Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012

David_Gerard

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

As long as I'm demanding that LessWrong provide me with the answers to my personal problems, I find myself becoming more and more misanthropic as time goes on. I genuinely like only about five people out of everyone I've ever met, two of whom are family. I feel like almost everyone else is borderline homogeneous, originality seems extremely scarce and I'm bored whenever I try to talk to most people.

Context: I'm in college and not making friends. This is largely because I don't drink or follow or play in sports, I think. I'm bad at small talk. It's also because I'm unhappy with lots of what's perceived as normal around here (eg the subtle dehumanization of women).

I don't really know what to do. I believe humans are social animals and that I'd be happier with friends, but at the same time I really don't like any of the people who I talk to here. Any social advice at all would be useful for me, and anything that deals with the specifics of my situation doubly so. Misanthropy is obviously bad, but I don't know how to transition from my dislike of most people to becoming friends with them, nor am I positive that it's the right thing for me to do in this situation.

Seconding drethelin's advice in general. I feel very empathetic towards your situation, and I did not like most of the people I met when I first went to college, and yet I made some serious long-term friends there.

Also, for fear of not having a "social role", just make sure there's something memorable about you. Like a cartoon character, have some element of style that is unique and not obviously negative - so that people can see you and think "There's that kid with the X again", and you blend into the background less. If X can also ... (read more)

2johnlawrenceaspden14y

I don't mean this snarkily, but have you considered drinking or taking up a sport? Low level sport (where everyone's a bit rubbish and no-one takes it seriously) is superb fun. Obviously, you'll be terrible at it, but if you find a club that's short of people and loses all the time anyway you'll probably be more welcome than you think. And just by taking part you'll get much better at it. It might change your life. And if you're embedded in a society where social life revolves around alcohol you'll miss out on a vast amount of the fun and happiness that comes with being human if you don't join in. You don't have to overdo it. Just try having a glass of wine with someone you like one day and see how it goes. I am a pretty nerdy guy, but if I had to relive my life without ever drinking alcohol or playing cricket or rowing or playing rugby I just think I'd probably not want to bother. ( I am unbelievably bad at rugby. ) If it helps encourage you, for a long time I coached novice rowers for King's College (part of the University of Cambridge). Occasionally we'd get a hopelessly non-sporty introvert turning up wanting a go. Some of these guys were so shy they could hardly speak. And they were often the people who enjoyed it the most, and became most committed and most likely to come back year after year. I'm not going to lie to you, with one exception they never became any good. But they all became much better than they had been, and seemed to enjoy the process, and are some of the people that I most enjoyed coaching. It helps of course that rowing is actually technically complex and I could talk to these people about how best to turn energy into momentum and how it is that a boat can balance even though its centre of gravity is above its centre of flotation and so on. I think one of the reasons that rowing is so popular amongst the sciency types at Cambridge is that it is a sport that you can think about in terms of physics. But it really doesn't matter what the

2beoShaffer14y

I take it you don't have a LW meetup near by. Do you think you could start one?