This feels like advice for the most basic level of empathy (support your friends) with the cherry on top of AI slop as the opener. Americans sure are something else.
For a long time, I’ve been this person for other people, but don’t feel like I have anybody to do this for me. That’s okay — I don’t feel bitter about that or anything. And I don’t wanna overstate what a good friend I am or whatever, I just do this a decent amount. But some part of me does wish I had someone celebrating my wins.
This:
“No one comes to mind? Maybe you haven’t really trusted anyone with your wins yet.”
really, really hit me for some reason. I’m pretty averse to praise/congratulations — even if I feel it’s deserved! — so I don’t really share my wins with people. How can I expect to have people hype me up if I don’t let them in a little? It’s obvious when I write it all out but I kinda can’t believe how long I’ve been operating this way.
> For a long time, I’ve been this person for other people, but don’t feel like I have anybody to do this for me.
For the longest time I was this and unfortunately I got bitter over time. But then a couple of years ago I got back into the mindset again. A few bad years later I realized that the more happy you are for your friends, the more happy you are. Do it for yourself and nobody else.
I’m so glad that line helped. It was a last minute addition, and I was thinking about how so many of my friends just don’t share the awesome stuff they do with the world. Share more!!
> Even if you root for the “wrong” friends, it’s still the best way to live. Life is better not feeling jealous. You can sleep so much easier at night by genuinely being happy for your friends, even if they’re a bit jealous of you.
Someone I'm "friends" with, recently confessed to me that they very much enjoy watching me fail. I was genuinely surprised because I love watching people win, but I dug into it a bit and apparently it's very common, people really do love to see other people have setbacks, but the research I read seemed to indicate it was more prevalent in friendships, people seem fine with other people getting a head if they don't know them personally. Apparently it's also considerably more common than not for friends to want their friends to fail, or at least take pleasure in their failures. This was all news to me till about a week or so ago, and I'm old. That research actually lead me to this, that I learned is apparently also news to me[1] - "The researchers found that boredom's effects on sadism were mediated by people's desire for excitement and novelty-seeking - essentially, sadistic behavior served as a way to escape the aversive state of boredom." - I sense somehow these two things are somewhat linked.
I'm going through a really really difficult time right now, 3 major areas of my life have broken down simultaneously over the past five months. I was ranting to this guy I've known for years about it (who is very successful but was once jr to me at work) - I would have called him a "good friend" - he was drunk and giggled out something along the lines of "makes me feel strong" - I reacted as you would expect "uh.. really?". We got into a bit, and talked it out (he basically explained it was normal, hence I then went to research if that is true or not), I can see where it sits in his personality now, and I don't think he and I will be friends anymore.
I refuse to believe this is normal and I have happily cut people out of my life for this.
The most painful moment was when I had a close friend almost enjoy the fact my wife had a miscarriage. It was completely insensitive and made me realise that I have no interest in being friends with someone who is willing to compete on something so ridiculous.
I feel like I took a wrong turn somewhere such that I'm learning all this in my midlife. I genuinely believed the only place for "ruthless competition" was in sports and business, and in theory you know what you're signing up for. The past couple of years have been very eye opening to me, to learn people take such pleasure in such miserable things. (I also didn't know about this till recently: https://www.quora.com/What-are-fair-weather-friends)
Yes. I, too, learned this the painful way. I had many friends, or so I thought. Then I got cut out of a volleyball friend group because I was too “intense” (aka talked about things that weren’t the weather) for them. Okay. That hurt a lot.
Lots of thinking later, and I can now tell the difference between acquaintances and friends. There’s a simple test: acquaintances will be there when you want them to; friends will be there when you don’t want them to, but need them to anyway. An acquaintance would never do that.
In my first few years on the job, I would fill out peer evaluations honestly. We have peer evaluations where you rate people out of 5 on various performance elements like "innovative" and "leader" or whatever. Then I survived a couple of rounds of awful layoffs where really good people lost their livelihoods.
Since then, I put 5 out of 5 on everyone for everything always, and say something nice in all the boxes.
I do the same. Doing HR’s job is not my job. And yet, some how I do.
If I rated any satisfaction metric below 80% my manager’s manager would have him talk to me; there would be flogging until morale improves.
It seems all a game of Emperor’s New Clothes.
This is probably one of the most essential bits of advice you can get. Not only is it beneficial to your friends and career, but it's also beneficial for your mental health.
