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So how do YOU make friends?

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Mystery_Meat, Apr 19, 2008.

  1. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    MM, I checked your profile and it said that you are over 30. I was over 30 and single and the biggest problem is that most of your peers are married.

    Married guys just don't drink beers every Friday night. I was going through that before I met my wife.

    Shit, try match.com if you are single. It might be easier to find a girlfriend than a drinking buddy.
     
  2. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    Try a nice progressive service. You will find that the preaching stops once you leave church.

    My church is in basketball, softball and volleyball leagues.
     
  3. imjustagirl

    imjustagirl Active Member

    The only time I darken the doors of a church is for someone's wedding or someone's funeral.
     
  4. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Now I am thinking about this.. First off, I am going to be 40 soon, actually, and being single is not a formula for having no friends. I have a lot of single friends my age (divorced, no desire to get married yet, and a few who are just inveterate womanizers who are smart enough NOT to get married because they will be horrible husbands). I also have A LOT of friends I used to be closer with have gotten married, had the babies, moved on to a place that created distance between us, etc. But I also actually have married GUY friends who still are able to be friends and do stuff... There are always going to be people who are like you, who fit into your world, no matter your circumstances. I am not sure the match.com advice was quite right for this thread. I don't think he is looking for women (that is just a whole different "game" to me). He wants to do stuff, have people to do it with, etc. You contact most guys on match.com, and my guess is they are not on that site looking for "guy friends"--at least the way I'd set the search parameters.

    But--and I never thought about this--a lot of my friends are just a function of things I do. Maybe that is why I don't think about it a lot. I don't need a church for what you posted, for example. I play basketball every weekend in the winter. We rent out a college gym early in the morning before the school's team practices. I am *never* going to be the guy who organizes something like that--and if I had to be, I probably would have no friends either (although maybe it is worth being the organizer if things are so tough?)--but I do have a group of about 15 friends who play in that game. And I guess I do other stuff with some of them aside from playing ball, even though basketball is a common tie. I've been playing basketball with 3 or 4 of these guys since I was in my late 20s, so I am not sure how I ever got started... So again, not the greatest advice, because I am not really sure what I would do if I was MM. But a group of us used to play in one of those organized leagues -- where you get the T-shirts and the refs and a game or two a week in different gyms around the city. We all knew each other, and every year we'd come up with a new face or two to replace an old face or two. Then most of the guys got married, moved out of NYC, etc., and that is why we don't play that way anymore--they can't go play basketball at a random gym at 7:30 p.m. or 10 p.m. or whenever, on a weeknight, because they have a wife and kids who will give them grief. But that is sort of how we ended up playing early on weekend mornings in a gym in a game we arrange on our own.

    But if there are any leagues like the one I described around (or whatever activity you are interested in if it isn't basketball... I'm just using basketball because it is something I will do), maybe it is worth just signing yourself up without knowing anyone. In the league we played in, we had our team already put together, but I believe they had a way for people without teams to get placed on a team... They had something like 25 to 40 different leagues in the one I was in -- and they would have you come down and play a couple of games that they watched prior to league play, and then they'd put you in a league that had you playing against similar levels of players, so it was competitive. They'd also have an open night, I think, where if you didn't already have a team, you could show up, play and they would place you on a team with players of similar caliber. I don't how common that sort of thing is, but maybe that is one way to go about it? For me, though, it would never have been about the "I want to make friends" aspect. It would have been that I wanted to play basketball. And then the friends just sort of happen if it is meant to.
     
  5. KYSportsWriter

    KYSportsWriter Well-Known Member

    hey, mcneely, back off pal. i was here first.
     
  6. EE94

    EE94 Guest

    MM might want to consider working on his personality.

    You can't just say - this is me, take me as I am - and then whine that you have no friends.

    If you think people don't succumb to your particular brand of charm, change brands.
     
  7. imjustagirl

    imjustagirl Active Member

    I'm going to defend MM here. I'm one of his friends in real life. Love the guy. His personality is not like anyone else I know, and I love that about him. I don't think he's hard to take, or difficult, or anything like that. He's just ... Meat.

    I do think there are people out there who would feed off him and offer back support. It's just a matter of finding that community where he is.

    Meat, knowing you, I'd look around at some of the subcultures. Look for the undercurrent of snark, maybe a zine person or whatever. Also look on google groups. There's a group here in your old stomping ground for movies and foodies and people just post "hey, let's meet at 7 p.m. at Casa Mexico" or something and then people go. I met two really cool people just by posting that They Might Be Giants was coming to town and they went with me.

    Also, look on craigslist on the 'strictly platonic' page. People are posting looking for people to hang out with. No pressure, just write someone and say 'let's grab dinner' or something. Maybe just coffee. Something.
     
  8. Tripp McNeely

    Tripp McNeely Member

    Hey ... you have Sasha ... what the heck do I have?
     
  9. JackReacher

    JackReacher Well-Known Member

    It won't sound like it, but what I'm about to say is not.......ah, fuck it.

    My God. Going to the internet to find someone to have lunch? Seriously? Has it gotten so bad that we've spent so much time in front of the TV or XBox or computer or whatever it may be that people can't strike up a conversation with a real live person anymore? Have we become that fucking disconnected?

    Maybe it's just me, but I don't get it. If you want to make friends, don't sit in front of the XBox for hours upon hours. Get out and meet people. The old fashioned way. Talk to people. Most of us on here are journalists; we talk to people for a living. It ain't that hard.

    I know some of you will completely disagree with that or call me an asshole for shitting on the way some people live. I'm OK with that.
     
  10. imjustagirl

    imjustagirl Active Member

    You're an asshole.

    Yes. I'm a journalist. I talk to people for a living. When I HAVE A REASON TO TALK TO THEM. If I'm sitting there eating lunch and some freak walks up and sits down and just starts talking to me? That's weird.
     
  11. pallister

    pallister Guest

    Darken being the operative word. :D
     
  12. imjustagirl

    imjustagirl Active Member

    Stop talking to me online, pallister. It makes us both losers.
     
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