Find people like yourself within traveling distance of yourself. It’s not easy but it’s easier than if you didn’t have online and had to grow up fending for yourself socially.
But for me online was my salvation. It allowed me to be social where I had difficulty otherwise.
I got dragged to parties as a teenager. party after party after party after party after party after party. “Ken, you have to get out of your shell”. “You have to socialize”. “Don’t be so awkward”. etc
I know they meant well. But I’d just find a cat to pet, a piano to play, a computer to fix, or else the loneliest person in the room would find me and start talking my ear off and I’d be polite and looking for an exit.
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I know that’s not an answer. I used to wonder, “Why can’t adults just walk up to one another and say “Wanna be friends?” and get a “Yeah” or a “nah” like Kindergarten?”
Well, I wasn’t the only one who wondered that because that’s exactly how they constructed social networks.
So, social networks are a substitution. I don’t know if anybody found the answer.
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They didn’t work for me either. Public libraries – I spent a lot of time in them.
They had a community center with pool tables and arcade games (it was the era) and it was from kindergarten to high school and I did good in that environment as a kid/young teenager.
The senior citizens ended up taking it over though and they eventually took out the arcade games and stuff.
High school was a K-12 for me – I found I liked a variety of age ranges around, seemed more human.
Never fully figured out adulthood. I’ve concluded that adults are a myth. They really are just overgrown kids who forgot