here's the thing: everyone complains about late capitalism and how alienated and isolated we all are. everyone acknowledges this, and reassures each other of this, alone.
you need to get out of yourself, and your head, and your small bubble of one, and you need to go see old friends, or former friends, or people in your social circle who are just meh, or your annoying roommates, or your co-workers, or your former co-workers, or your lame family members, or your lame and bigoted family members, or strangers at a bar, or whomever, and party. meeting people is praxis, strengthening relationships is praxis, making yourself seen and vulnerable to another is praxis. please, guys, go out.
this, here, now, is a facsimile, mediated through a thousand screens. go kiss, go get kissed, go reject a kiss, go be denied a kiss. go out.
Tangentially related but I just moved out of a slum apartment block in a really bad part of town to a decent ‘nice’ ‘luxury’ apartment complex in a wealthier area and i wasn’t prepared for how socially alienating it is being in the nicer place. I miss my old neighbors terribly, and didn’t realize how much I was actually interacting with them each day. Every time I passed by my next door neighbor outside smoking I would bum a cig and we would chat. And he never minded because he was an older man who loved to tell stories. Me and another neighbor always did our laundry at the same time so we would bring beers in the laundry room and bullshit around. Sometimes when I would use the grill another neighbor would come up and we’d talk about food or whatever. Even though I lived alone, I never really was alone.
Now I’m in a nice place where the forced socialization isn’t really there by design. The most interaction I’ve had with my next door neighbor is meeting them on the elevator, and it was just a friendly introduction and that was really it. No one wants to talk, everyone has their headphones in. It’s incredibly lonely.
Solution I have found: be thar fucking weirdo that just goes up to people and goes in for a full conversation like an Elder Scrolls player character. Shit just like, works. I chatted up a sweet old lady about this mutual neighborhoud cat we both pet and found out she was being illegally evicted in a way that i acrually dealt with before. She started by asking about apartments in the area and then explained her situation, I had been through the exact same scenario and it's all sorts of illegal to boot her out, it's being sold to another landlord and unless the buyer plans to say turn a flat back into a house and acrually occupy it, they cant remove tennants
100%. If you've ever heard people randomly just saying shit outloud to nobody/everybody on the bus, subway, or at a bar, it's not always because of a psychotic break/drunkness. Often times it's just somebody looking to start a conversation and they know eventually, somebody will respond to their loud monologue ramblings
And that person is me. I tricked myself into thinking i had bad social skills for a while but I am a fucking people at heart big time and after admitting it ive been described on more thsn one occasion as 'really fucking charming'. People are cool and fun for the most part, as far as figuring out who, if you smoke, other smokers but in general, old people are down hard to chit chat .
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Also, I speak English and French but specialize in shitty translations of languages i dont speak:
me: “hey, whered you get those llamas?”
kid: “[kid’s name]”
me: “my llamas [strawberry].”
kid: …
me: …
I have a LOT going on that talking to people well was as easy as deciding to talk to people. Like, all my best qualities are for speech checks, ive always been and knew pretty really on that im fucking hilarious, very quick witted and am a massive langugage need and have a huge vocabulary. So yeah, for me it was a matter of getting over myself and finding out it's probably my greatest asset and that is also why i advocate it, but yeah, different people have diferent root causes.
This makes sense because I've formed friendships with who were just talking to me out of nowhere. Even if I was initially annoyed/nervous by them talking
People who make a lot of money are very open to socializing at more luxurious events/places
Rock climbing gyms, golf, and tennis for example are some places where people are very open
I've noticed what you said and I don't really get why people who make more money are less open to socializing in random places
More so the nicer complex is designed so you aren’t forced to socialize. Everyone has their own washer dryer, so you don’t have to leave your apartment to use the laundry room. Everyone has a balcony, so if you want to raise plants you do it on that instead of in a community garden, etc.
Maybe it’s just the culture of the new community I’m in but every time I try to strike up a conversation, it just goes nowhere quick. People only leave their apartment to pick up food courier orders or go to work.