Real Relationships in a Digital World?

[Bickendan]

Thread hijack/stupid question: where can I go to talk with random people? I'd probably get kicked out of a bar for not ordering anything.

Tell the bartender you're the DD and just order a soda. Sometimes they'll even put it on the house because you're the DD...

[Brandon]

Thread hijack/stupid question: where can I go to talk with random people? I'd probably get kicked out of a bar for not ordering anything.

Lot's of places.  Go take dance classes (as an example).  There's a lot of single women there.  That's also opens you up to go to places where people socially dance.  I go to one twice a month where there's no alcohol (people bring in pop and snacks as it is at a park district facility), and switching partners every song is encouraged.  You get to know quite a few new people that way.

Join a group on Meetup.org that does something you enjoy.  There's bound to be single ladies in them, even the geeky groups have them.

Take a class in something you enjoy at your local park district.

[NE2]

Join a group on Meetup.org that does something you enjoy.

Yeah, that's the one thing I have done (a group plays frisbee at the local park). But that's more of a fun active thing than a social thing.

There's bound to be single ladies in them, even the geeky groups have them.

While romance (or a one-night stand) would be nice, it's not what I'm looking for at this time.

[Pete from Boston]

I forgot about meetup. The only meetup I have done are for New York sports fans in Boston (at bars, and no, it wasn't an ambush).  They moved to facebook and I didn't, so that was that.

Is it free to create meetups?

[NE2]

Is it free to create meetups?

No, it's like $15 a month. Sucks but it's a useful service.

[Pete from Boston]

I've never owned a dog, but walking others' dogs has always been a magnet for stranger attention.  There are worse reasons to take care of an animal.

I used to meet a lot of people at the farmers' market when I lived right by one.  Busy coffee places, too.

Some regions are also just better for this.  Boston and New York are of course full of sociable people, but go a short ways into the suburbs of either and the engagement really drops.  I have noticed this as I've inched outward over the years.  My beautiful neighborhood has very few meaningful ways to mingle with the neighbors.

[mgk920]

How many of us would have crossed path if not for online forums?

I'm trying, but I honestly can't think of anyone with whom I've interacted on MTR, on Roadgeek, on here or on one of the Facebook roads-related groups, or met at a meet, that I would have otherwise met.

There are only a couple of central and NE Wisconsin roadgeeks who I knew before on-line forvms - and before forvms I only ever saw them at WisDOT PIMs and public hearings.

Also, I randomly bumped into a female in an IRC chatroom (remember those?) in the mid-late 1990s, meeting up in person several months later (she was in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York at the time).  We did get to know each other quite well before we met in person and had circumstances on both sides been better, I do consider it a real possibility that it could have become 'permanent'.

Sadly, she died of breast cancer a couple of days after the 2012 Joliet meet.   

Mike