It's not easy, at least initially. Jealousy is an emotion that's easy to come by and hard to dismiss. It's also an emotion that makes you unhappy, so learning to feel pride and happiness instead of jealousy made my life immeasurably better. I don't care if it's reciprocal; I do it because it's right for others and it's right for me.
I root for my friends, but it's hard since the ones who mattered are all abroad. I haven’t seen most school friends in a decade, and college friends since 2020—except one, who’s now in Australia. A relationship ended badly last year, and I haven’t had the energy to start another. I’ve made a few surface-level connections through running/cycling clubs, with one solid bond.
Feel bummed to keep rooting for other people, but no one is there that way for me, besides my parents.
Just had a friend leave their company. They had formed a really strong network of people within that company who were in constant contact. This helped them succeed in a lot of ways.
Sounds good? It was, except...most of that bonding was based on lowkey negativity by a set of people who felt powerless, complaining about how others were terrible. Some in this network went down a rabbithole of resentment and are still there. The reality is that yes, there was lots of stuff to be grumpy about.
Rooting for your friends is great. But people sometimes bond over wishing harm for their foes. Shared trauma does that. I personally try to avoid that mindset.
> Rooting for your friends is great. But people sometimes bond over wishing harm for their foes. Shared trauma does that.
Yeah this is way too common. And it’s not just trauma which does it. I think it’s its own psychological trap. I think the trap is a self reinforcing cycle of a few thoughts:
1. Other people are bad at things. Look at all the things others do which have flaws! You must be better than all those dolts.
2. You tell yourself you could do something better - but if you try, maybe it’ll have flaws too. Then you’ll be just as bad as anyone else. Uh oh.
3. So you don’t do anything creative, or take responsibility for anything. But you need a reason to tell yourself as to why you’re not doing anything.
4. It must be because other, idiot people stop you. Change is too hard. Doing anything would be “fighting against the system” or something. See point 1.
And the trap is closed. The only way to escape it is to do stuff that you’re bad at. And if you do that, you’ll find all the faults in your own work and feel terrible about yourself.
I think the bottom level of almost any company is packed with people who have this mindset. It’s a disaster on every level - personal and professional. And it’s quite resilient and contagious. People like that are always a little afraid that somebody will call them on it. So they need others to agree with them that staying small is the smart move.
Avoiding them is definitely a smart move. I’ve taken to sometimes needling people like that, just to rattle the cage and see what happens. “You’re so right about those flaws! We’d love your help fixing some of them?” / “I think your idea is wonderful! So what you’re saying is if we got Bob on side, you think we could do it? Let me help - I’ll set up a meeting. With the two of us, I’m sure he’ll come around!”
I generally hate being too positive. But I make an exception for this kind of subtle supportive bullying. This awful mindset can’t survive in the sunlight. It’s fun to see what happens!
I've met a few people that I like to describe as "walking Reddit". Chat with them and they'll always have a story or gossip that's engaging and somewhat infuriating or rage-inducing. One was a colleague who would telling me all the questionable and unkind things the managers in other teams were doing.
I eventually realised that these interactions weren't joyful... they were easy conversations, but they were also demoralising and lowered my energy. These days I try to "manage" my conversations with people like this by steering the topics and (gently) setting boundaries on what I don't want to talk about.
I’m the hype man and motivator for all my close friends…and URL friends.
The world (Internet) is VERY GOOD at telling you how much you suck and most people are susceptible to that. Having someone who believes in you helps you build confidence and drive.
I think my friends are dope af so why wouldn’t I big them up?
I’ve found my way into a small group of incredibly supportive dads. And one of the ways in which we exercise rooting for our friends is to basically commandeer “jealousy” into a positive thing. “Ah man I’m so jealous that your kids sleep so well!”
“Jealousy” in a non-toxic manner feels kind of right for the task of describing wins that we all know are largely just up to random chance.
Being jealous of someone’s hard work doesn’t really feel the same.
This sounds beautiful. Thank you for sharing. I think Jealousy is a useful and important emotional state in society, and to wish it away and suppress it only makes it show up in violent ways. Like all emotions, if we allow and appreciate (and share!), it flows through us and does not fester.
You are essentially your network. Laugh where you want to laugh. I think this is great advice. Anybody who is bitter of your success should not be part of your network.
