I am not joking when I say that I thinked for hours about how do people find each other in 2025.
Currently, the world is in very weird state. People online are either using social video platforms or they are reading news or lurking in online forums in it’s different shapes and forms.
Most chat platforms that I know had shut down and most alt social platforms are almost dead. Even Hackernews had started to see a lower amount of comments compared to previous years.
I want a serious answer, how should I find people online to talk to about anything really other than politics?
Seriously though the only places I’ve seen any kind of thriving community are invite-only private torrent tracker sites.
I have an IRL friend who always goes like "oh, sorry, its invite-only torrent (￣y▽,￣)╭ "
That’s lame, you’re only supposed to be inviting people you really know IRL anyway… Weak excuse from your friend, if you’re willing to seed.
Whatever you do, steer clear of meetup.com - all of their social activities on there now are scientologists thinly veiling their seminars as get-togethers.
How does that even work lol
“What do you guys wanna do? Actually I know, let’s check out this building” “no you should really check out this building” “get in the fucking building”
“Guys I wanna leave”
“Okay but $50 and we will call your phone for eternity”
Here’s an example one: https://www.meetup.com/101-dating-relationships/events/307612236/
That’s not true everywhere, my city has a pretty good meetup scene for various hobbies. However the amount of people who sell their useless courses as “meetup, but I will ask for a 20€ fee from everyone” or shady “we will talk about investing/crypto…” groups has gone up.
I’ve gone to local meetups that were cool, but it seems like most of the events on there now cost money, and are hosted by some life coach or guru.
Videogames.
I want a serious answer, how should I find people online to talk to about anything really other than politics?
You don’t.
You don’t find people online (or IRL) waiting for strangers to start a discussion on some random topic you feel like talking about. Because people, unlike trolls, are busy with their live.
What you can find is people willing to discuss with someone they find interesting or, with any luck, intriguing on whatever topic you both are interested in.
So, what are you interested in? Have you any hobbies, interests, passions? Find small communities around those topics you’re interested in, and start posting. Do the work to show you’re there and that, maybe, you’re worth discussing with.
Meeting people is much possible in the real world.
I don’t have an answer about online methods… I went through the phase of how to meet people as well, and eventually decided to join / try out some group activities. I did some rookie dragon boating, table tennis, stand up paddle, and eventually met my forever spouse as she taught me scuba diving. PS: other than the scuba diving, those were all free activities for beginners. Good luck
Play on small game servers at the same time every day. Eventually youll start seeing the regulars and then its just a matter or trying to break into the friend group.
Outside of that you could try discord but its like wading through a sea of shit. If youre over 25 it will be very hard to find a group that doesnt eventually end up filled with kids or everyone has gotten on with their lives.
I posted on lemmy if anyone wanted to play games with me. Someone answered and we talk everyday since then, on most days we spend hours on video calls. Just try posting on whatever you use, you might find people you like.
play an MMO game. plenty of ways to break into friend groups there.
You really want online? I guess playing games, discord, vrchat.
My suggestion, do stuff IRL
Check out https://slowly.app/ - its a penpall service that simulates snail mail which makes for great connections! You can get a random pall or choose one explicitly and the community there is really wholesome.
In their terms of service, they share data with ad companies and marketers. But I can’t copy paste it here because JavaScript
Edit: grammar
I just quickly read through them, and it just sounded like the usual “we run as here”. Could you specify it a bit? Or take a screenshot of the relevant part?
You might be looking for this perhaps?
I can’t copy and paste the text from my phone, but under Privacy Policy > 4. When and with whom do we share your personal information?, it says the following in the first paragraph:
Vendors, Consultants, and Other Third-Party Service Providers. We may share your data with third-party vendors, service providers, contractors, or agents (‘third parties’) who perform services for us or on our behalf and require access to such information to do that work.
(Not verbatim…) It goes on to say the contracts are designed to safeguard personal information and can’t use any personal information without their permission. Third parties will not share personal information except with them and third parties commit to data protection they hold on their behalf and to retain it for the period they have been instructed.
Third parties information may be shared with:
- Ad Networks
- Data Analytics Services
- Payment Processors
- Performance Monitoring Tools
- Sales & Marketing Tools
- Testing Tools
- User Account Registration & Authentication Services
- Website Hosting Service Providers
- Cloud Computing Services
- Communication & Collaboration Tools
- Retargeting Platforms
- Social Networks
Additionally:
- During business transfers i.e. mergers, sale of assets, financing, acquisitions, negotiations
- When using Google maps platform APIs
- Other users: this seems to be mostly if you connect/interact via a social media platform like Facebook. It may be more nuanced than I understand.
i’m assuming it’s this part:
Unfortunate :(
Although, this still reads like “standard” stuff like using google analytics or a Facebook plugin. To me, this does not seem to be any worse than most mainstream sites.
Of course, modern internet sucks balls, don’t get me wrong.
Look for sections about sharing data. In an attempt to copy paste it seems I banned JS from that site which made it fail to load the body content entirely.
thinked
You don’ thunk hard
Thank. Doot doot.
I hear Lemmy is pretty good as a sort of forum, maybe you’ve heard of it?
But more seriously, I’ve found that social media platforms (even the fediverse ones) tend to limit connections to surface-level. I personally wouldn’t rely on them to find people to talk to. But if you’re looking for communities who share similar interests, it’s very good at that. If you’re looking for individuals, the next best thing is sliding into someone’s DMs to have a more focused one-on-one conversation. I’d recommend against doing that without some other interaction first (it looks scammy).
In case you want to chat, my DMs are open.
A couple years ago I had my discord nametag as my Mario Kart Wii nickname, zheg#someNumbers, random people added me and then talked with them while playing. Those were good ol’ days.
What things are you interested in? Video games, ttrpgs, anime, cinema, woodworking, sports, fast cars, sneakers, programming, yoga, wines, bdsm, books, drawing, dogs, veganism, religion, music, hiking?
Whatever the answer is, find a community for it or adjacent to it. On Lemmy, Reddit, Discord, Matrix, or some obscure forum.
And then, the last step, is engage with that community.
