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To HN: Looking for people to talk to...
77 points by stevenboudreau on May 29, 2008 | hide | past | favorite | 47 comments
I'm often fascinated by the people in the HN community. I feel a connection with many of them.

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 ;)

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?

Well anyway,

my AIM screename is: stevenbe123

Link to my facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=32403303

Link to the letter I wrote: http://www.stevenbe.com/

My e-mail: stevenboudreau123 [at] gmail.com

*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 :)




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.


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.


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.


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.


Just because everyone else is drunk doesn't mean you have to be too.

Granted if you are sober, a really drunk person can be a pain. However, drunk people don't know you are sober, so you can banter away with them sober or not, but its difficult if you are shy I admit. Its 'just' a matter of putting yourself out there and doing it.

Other good places to meet people is at the gym - take circuits classes, join a sports club of some sort (tennis, biking, swimming, rock climbing ...).

I am pretty shy naturally, but I have met a ton of people at the swimming pool and on nights out (but I do drink a bit too much beer!).


I've had access to alcohol since I was really small, but I never saw much in it. When I got to US to go to college, everyone was crazy about alcohol...it was really weird. To me, it was like seeing adults go to chuck e cheese every day.


I hear ya. I don't drink either.


I would love it if there were a college specific channel for users. It would be easy to know who else is part of the community at one's college--and maybe meet with them.


While I appreciate the connection with people in a similar situation as myself, I think one of the major advantages of HN, and the hacker community as a whole, is that completely pervasive respect of one another. This community exists almost entirely outside of bias, and I think the first step towards reversing that is willingly dividing people based on their situation. I wouldn't want to risk the benefit of being able to communicate with folks in this forum as peers, I think it's really important to the culture.


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


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.


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.


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


Thanks for the compliment and advice.


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/


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


There's a #news.yc channel on freenode, but it's been just me and one other guy for the past few months.


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


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.


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.


What's #startups?


It's an IRC channel. You can connect using this:

http://www.mibbit.com/

#startups is the channel, irc.freenode.net is the network (it is on the list, just a ways down).


Or click: http://www.mibbit.com/server=irc.freenode.net&channel=%2... :)


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.


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


I live in Seattle.


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.


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.


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 =)


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.


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/


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?


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.


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.


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.


I transferred my Sophomore year of college and encountered exactly what you described. Freshmen year it seemed like all the students were wide-eyed and eager to meet new people. By Sophomore year all that had changed, much to the dismay of this new kid in town.

I've graduated since and -- I'm fortunate -- things worked out for the better. But if I had it to do over again I almost certainly wouldn't transfer.


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


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


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


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.


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!


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


My gtalk info is in my profile.


jnthnlane on AIM

or e-mail in my profile.

Jonathan Lane on Facebook (University of Lethbridge network)


rottled on aim, up for whatever :)

out of the ordinary submission, but upmodding.


jlbxk8 on aim


curi42 on AIM

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




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