Passionately Promoting A More Perfect World

The main problem with this is that, while it would be a plus, it wouldn’t give me the thing I actually need.

Going to things with lots of people is very exciting. It’s a strong short-term happiness boost. But it doesn’t really have any effects outside of that. The hours of my life outside of that experience aren’t meaningfully influenced by having been there.

Relaxed, cosy, one-on-one interactions with people are fulfilling/rejuvenating/restoring. They boost my longer-term quality of life. They raise baseline happiness, even if they’re less exciting on a moment-to-moment basis.

For example, other than freshman year of college (which is what caused me to realise how large my social appetite was), the time I was most socially fulfilled was when I was semi-homeless in London, because I kept being bounced back and forth between friendly British people’s houses. Meanwhile, in the Bay, people wilt if you ask about visiting their home for something other than a party.

So, when I’ve gone to things that were events, I’ve been most interested in finding specific people that I could connect with, so we could hang out later in a setting that would actually be valuable to me.

But that keeps not happening. People I meet at parties or meetups or other ~event~ stuff then later 1) don’t speak to me, 2) can’t meet up again, 3) only want to meet iff it’s at another event, or 4) flake on all intended hangouts.

So that’s been failing pretty badly. This is why I specifically broke my quiz’s question about hanging out into two different questions - whether one likes events and whether one likes one-on-one hangouts, with the latter getting twice as much weight as the former.

I’m confused by the fact that the vast majority of people said they like one-on-one hangouts (and only a little over half like events) when, empirically, the only way I can get people to interact with me is by going to events. Survey responses continue to be uncorrelated with my real life experiences; more news at nine.

(I think some of my most frustrating experiences are having people say to me that they feel like they’re too boring to occupy my time one-on-one, so they only want to meet me if it’s part of an event. And I’m just like “NO STOP WHAT ARE YOU DOING THIS IS THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF HOW THAT WORKS”.)

((Or when I think I’m meeting someone alone and they’re like “Oh, I heard you like extroverting, so I’m actually at an event with tons of people! Isn’t that great! :D :D :D” 😞😞😞))

I have no trouble getting invited to events constantly, because Facebook. So I don’t think I’m going to run out of the type of socialisation a club might get me, or what Meetup.com might provide. However, getting individuals to spend time with me one-on-one is extremely close to “actually impossible”.

Like, I’ve been trying continuously on Tumblr, Facebook, dating sites, friendly-hangout services, 4chan’s /soc/ board, kik groups, etc for over a year. It has consumed half my brain while remaining largely insoluble. The last hangout I arranged required cold-calling (well, cold-PMing) a Tumblr because they happened to mention in passing that they were in the Bay Area, but this is definitely too rare to base my socialisation on.

In conclusion: Everyone claims their preferences line up with mine, yet my preferences remain unsatisfiable even when I put large amounts of work in. Something is wrong here and it’s killing me.