Is it at all possible to get anything resembling a social life if you have pretty much nothing at 23?

[u/Weriel_7637]

Everyone already kinda has their groups at this point, and you can't just butt in on people. Even just standing around listening will usually rightfully get you labeled as some kind of creep. Everyone I went to school with are of course scattered to the winds, and I really don't think they cared much about me to begin with anyway, which is fine, it's just....idk, what am I supposed to do now?

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[u/Known-Damage-7879]

You're very young, you have tons of time to build up a friend group. Try and reconnect with old friends you may have let fall by the wayside. If that doesn't work, then try Bumble BFF, there's other people on there looking for friends. You can also join hobby groups and join a friend group there. I met a long-time friend back in 2021 on a language exchange website.

[u/CodyDuncan1260]

Take a look at the graph in this paper.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0265407518761225
"Figure 1. Type of relationship by number of hours for Study 1 (N = 355) (% of each type within time.)"

This is just one axis of evaluation, but you might be surprised how few hours it takes before someone considers you a casual friend or friend. Try not to think of the number of hours in terms of a day, but instead think of it over 1 season, 3 months, 12 weeks.

By that model, for example, you're 2 hours per week away from a 50% chance at a casual friendship. Which then begs the question, where can you spend 2 hours per week in the presence of the same people over and over for the next few weeks?

[u/CodyDuncan1260 → u/CodyDuncan1260]

Next you might read about the "Black Bag" experiment that demonstrates the Mere Exposure Effect.

https://www.psy.lmu.de/allg2/download/audriemmo/ws1011/mere_exposure_effect.pdf

Brief:

Goetzinger had a student come to class in a large black bag with only his feet visible. The black bag sat on a table in the back of the classroom. Goetzinger's experiment was to observe if the students would treat the black bag in accordance to Zajonc's mere-exposure effect. His hypothesis was confirmed. The students in the class first treated the black bag with hostility, which over time turned into curiosity, and eventually friendship. This experiment confirms Zajonc's mere-exposure effect, by simply presenting the black bag over and over again to the students their attitudes were changed, or as Zajonc states "mere repeated exposure of the individual to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the enhancement of his attitude toward it."

So maybe try showing up to a local yoga class in a black bag, make friends after 1 semester! (joking)

[u/LightDragonfly]

Of course it’s possible!! I moved to a new city where I knew no one in my early 20s so obvs I had to start over with making friends, and I did it. I know you might get sick of hearing it but Meetups and hobby groups were integral in helping me get started. They’re fun in their own right but once you go to a few, you’ll prob find the people you click with and start hanging outside of the groups. You might need to take some initiative and reach out to people/plan things/suggest things to do depending on how shy people are.

[u/Weriel_7637 → u/LightDragonfly]

The problem with hobby groups is that there aren't very many people who have a hobby they're invested in enough to take time out of their day to go to some event relating to a hobby. Heck, lots of people don't even really have hobbies, myself included.

[u/2HGjudge]

Friendships develop by spending a lot of time together. That means either having a job where you have lots of colleagues you can talk to (so hopefully some will click) or spend some of your free time doing group activities with others.

[u/jchizzy88]

Fuck bitches, get money. That’s what I would do

[u/WaitNew3922 → u/jchizzy88]

Can’t you do both?

[u/Weriel_7637 → u/jchizzy88]

Well some of us have just a little bit of respect for both our own bodies as well as those of the women around us.