

To HN: Looking for people to talk to... - stevenboudreau

I'm often fascinated by the people in the HN community. I feel a connection with many of them.<p>I recently wrote a letter to my local television station about my experiences in college (I'm graduating in June). In it I talk about my lack of friendships, among other things. I have realized that I really enjoy talking to people about almost anything. Learning about others brings a lot of enjoyment to my life. It's also therapeutic ;)<p>Unfortunately, I haven't met many people in college to do that with. So anyway, I am wondering if any of you would be interested in talking to me? Maybe you've had similar experiences?<p>Well anyway,<p>my AIM screename is: stevenbe123<p>Link to my facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=32403303<p>Link to the letter I wrote: http://www.stevenbe.com/<p>My e-mail: stevenboudreau123 [at] gmail.com<p>*If you want, you can e-mail me your sn, and/or other contact info. Or just leave it as a comment? Well, thanks for reading this :)
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erickhill
There is a strangely sad yet intensely kind message inside this post. . . so
unlike anything I've ever seen in a forum like this. Not sure why it compelled
me to write this comment, but it did.

I'm very happy to see the community rise around you here. HN has got to be one
of the best communities out there.

Be sure to reach out to your fellow human beings in person, if you can.
Massive colleges/universities can seem cold and distant for many. If feasible,
I would recommend transferring to a good smaller college, esp. a Liberal Arts
college. You can make friends for life at the smaller institutions. That being
said, I have no idea what your interests are so take my advice with a massive
boulder of salt.

Take care, Steven.

~~~
stevenboudreau
Ironically, I go to a small Liberal Arts college. I think my experiences can
happen anywhere. It's tough being a kid these days, making friends, and more
importantly, keeping friends.

I appreciate your comments, as well as everyone else's, very much! Thank you.

~~~
elai
Yeah, especially if you don't drink alcohol. I've heard that around 24/25 is
when people get over the novelty of it and start not caring about it as much.
Maybe you can move to a country where nobody drinks. I can't think of one that
isn't islamic although :( It's sad that people need alcohol to be 'drunk'
(stupid, goofy and social), it's such a crutch.

What I do is talk to random people on the street/mall/coffee shop with
complete honesty that look interesting to you. Maybe even a few girls ;) Some
will get nowhere, some will putter, others you'll click. People from more
social cultures (latin,etc) are a lot less uptight. There's millions of people
out there in your city today, a few of them have GOT to be interesting :P Or
create user groups or meetup groups or whatever your interested in and
advertise! And organize, and initiate. And keep on going and going an going.
When your the one who starts it, your the one with the ultimate choice.

And to be honest, programming doesn't have to be an anti-social job. There's a
lot of ranting and raving with your fellow co-workers ;) It's like saying
film-making is anti-social because you have to sit infront of a terminal
editing video, thinking up scripts and creating sets.

~~~
stevenboudreau
I don't think it is or has to be either. But when I was "learning to become a
programmer," I just found myself becoming increasingly disconnected from the
world. It was as if I was constantly thinking about programming, etc. and I
didn't want to be bothered.

------
arasakik
There's also the Hacker News Chatterous chatroom, which has 119 members,
including a number of founders from the Y Combinator Winter '08 cycle.

You can hook your Jabber/GTalk, Email, Phone contacts into it as well.

One-click invite link: <http://www.chatterous.com/landing/hnyc/hcker/>

by phone: text CHTR JOIN hnyc hcker to 41411

by email: @join hcker in body to hnyc@chatterous.com

by jabber/google talk: add hnyc@chatterous.com and send @join hcker

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kyro
You should come into the IRC room. There are a lot of cool people. #startups
on irc.freenode.net.

My AIM is hybridxaos. Also, Kyro Beshay in Orange County, UCI, and UCSD on
Facebook / kyro on #startups. I also do webcam shows every Thursday night, but
that'll cost you.

~~~
DTrejo
The #startups channel is booming. Lots of great discussions and once the good
articles on HN have been read its a great place to go talk.

------
silvia77
This is the first comment I ever written on YC News, your story was strangely
compelling. You are a very talented writer, you can really capture the emotion
though your words..

I go to college too and there have been some times where I felt the same way..
The best thing to do is to get involved with something you are interested in
and meet people through there. Use events or activities as a medium to get
closer to interesting people, its one thing that has really worked for me.