Lets face it once and for all: there are no true friendships anywhere on this planet and there have never been. That's why people read studies and talk about friendships like it was a research topic of an alien species. There is only people, who give more than they get, hoping to one day get a little bit back. Don't chase something that had never been there and won't be there. Thank me later.
Ok, so maybe instead of friendship let’s call it platonic love.
I get your point, but we are herd animals. Today distance is bigger than ever so we are more often lonely. Some believe in gods, religions but I rather believe in people and make it a hill I’ll die on.
I’m not trying to be controversial but this behavior seems to be very hard for a lot of men. I’ve noticed it a lot in my life that guys are far more willing to “circle the wagons” over petty slights, and alienate people over it. Then their ego doesn’t let them back down, and they just get more bitter from the (obvious) outcome.
I’m guilty of it myself of course, but it seems like there is some kind of naturally adversarial behavior baked into me. It literally just makes things worse is the funny thing, and I already know this. But sometimes I cant stop it. Life would be easier and better if we were all collectively friendly hypemen but alas.
I have a close friend who's a huge motivator for my work. He deeply believes that I'm destined to fail and I'm determined to prove him wrong.
Cheerleaders are great if you need reassurance and affirmation. If you want to innovate and push boundaries, I'd argue that competition is a more significant driver.
> If you want to innovate and push boundaries, I'd argue that competition is a more significant driver.
Competition is great, but there's no reason it needs to be negatively tinged (as in your example). Two people can compete and push themselves hard to come out ahead, but also cheer for each other to do well. After all, if your rival sucks they don't really push you to get better, so cheering for them is in a way cheering for yourself too.
This recent episode of the Secular Buddhism podcast may be worth a listen. It gets into the enduring value and joy we can find in the good fortune of others.
Blogger says it’s better to be positive than negative. Could that be the case? Is it really so? Yes. And further. Thinking good thoughts is better than thinking bad thoughts about yourself or others. It’s also better to give meaningful feedback on projects. Than not meaningful feedback.
“This is a message that a lot of people need to hear,” says blogger.
Oddly I have found that nearly all of my best friends come from different walks of life than me, and do different things for work. Only one of my very good friends does the same things that I do. Others, like my stonemason friend, have very different lives, and we met by chance. I’ve also found lately that I enjoy socializing with people over a shared activity, like a class. I just got back (today) from taking a drafting (ie, architectural drawing) class. The people in it were very different from me: a mix of tradespeople and artists. Nevertheless, it was clear that all of us shared a love of learning a skill and doing it well, and so it really was a blast. I learned a lot from them.
You might try just doing something different. It was an interesting experience spending the day with people who wanted to talk to me because I was the odd one out—none of them personally knew any programmers or computer scientists and they all had a million questions!
This feels like advice for the most basic level of empathy (support your friends) with the cherry on top of AI slop as the opener. Americans sure are something else.
For a long time, I’ve been this person for other people, but don’t feel like I have anybody to do this for me. That’s okay — I don’t feel bitter about that or anything. And I don’t wanna overstate what a good friend I am or whatever, I just do this a decent amount. But some part of me does wish I had someone celebrating my wins.
This:
“No one comes to mind? Maybe you haven’t really trusted anyone with your wins yet.”
really, really hit me for some reason. I’m pretty averse to praise/congratulations — even if I feel it’s deserved! — so I don’t really share my wins with people. How can I expect to have people hype me up if I don’t let them in a little? It’s obvious when I write it all out but I kinda can’t believe how long I’ve been operating this way.
Anyway, great post!
> For a long time, I’ve been this person for other people, but don’t feel like I have anybody to do this for me.
For the longest time I was this and unfortunately I got bitter over time. But then a couple of years ago I got back into the mindset again. A few bad years later I realized that the more happy you are for your friends, the more happy you are. Do it for yourself and nobody else.
Why not both?
I’m so glad that line helped. It was a last minute addition, and I was thinking about how so many of my friends just don’t share the awesome stuff they do with the world. Share more!!
Ditto.
What gets me is when I have a few times found the people I am hyping for are actually putting me down, or selling me out to management.
Fair, but the post briefly alluded to this:
> Even if you root for the “wrong” friends, it’s still the best way to live. Life is better not feeling jealous. You can sleep so much easier at night by genuinely being happy for your friends, even if they’re a bit jealous of you.
