. extremely relatable. had the exact same experience. it's a shame the rest of your post is so strange >Honestly, I think the idea of a friend is new, not actually something that human culture naturally has for males anyway. this is false, men who were friends with each other used to literally say they loved each other and soykaf, prior to the 1900s. extremely close male friendship is something that's declined over the past century

>>31769 This is true. How do I know? Because I am that person. Even if I can't always keep small things like being super punctual, or might fail at something small, at the heart of the matter there are many people I am always goodwilled towards, because we understand each other :D even if they are pseudonymous to me and me to them. Love you anonymous

>>31769 This is true. Maybe one out of every four people is genuinely trustworthy and good-hearted. That doesn't mean they will always be good friends, many people are incompetent or ignorant, or you may simply be incompatible. Still, best to keep them as acquaintances.

>>31826 >Their lizard brained fight or flight instinct engages, you have violated their [intellectual] territory and they will never cede an inch of it to admit you might have a point. Huh, it's weird. Sometimes my lizard-brain instincts readt that way, but there is usually a mediating process that prompts me to take things into consideration and acknowledge where I am lacking in information or plain wrong. Which is still a bad strategy because people online usjally seem to just want to "win" arguments so they kind of drag you into a meaningless game of who's right and who's wrong and even if you concede others a point, it doesn't lead to meaningful exchange but to be labeled the "loser". I don't really mind that outcome, I'll take it if it makes them happy, but it feels pointless. Idk why people like to play games so much. Maybe I'm just bitching because I can't play their games.

Heck yeah friendo. Good to see ya. My last job I was marked as the office moron by a supervisor that couldn't fire me (actually a good cog that did work and showed up). That was a lonely few years, nobody would work with me or take me seriously, I never had to deal with bullies in school, so getting a corporate bully was new to me. I think many of us have holes in our existence that brought us here.

I am in a similar position but I find more than a few hours of socialisation deeply uncomfortable and I can't hold light conversation to save my life I think a lot of people are in the same place, I'm not built for being really outgoing and pro actively social, I only work well with small intimate groups bug getting them into them is hard so it takes ages to make friends It is like kicking dead whales down the beach but its what it is, I like walking and sports groups because I can have lots of little conversations with different people without constantly having to scramble for new stuff to talk about and I can take the groups and leave them each week as I like.

>>31766 >Can anyone else relate here? yes. It took me joining a group of people with a specific goal that everyone shared, and going through bad times together, to bond and become friends. How do you find that? I don't know. Use your interests to find people. Try to work together to accomplish a goal and see where that takes you.

Honestly. Only way how I can get to talk people is either online or going to a bars/pubs. I'm not in school anymore and my work is solitary. People you meet at drinking establishments aren't genuine friends as they most likely won't remember your name and will not see you outside of drinking activities. But it helps to cope with loneliness to have someone to talk with. I suggest cheaper and run down places on weekdays that have a bar desk. You may end up not talking to anyone, if that happens I usually leave after a second beer.

I just want to be back home with my desktop computer.

>>31826 >think collaborators and/or conspirators are a better goal than friends yes >The Past is a Fact lately been toying with the idea that we rewrite the past as we look at it

>>31997 That's an interesting thought. I recall watching a documentary about a series of murders that occurred in some northern place (Iceland? Wherever Bjork's from, basically, I think) and some guy got blamed for it, despite there not really being any evidence that he did the deed. He was caught with proof of committing fraud to make money I believe, but that's it. The relevance of this story to your post is the fact that, when they were interrogating him, they kept him in an isolated cell. He was just in that cell with nothing to do, and was only interacted with when it was time for another interrogation. They kept trying to get him and the other suspects to remember the crimes and they used all sorts of techniques to pull the "truth" out of them, but the story just kept changing over and over again. All they found was that memory was fickle, and they jailed the guys anyway.

They are overrated. >The only people I talk to are you autists and your autism allows me to pretend you are all bots in my fantasy land. Loneliness is kino

>>31766 I have been friendless for many years now. One thing I had to accept was that no one is obliged to be my friend. I don't know how to get friends. I'm NEET, so I really don't have many chances for getting new friends. I think school or work is one of the best places to meet new people. Hobbies can be even better. I guess, It's possible to get online friends at IRC, too (You could try Lainchan IRC, just install Hexchat and connect to the server). Most self-help books are bullshit (like How to Win Friends and Influence People). They teach you to become a good salesman instead. To people with friends: What do you usually do with your friends?

>>31766 >Can anyone else relate here? Me. If you, OP, or anyone else wants to add me on Matrix and be my internet buddy, I'd love that (I already have one, but I'd like more) My username is banana2