People are naturally social creatures, its probably hard but force yourself to
go out and meet people. The best way to start a conversation is just to say
hi. Yea you will probably get rejected by 90% of the people you meet but keep
at it and the 10% will more than make up for all of those failures.

Also if you want to talk feel free to email me at chris.r.mccann [at]
gmail.com I'd be happy to talk

~~~
stevenboudreau
Thanks for the compliment and advice.

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markbao
AIM - marktbao, email in profile. Mark Bao on Facebook, Boston, MA network.
MarkBao on the #startups chatroom.

Join HN on Ning: <http://newsyc.ning.com/>

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almost
It really sounds like you need to loosen up a bit. A drink or two is probably
not going to kill you, you don't need to get drunk but it's good social
lubrication as well as a sociable thing to do with others.

I hope this works out for you, I'm sure you'll make contact with some
interesting people through here. I can't help but think that what you really
need is real life contact though.

Good luck

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mark-t
There's a #news.yc channel on freenode, but it's been just me and one other
guy for the past few months.

~~~
markbao
You should try #startups, about 30 members on average.

~~~
mark-t
I realize this is a somewhat unpopular thing to say here, but I don't care
about startups. I have little interest in being in a channel where that's the
only thing people talk about. I'm here for the general tech news.

~~~
vikas5678
The conversations on #startups are not always about startups at all, its just
a bunch of people interested in startups hanging around, talking about all
kinds of random stuff of interest to hackers in general.

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whacked_new
I had to upmod this, although it is quite an unusual submission. I too have
enjoyed the kind of discussion here over the past year or so.

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hollerith
It becomes much more likely that this kind of human interaction will have a
big payoff for you if it includes a face-to-face meeting early in the
interaction or friendship. Consequently, it would help people like me
considering whether to take you up on your offer if you would say where you
live.

Particularly, I live in the northern part of San Francisco Bay area and almost
never travel out of the Bay area, so I would be interested if you lived
somewhere in the Bay area (north or south) or were planning a trip out here
soon.

ith@sonic.net

~~~
stevenboudreau
I live in Seattle.

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frederiksen
I think you're too hard on people. Not every conversation has to be some deep
and meaningful meeting of minds. There's lots to be said for a night of crude
jokes and chasing women. I'd argue that it's a lot more human experience than
deep conversation. It really sounds like you need to relax.

Meeting people on the internet is no substitute for honest-to-goodness human
interaction. Also, it's a good idea to have lots of friends that you have
nothing in common with. The perspective you get is invaluable.

~~~
stevenboudreau
Hi frederiksen. I think I do probably need to relax a bit. I'm trying to take
life less serious :)

I am looking forward to getting out in the real world and engaging in human
interaction once I graduate. But I think the Internet is a useful way to meet
others as well, and possibly make friendships.

I also agree that having friends of multiple backgrounds, personalities, and
interests provides great value. But to me it seems like doing this is much
more difficult. People seem less willing to let people into their circles or
lives if you have different interests or perspectives. Listening seems to be a
highly undervalued characteristic these days. These are just my observations,
though.

Thanks for the comment.

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tigerthink
This is sort of off topic, but...

I'm a teenager and I'm trying to figure out what to do for a living.
Programming seems good, but I've read two independent sources that say it's
lonely. Does it have to be this way, or is it a question of what kind of
person you are? Is working in industry X always lonely while industry Y is
much more social? Etc.