Someone I'm "friends" with, recently confessed to me that they very much enjoy watching me fail. I was genuinely surprised because I love watching people win, but I dug into it a bit and apparently it's very common, people really do love to see other people have setbacks, but the research I read seemed to indicate it was more prevalent in friendships, people seem fine with other people getting a head if they don't know them personally. Apparently it's also considerably more common than not for friends to want their friends to fail, or at least take pleasure in their failures. This was all news to me till about a week or so ago, and I'm old. That research actually lead me to this, that I learned is apparently also news to me[1] - "The researchers found that boredom's effects on sadism were mediated by people's desire for excitement and novelty-seeking - essentially, sadistic behavior served as a way to escape the aversive state of boredom." - I sense somehow these two things are somewhat linked.
Some reading:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/43119265_Envy_and_S...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-evaluation_maintenance_th...
https://www.scribd.com/document/796080571/Document-2
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44068463
I’m curious about how this came out and what the fallout was. If you feel like sharing.
I'm going through a really really difficult time right now, 3 major areas of my life have broken down simultaneously over the past five months. I was ranting to this guy I've known for years about it (who is very successful but was once jr to me at work) - I would have called him a "good friend" - he was drunk and giggled out something along the lines of "makes me feel strong" - I reacted as you would expect "uh.. really?". We got into a bit, and talked it out (he basically explained it was normal, hence I then went to research if that is true or not), I can see where it sits in his personality now, and I don't think he and I will be friends anymore.
I refuse to believe this is normal and I have happily cut people out of my life for this.
The most painful moment was when I had a close friend almost enjoy the fact my wife had a miscarriage. It was completely insensitive and made me realise that I have no interest in being friends with someone who is willing to compete on something so ridiculous.
It can both be normal (in that it’s common) and painful at the same time.
And you can and should still absolutely cut them out of your life. Let them have each other.
There’s a reason misery loves company.
I feel like I took a wrong turn somewhere such that I'm learning all this in my midlife. I genuinely believed the only place for "ruthless competition" was in sports and business, and in theory you know what you're signing up for. The past couple of years have been very eye opening to me, to learn people take such pleasure in such miserable things. (I also didn't know about this till recently: https://www.quora.com/What-are-fair-weather-friends)
Yes. I, too, learned this the painful way. I had many friends, or so I thought. Then I got cut out of a volleyball friend group because I was too “intense” (aka talked about things that weren’t the weather) for them. Okay. That hurt a lot.
Lots of thinking later, and I can now tell the difference between acquaintances and friends. There’s a simple test: acquaintances will be there when you want them to; friends will be there when you don’t want them to, but need them to anyway. An acquaintance would never do that.
> he basically explained it was normal
I think this is just him trying to justify it.
In my first few years on the job, I would fill out peer evaluations honestly. We have peer evaluations where you rate people out of 5 on various performance elements like "innovative" and "leader" or whatever. Then I survived a couple of rounds of awful layoffs where really good people lost their livelihoods.
Since then, I put 5 out of 5 on everyone for everything always, and say something nice in all the boxes.
I do the same. Doing HR’s job is not my job. And yet, some how I do. If I rated any satisfaction metric below 80% my manager’s manager would have him talk to me; there would be flogging until morale improves. It seems all a game of Emperor’s New Clothes.
This is probably one of the most essential bits of advice you can get. Not only is it beneficial to your friends and career, but it's also beneficial for your mental health.
It's not easy, at least initially. Jealousy is an emotion that's easy to come by and hard to dismiss. It's also an emotion that makes you unhappy, so learning to feel pride and happiness instead of jealousy made my life immeasurably better. I don't care if it's reciprocal; I do it because it's right for others and it's right for me.
I root for my friends, but it's hard since the ones who mattered are all abroad. I haven’t seen most school friends in a decade, and college friends since 2020—except one, who’s now in Australia. A relationship ended badly last year, and I haven’t had the energy to start another. I’ve made a few surface-level connections through running/cycling clubs, with one solid bond. Feel bummed to keep rooting for other people, but no one is there that way for me, besides my parents.
Having a cat reall helps though.
Have you made any friends online? A ton of my friends are people I interact with almost exclusively on discord
> You just shipped a side‑project that lands on the front page of Hacker News. Who’s the first person you want to tell?
No one, I'd be embarrassed.
Just had a friend leave their company. They had formed a really strong network of people within that company who were in constant contact. This helped them succeed in a lot of ways.
