Lately, I’ve been noticing that, since the pandemic started, it’s become nigh impossible to find people who want to put the time into making new friends. I’ve made a lot of friends since the pandemic started, but all of them are online, and all of them are generally social people as-is.
It feels like people have passed a nihilist tipping point, seeing the world end before them under the capitalist system. It seems like very few people see any reasoning to put time into new people, some people I know fully self-isolated over the course of the pandemic and now don’t engage with anyone more than they need to.
This issue seems worse in person, I just moved to a new city. Only been here a few months, but it’s looking like absolutely no one wants to make friends here. People’s jaded-ness is much more noticeable in person, everyone expects to be ghosted or mistreated, no one’s willing to be vulnerable around others.
Is anyone else noticing this? does anyone else have tips for getting around this? surely I’m not the only one who’s feelin’ a lil more lonely than usual.
This is still very relatable and your observations are still very apt 9 months later.
In the past few years, when I could muster the time and energy I have tried to make friends. I got pretty far one time with someone who shared a career aspiration but the poor bloke was a heavy, heavy alcoholic (among other things) which is hard for me because of my own personal life reasons. I ghosted him and, nearly a year later, I still feel bad and think about him and think about what I should say to him to try and undo things.
The hurt, desperation, and insecurity of many strangers is indeed very visible in their eyes and energy. I DoorDash so I interact with a half dozen or so people at a couple dozen different restaurants regularly. I sometimes try and gently test talking with people when I’m free and waiting for an order but either my bullshit, their bullshit or a combination fucks it up and we awkwardly ignore each other more or less. I wish I could be loud and frank and just acknowledge these ugly things so we could move past it but alas this is far from acceptable in the tense, plastic atmosphere of America circa 2022.