On the flip side, I was into swing dancing for a few years and I found that was a great place to socialize. Of course, like the board games thing, it's not for everyone. That said, I did find it was a bit easier to just show up there and just socialize. Once you're a regular, you don't necessarily have to be constantly dancing or anything. (I did when I got started, though.) You can just hang out and have a good conversation with another regular, and often there's a bar where you can chill with a drink. It's definitely intimidating to go dancing as a newb, though, so I recommend going some place that offers a weekly class. That's a great way to meet other newbies and go to the dance together.
If you're a screen addict living in these cities, paying an entry fee could be reassuring because you know that you're supposed to be there. The same goes for having a non-skills based activity, because you can't screw it up.
Compare that to a free and/or skills-based gathering[1], where you end up paying with social capital (which you don't currently have), and staying home with the screen becomes all that more enticing.
1: I help run a monthly pinball tournament locally, and we've taken deliberate steps to favor socialization over competition, which has been wildly successful, but there are still those for whom the skills-based activity is too much. I feel the same about dancing.
There was a dream that was having a social life. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish, it was so fragile.
-- Marcus Aurelius
It's half the reason people aren't social. They try so hard to "schedule a meetup" and the meetup becomes work so people stop hanging out.
You're just supposed to show up at someone's house and do shit.
You don't make friends by agenda. You have cool experiences , build trust and develop a bond.
That, or college just walking around dorms to find stuff going on.
The pitch here is for getting people over the first hurdle, which is being at the same place at the same time as other people, and to some extent, the second hurdle, which is striking up a conversation (as anyone who would attend something like this is, by their presence, signalling an interest in at least casual interaction with the other participants). This adds people to your "acquaintances" list.
The next step is forming setting specific friendships. Your gym buddies, your work friends, etc. Then you need to actually invite some of those friends to other settings, until your friendship isn't entirely predicated on the particular setting. Then you need to spend enough time with that person to maintain the friendship.
For most people, the big hurdles are the "being present", "striking up a conversation", and "converting setting specific friendships into general friendships" steps. Everything else is pretty straightforward.
Casually dropping by someone's place unscheduled is typically reserved for pretty close friends. That's not what this service is targeting.
I've got a few friends who I don't even have the contact details for, If I want to talk to them I just go out to whatever the current event or party is and they will probably be there.
I don't "book/plan" things with friends, but it makes a massive difference to consistently reach out and nurture friendships.
The way you're describing meeting people seems fun, but half the time folks are busy with life or other stuff to be spontaneous.
I work from home, live far away from family, and sometimes the only social interaction I get each day is getting marketing text messages from HelloFresh. I then can take the time to go speak to my local barista for ~30 seconds and buy a drink.
My dad is in his early 70s and still regularly gets together with people from all eras of his life, going all the way back to high school. Old neighbors, former co-workers and employees, and various others he met along the way. Unlike a lot of retirees, he has a rich social life and a packed calendar with dozens of close friends. This was all due to him regularly reaching out and scheduling a meal or activity, or just time to chat, over the course of his life. Friendships don’t just spontaneously last decades, they take effort, especially as people go through different stages of life.
It's the corporatization of life that I'm protesting and we all participate. A total buzzkill
I think they’ll find a lot of the same challenges:
1. Finding space to have events
2. Ensuring that people who said “I’m going” actually end up going.
3. Bootstrapping groups such that when I stumble upon The Offline Club, I can signup for something relevant to me, happening a short time from now.
4. Keeping organizers willing to continue hosting events
5. Keeping away organizers who see it as lead gen for their sales job
Edit: On second look, this is different than Meetup in that it’s not centered around a specific topic … except for being “offline” together, which obviously could create other opportunities for hobbies, etc.
I understand needing that during that period, but it seems like if they want to get back to the real purpose of the site, they need to do away with that option.
> 1. Finding space to have events
Talk to a coffee shop owner. Promise them your group will (reliably) order drinks or snacks. In exchange, every month we get an area "cordoned off" just for us.
> 2. Ensuring that people who said “I’m going” actually end up going.
Aside from sending a general newsletter, I personally ping and catch up with individuals. This is a lot of work. It pays off when they evangelize your event on your behalf.
> 3. Bootstrapping groups such that when I stumble upon The Offline Club, I can signup for something relevant to me, happening a short time from now.
See #2
> 4. Keeping organizers willing to continue hosting events
That's tougher. However, if the event is specialized/niche/unique enough, the organizers will be conferred high social status by the community.
> 5. Keeping away organizers who see it as lead gen for their sales job
Mmm, could we define sales job? On the business front, the meetups are used to promote our (indie) conferences. The meetup groups don't mind when I ask them to buy a ticket. They can just say no and we're not pushy about it.
Part of the promise of WeWork buying Meetup, for instance, was “oh look! We have access to tons of real estate to house Meetups in.” A large amount of organizer support was providing ideas for places to have events.
I worked at Meetup for a couple of years. There were often Meetup groups that started up in the guise of $GENERIC get together, that ended up actually being literal lead gen for a pyramid scheme. This wasn’t likely a tech meetup thing, but perhaps a knitting circle, or whatever.
Ah yes yes. That's horrifying.
The issue is vulture capitalism and misalignment of incentives for platform vs host vs participants. I've been a part of groups that solved these and grew to 8000-member communities. It's simply that meetup wasn't actually interested to solve the challenges because they needed to extract wealth and pass extraction down the chain (no incentivise to protect underlying communities as a commons)
_rpxpx•4h ago