Sounds good? It was, except...most of that bonding was based on lowkey negativity by a set of people who felt powerless, complaining about how others were terrible. Some in this network went down a rabbithole of resentment and are still there. The reality is that yes, there was lots of stuff to be grumpy about.
Rooting for your friends is great. But people sometimes bond over wishing harm for their foes. Shared trauma does that. I personally try to avoid that mindset.
> Rooting for your friends is great. But people sometimes bond over wishing harm for their foes. Shared trauma does that.
Yeah this is way too common. And it’s not just trauma which does it. I think it’s its own psychological trap. I think the trap is a self reinforcing cycle of a few thoughts:
1. Other people are bad at things. Look at all the things others do which have flaws! You must be better than all those dolts.
2. You tell yourself you could do something better - but if you try, maybe it’ll have flaws too. Then you’ll be just as bad as anyone else. Uh oh.
3. So you don’t do anything creative, or take responsibility for anything. But you need a reason to tell yourself as to why you’re not doing anything.
4. It must be because other, idiot people stop you. Change is too hard. Doing anything would be “fighting against the system” or something. See point 1.
And the trap is closed. The only way to escape it is to do stuff that you’re bad at. And if you do that, you’ll find all the faults in your own work and feel terrible about yourself.
I think the bottom level of almost any company is packed with people who have this mindset. It’s a disaster on every level - personal and professional. And it’s quite resilient and contagious. People like that are always a little afraid that somebody will call them on it. So they need others to agree with them that staying small is the smart move.
Avoiding them is definitely a smart move. I’ve taken to sometimes needling people like that, just to rattle the cage and see what happens. “You’re so right about those flaws! We’d love your help fixing some of them?” / “I think your idea is wonderful! So what you’re saying is if we got Bob on side, you think we could do it? Let me help - I’ll set up a meeting. With the two of us, I’m sure he’ll come around!”
I generally hate being too positive. But I make an exception for this kind of subtle supportive bullying. This awful mindset can’t survive in the sunlight. It’s fun to see what happens!
I've met a few people that I like to describe as "walking Reddit". Chat with them and they'll always have a story or gossip that's engaging and somewhat infuriating or rage-inducing. One was a colleague who would telling me all the questionable and unkind things the managers in other teams were doing.
I eventually realised that these interactions weren't joyful... they were easy conversations, but they were also demoralising and lowered my energy. These days I try to "manage" my conversations with people like this by steering the topics and (gently) setting boundaries on what I don't want to talk about.
I’m the hype man and motivator for all my close friends…and URL friends.
The world (Internet) is VERY GOOD at telling you how much you suck and most people are susceptible to that. Having someone who believes in you helps you build confidence and drive.
I think my friends are dope af so why wouldn’t I big them up?
I’ve found my way into a small group of incredibly supportive dads. And one of the ways in which we exercise rooting for our friends is to basically commandeer “jealousy” into a positive thing. “Ah man I’m so jealous that your kids sleep so well!”
“Jealousy” in a non-toxic manner feels kind of right for the task of describing wins that we all know are largely just up to random chance.
Being jealous of someone’s hard work doesn’t really feel the same.
This sounds beautiful. Thank you for sharing. I think Jealousy is a useful and important emotional state in society, and to wish it away and suppress it only makes it show up in violent ways. Like all emotions, if we allow and appreciate (and share!), it flows through us and does not fester.
legit thought this was about giving root priv to ur mates
You are essentially your network. Laugh where you want to laugh. I think this is great advice. Anybody who is bitter of your success should not be part of your network.
Lets face it once and for all: there are no true friendships anywhere on this planet and there have never been. That's why people read studies and talk about friendships like it was a research topic of an alien species. There is only people, who give more than they get, hoping to one day get a little bit back. Don't chase something that had never been there and won't be there. Thank me later.
I’m really sorry that someone betrayed/hurt you so much and I hope you are able to forgive them.
I’m sorry that has been your experience. The culture you’re brought up in is hardly representative for 8 billion people’s experience.
Ok, so maybe instead of friendship let’s call it platonic love.
I get your point, but we are herd animals. Today distance is bigger than ever so we are more often lonely. Some believe in gods, religions but I rather believe in people and make it a hill I’ll die on.
I largely agree, this is a great way to support your friends.
I would add to bias towards praise, but still be honest and judicious. People know when they hear empty words, and it's important to be trustworthy.