You can reply to this comment, or aim johnmaxwelliv / email
john.maxwelliv@gmail. I would love to make some internet friends =)

~~~
underscore
I think it is what you make of it (or, as you say, it is largely dependent on
the kind of person you are, and your actions).

I don't doubt that there are lonely programmers. I think that you'd probably
find lonely people for any X that people choose as a major pursuit in their
life, though. I think that many (certainly most of the folks I know)
programmers are programmers because of the fascination/cool factor/feeling of
relative omnipotence/etc that comes along with creating and controlling
processes that do cool things (whether for you or for millions of your
friends). Within that, there's still a lot of diversity.

Also, you don't need to have a homogenous social circle if you don't want to.

------
girk
Thanks for sharing. I just graduated last August, and experienced these same
persistent feelings all throughout my college career. I'm often the type of
person who can be surrounded by a huge group of people and still feel
incredibly alone.

Here is an excerpt from an essay I wrote after returning from a year abroad in
China:

"The concept of 'foreignerism' is not unfamiliar to me. Though I have spent
the majority of my life as a citizen and resident of the United States of
America, I am, in many ways, suspended between two worlds. Long before I moved
to China, I felt like a stranger in a strange land and I often yearned to find
a place that I could truly feel at home. Then shortly after I had adjusted to
life in Beijing, I found myself completely at ease. Looking back now, I have
to wonder if I did actually find somewhere that I "fit in" or if rather, I
finally became comfortable with the fact that I might never quite fit in
anywhere."

I can send you (or anybody else) the rest of the essay if you would like. Just
email me at m[at]gee.ky. However, all of my experiences in China leading up to
this realization are chronicled on: <http://www.middlefusion.com/>

------
dhotson
I was just thinking the other day how great it would be to have a Hacker News
meetup. I'd certainly be interested in meeting other like-minded people.

That said.. are there any people from Melbourne (Australia) that hang out
here?

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maximilian
Finding friends is such an odd thing. In college I had a million freshman
year, but it seemed that every year the number dwindled, but those remaining
were that much better. Now I'm in grad school and I only have like 3 friends,
and I'm totally unsure as to how I would make more? I don't understand how
people moving to new places make any at all.

I'm also going to a school now that is more of a commuter school, so nobody
lives close by. I honestly think that if people lived close to school, then
everybody would have more friends.

~~~
obvio171
This is true. When you're a freshman you don't know anyone yet, but _no one
else_ knows anybody else either. So people are much more compelled to make
friends. After a couple years your circle of friends kind of crystallizes, and
those whom you don't know aren't that eager to stretch out of their little
circles either.

I went through the "moving to a new place" experience a few months ago when I
moved to Germany for 3 months. It was really odd, as it was the first time in
my life when I really had to objectively think about how to make new friends.

And the best advice I can give about that is: DON'T go live on your own. At
least not for the first few months. Go live with other people, particularly
with people who value having a good vibe in the house, and not just living
together to share expenses but never looking each other in the face (if you're
going to Germany, look for "kein zweck WG" ;). You'll end up becoming friends
with them, and meeting their friends that come over from time to time.

~~~
maximilian
I actually lived in germany for a year too. Weird... I made all my friends
through international student clubs, so I had almost no trouble there. Its
coming back to grad school when I find myself with very few friends and
noticeably fewer outlets through which to meet friends.

Our circle wasn't that we didn't let new people in, it was that people started
graduating or whatever, and the circle got smaller without anyone to fill in
the gaps. I guess that is because we didn't know anyone new, so we didn't have
any "applicants" to join our circle of friends. I'm still convinced that all
my problems here is because nobody walks here where I live. As soon as I can
walk to other houses and cafes and bars, everything will get better.

It'd be an interesting sociological experiment to track the correlation
between # of friends to distance walked per day.

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Prrometheus
This is why I want to make software that helps people meet each other in real
life, other than for dating purposes.

------
MaysonL
Check out <http://www.the1secondfilm.com/> : There are people there who you
will probably click well with.

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xenoterracide
xenoterracide@gmail.com: email, msn, gtalk; xenterracide: yahoo,aim,freenode;

feel free to give me a shout. I may or may not be responsive over the next
week. I've been in the middle of moving and it's finals week. After wednesday
I'll hopefully be in the free and clear. Then it's pound out my startup time.

------
brianlash
Dropped you a line via Gmail -- feel free to get back to me. Brian Lash
(University of Pittsburgh) on Facebook.

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avinashv
asvora on AIM, avinashvora@gmail.com on MSN, avinashsvora@yahoo.com for Yahoo
IM, <http://twitter.com/avinashv>, <http://avinashv.net>, or, just email me.
Good luck!

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kashif
Good to hear from you. :) kashif(dot)razzaqui(at)gmail

------
lanej0
jnthnlane on AIM

or e-mail in my profile.

Jonathan Lane on Facebook (University of Lethbridge network)

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nickb
My gtalk info is in my profile.

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yan
rottled on aim, up for whatever :)

out of the ordinary submission, but upmodding.

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jasonlbaptiste
jlbxk8 on aim

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xlnt
curi42 on AIM

edit: wow, this comment is already the top google hit for 'curi42'

