socialization

vincent’s model of interacting with strangers

recently i was thinking about how incredibly unsuccessful i’ve been at making new friends in sf. i’ve probably met a few hundred new people over the last year, from a pretty wide range of contexts (coworking sessions, housewarming/birthday parties, workouts, science events, twitter, etc), and have managed to keep in touch with ~0 of them, with the exception of people who read this blog. it seems like people who first meet me through the internet find me much more interesting than people who first meet me in-person

last weekend one of my friends told me she wished she had a more distinctive personality. hearing that was very confusing because i thought she already had one. i suppose friendship is noticing and appreciating all the nuances in another person

if i had to simplify my views on socializing with strangers into one chart, it would look something like this:

i think everyone has an inner version of themselves which is extremely engaging and attractive to compatible people (related: i want to destroy the words “interesting” and “sparkly”), and which often gets filtered or compressed because of social ineptitude and lack of emotional awareness and other barriers. the transparent ↔ opaque axis is about how easy it is for strangers to perceive the inner version of you. the inauthentic ↔ authentic axis is about the extent to which you try to present traits that don’t arise naturally in the inner version of yourself. where you are on the chart often changes depending on context

in my case: i’m usually pretty high on both authenticity (i never feel pressure to fake anything - if other people are doing something that doesn’t seem appealing to me i’ll simply not participate) and opaqueness (it’s very hard for strangers to read me, though i’ve been working on it over the last half-year) so i sometimes get lucky and develop extremely deep friendships but most of the time new people think i’m boring. the effect of blogging is to move me from opaque to transparent, which explains why i have a much easier time becoming friends with people who read my writing

explanations of other quadrants: some people are extremely good at being both authentic and unfiltered around strangers, eg. my former boss, which makes it very easy to connect deeply with people they’ve just met. some people seem very open and engaging around strangers but are really doing a lot of work to maintain appearances (eg. pretending to be interested in a topic, matching energy and mannerisms, filling gaps in conversations to avoid silence) so strangers often like them but socializing is very exhausting on their part, and it’s easy to end up with “friends” that are actually not very compatible. i can’t think of anyone who is both extremely opaque and inauthentic, which may be a case of selection bias (would i ever end up being friends with such a person?)

there are many ways to shift how transparent or authentic you are, though i suspect most of them require a lot of emotional work to change how you process or talk about feelings

for me increasing transparency is about learning to notice and communicate experiences in greater and greater detail - did you understand what you saw today? did you understand what you liked and disliked about it? did you notice how vibrant all the colors were, or the patterns the sunlight made as it shined through the leaves, or how beautiful it is that we can see anything in the first place? how did you feel about it all?

i have some authenticity work to do, mostly related to when i am uncomfortable. there are specific people that consistently make me feel unsafe, and when interacting with them i become a compressed version of myself: show no signs of weakness, pretend to not have feelings, talk exclusively about technical topics. i should figure out how to push back against the sensation of feeling unsafe, though it hasn’t been happening often enough to be a priority

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i’ve been spending a lot of time around new grads who just moved here and are struggling to make new friends. i think most of them suffer from either 1. a logistical problem of how to find new people in general or 2. a communication problem of how to connect with new people once they’ve been found

many people have written about solving the logistical problem already and i don’t think it’s particularly hard (use the internet, go to or host events, meet friends of friends) so i’m not going to say much about it. the communication problem is a bit more complicated

i think it’s very easy to go through the motions of trying to meet new people and connect with them instead of actually trying to do a good job. by “going through the motions” i mean doing things because you think you’re Supposed to do them, eg. going to parties and making small talk, and expecting that to work. i did this for 2-3 months and it was miserable

probably the most effective way to connect with new people is to actually, truly want to connect with people - not people in the abstract sense of a mythical figure who hasn’t shown up yet and has all the right attributes, but people in the sense of the person standing right in front of you. i’m often reminded of that essay on charisma:

I suspect the key to charisma is to like people. All politicians smile when they're working a crowd, but the really charismatic ones don't have to remember to smile. Their smiles are genuine, because they're enjoying themselves. If you look at photographs of [Bill] Clinton in a crowd, time and again you see him stretching way out to reach people's hands - often over his own Secret Service agents, like a basketball player stretching to block a shot. And he's not merely smiling. He's ecstatic. Working a crowd is not a duty for him; it's the part he likes.

this isn’t to say that you’ll connect deeply with everyone you meet. compatibility is real and very important. a lot of people i’ve met are looking for something that i simply don’t have, or vice versa. but i don’t think you have much of a chance to begin with if you’re just going through the motions