Yeah i only put the one line in there that talks about that: > people who are honest to your face and praise you behind your back.
I could have emphasized that more.
The way I try to do it is: if you think something nice, say it
I’m not trying to be controversial but this behavior seems to be very hard for a lot of men. I’ve noticed it a lot in my life that guys are far more willing to “circle the wagons” over petty slights, and alienate people over it. Then their ego doesn’t let them back down, and they just get more bitter from the (obvious) outcome.
I’m guilty of it myself of course, but it seems like there is some kind of naturally adversarial behavior baked into me. It literally just makes things worse is the funny thing, and I already know this. But sometimes I cant stop it. Life would be easier and better if we were all collectively friendly hypemen but alas.
I have a close friend who's a huge motivator for my work. He deeply believes that I'm destined to fail and I'm determined to prove him wrong.
Cheerleaders are great if you need reassurance and affirmation. If you want to innovate and push boundaries, I'd argue that competition is a more significant driver.
> If you want to innovate and push boundaries, I'd argue that competition is a more significant driver.
Competition is great, but there's no reason it needs to be negatively tinged (as in your example). Two people can compete and push themselves hard to come out ahead, but also cheer for each other to do well. After all, if your rival sucks they don't really push you to get better, so cheering for them is in a way cheering for yourself too.
There's a huge difference between believing someone will fail and hoping that they will.
I need to learn from you. Also: good for you!
I kinda had this maybe assembled in my head in an incomplete bits and pieces way but this really brought together the concept I love it.
Whoever wrote this post is really rocking with the clear human thinking.
Thank you
I believe in this. Just don't get onto to the corporate hype train.
I forgot for a moment what website I was on and expected the link to be about the board game Root and getting your friends to play it with you.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/237182/root
I thought it was about giving SSH and sudo to your friends.
I thought it was a peevish Kiwi joke about how people of other nations do not use words as they do.
This recent episode of the Secular Buddhism podcast may be worth a listen. It gets into the enduring value and joy we can find in the good fortune of others.
https://secularbuddhism.com/blog/204-beyond-happiness/
Having a partner also that roots for you makes wonders for the self esteem
I like the sentiment and appreciate when I see an OP in the comments taking feedback
"root" means something quite different as a slang term here in Australia. I head to read the title several times.
For anyone else wondering: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/root#Usage_notes
I was thinking it was about ways to securely give friends root access to your home server
I’m generally happy for those around me who are achieving things and doing better for themselves.
I love people like that!!
Friends and strangers who try and aren’t quitters.
Hey, I see these greyscale images (the one at the top of the article) quite often these days. Can you please give me the prompt?
You can get the prompt in Japan, but it costs you. There's a whole studio behind it. These people also need to eat, you see.
Get with the times. It's just virtue signaling at this point :)
Because vice signalling is so much better.
Root for all around you.
Blogger says it’s better to be positive than negative. Could that be the case? Is it really so? Yes. And further. Thinking good thoughts is better than thinking bad thoughts about yourself or others. It’s also better to give meaningful feedback on projects. Than not meaningful feedback.
“This is a message that a lot of people need to hear,” says blogger.
Here’s some memes from 2012 to now.
And here I was cynically thinking I was going to learn how to "get root" on my friends.
Still applies I guess.
As an Australian, "Root for your friends" has a hilariously alternate meaning.
Me too, reinforced by author's name :)
inception is a form of code execution in their brain.
I offered to give root and/or ssh to a couple of friends, and they all turned it down. I don't really have any friends anyway.
Perhaps we can parlay this title into a video game. Or simply an alternate title for Core War.
Oddly I have found that nearly all of my best friends come from different walks of life than me, and do different things for work. Only one of my very good friends does the same things that I do. Others, like my stonemason friend, have very different lives, and we met by chance. I’ve also found lately that I enjoy socializing with people over a shared activity, like a class. I just got back (today) from taking a drafting (ie, architectural drawing) class. The people in it were very different from me: a mix of tradespeople and artists. Nevertheless, it was clear that all of us shared a love of learning a skill and doing it well, and so it really was a blast. I learned a lot from them.
You might try just doing something different. It was an interesting experience spending the day with people who wanted to talk to me because I was the odd one out—none of them personally knew any programmers or computer scientists and they all had a million questions!
sudo make me a sandwich
(xkcd.com/149)