🗣️
Rec'd on 🌆 finding a sense of community
TALK TO STRANGERS
TLDR: there are friends everywhere for those with eyes to see I think one consequence of urbanism is a sense of alienation or otherness from one’s neighbors, and especially from strangers. the average person you pass on the street is assumed to have little in common with you with which to establish a mutual connection. maybe this is a consequence of me living in the south, but i’ve been finding that most people are happy to start a light conversation in public. ive been making a practice of being in public spaces with a posture of openness to interaction. no earbuds in, making light convo with people like service workers that goes beyond the transaction, striking up convos with people who are sharing a space i’m in, etc. most recently I stopped on a park bench at a skatepark during a bike ride and struck up a convo with a skater who beefed a trick and was describing in great detail how it happened and his history with skating. shout out cole I hope your collar bone isn’t broken. these aren’t the same as a deep, intentional community that one has with close friends/peers (that comes from seeking out, plugging in, and showing up consistently), but seeing everyone around you as a possibility for human connection until proven otherwise makes one feel less lonely. there’s an intentionality in having a posture of openness to connection that can become a self fulfilling prophecy. it’s easy nowadays to feel like we live in social archipelagos, with our own clusters of friends and loved ones with little connecting each group to each other and little connection to others everywhere around us. but your average person is just as interesting and worth getting to know as anyone else. be curious, be cordial, and start integrating casual momentary connections into your life to tide you over between the deeper relationships in your life you might not have access to all the time
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@royallmonarch
May 4, 2025
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@shrillhaus
Been switching between a flip phone and smart phone over the past year and it’s really eye opening to see how consuming technology has become in closing us off to our surroundings and allowing us to create our own little isolated bubble, even if on a packed train. this is honestly amazing, thank you!
May 8, 2025
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@royallmonarch
@SHRILLHAUS fr I kinda wish we lived in a pre digital world
May 8, 2025
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@random-gay-nerd
@SHRILLHAUS I spend a lot of time on packed trains and busses and honestly I’m not sure people were all that social during transit in pre-smartphone days. Phones replaced newspapers and magazines, and podcasts have replaced a Walkman, but people have mostly kept to themselves while commuting. This isn’t to say I don’t ever talk to people on the bus! I will say you can still have a nice moment with someone even within the social boundaries of being on a bus. I made friends with some cool fellow transmascs on the bus a couple months ago when one of them struck up a conversation with me, and just earlier today I was standing next to another rider who was singing along under their breath to the music they were listening to, and I enjoyed joining in under my breath for an impromptu karaoke duet of Man In the Mirror. I want people to be more connected to each other, but I think it’s more to do with individualism and NIMBY politics than to do with smart phones. You and I wouldn’t be connecting right now without phones! :) I remember hearing anti-internet talk as a teenager in my tiny, isolated hometown in the middle of South Dakota, and being confused by that perspective because having a connection to the world outside my town was the reason I was still alive. Phones have their place, and every now and then we should look up from them. 💛
May 8, 2025
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@royallmonarch
@SHRILLHAUS all fair points. there’s definitely a lot of good that can come from being connected online that’s worth highlighting. I do think that proliferation of tech has led to a cultural prioritization of leisure time and entertainment over existing socially though. people are spending more time at home on screens (certainly than before TV) that would have otherwise been spent in more communal/social settings. definitely people have always enjoyed privacy and solitude, and it’s not like people haven't always inhabited public spaces individually, but I think with smartphones especially it’s more available and easier than ever for people to disappear into their own microcosm of media. in the moment people are just enjoying their own music, shows, social feeds, etc. but I think people don’t realize how much the atomization and individualization of leisure and entertainment time has taken away from how leisure and entertainment were experienced more communally historically. its easier to feel isolated in a world where the go to spot after work for everyone is their living room and not some social third space or public area.
May 9, 2025
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@shrillhaus
@SHRILLHAUS oh no I am definitely not anti-Internet or anti-smart phone, both are amazing tools for creating connection. I was more stating that it wasn’t removed my smartphone that I realised how much time people spend pre-occupied with their phone, whether it be on the train or even out a dinner.
May 9, 2025
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@random-gay-nerd
The other night, my friends and I went to the spring festival in my neighborhood, but it suddenly started raining so we sheltered under this artist’s tent and moved her wares so they wouldn’t get rained on. Now we’re also friends with the artist, another customer, and the other customer’s pet cockatiel he had in a cat backpack lol. I love talking to strangers (within reason), in fact later that night I was at a bar doing karaoke and two-stepped with a stranger. The first time I ever went to that bar for karaoke, I hung out in the back playing pool until karaoke started, and this guy told me he’d never done karaoke before. Later when I was singing Unwritten by Natasha Beddingfield, he came up and grabbed an extra mic because no one can resist that song lol. Strangers can become friends so quickly!
May 4, 2025
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@royallmonarch
@WREN-SEB this is praxis
May 4, 2025
1

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Talking to strangers
It’s nice to remember that the world is brimming with kind people. I by no means have lengthy conversations with them, but even a joke or an observation to the store attendant makes me feel like I am the sort of person who is casual about things. It’s fun and reminds me to get outside my (sometimes claustrophobic) bubble.
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@julian-shapiro-barnum
Aug 21, 2024
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i live for it
over the past two years i’ve gotten quite good at speaking to new people, and in the past six months i’ve made it one of my favorite traits. i tell people i love their hair when i’m behind them at line at the shops. i befriended an older lady on the train home from work, we laughed and exchanged stories on the crowded rush hour car. i built a relationship with the lady at sandwich place near my work, to the point where she calls out my nickname (veggie melt) when i walk in, and gave me a free sandwich the day i lost my wallet. i draw her pictures every time, and the other day she offered me freelance illustration work as a result. there is so much beauty and possibility around us, so many stories we can unlock by talking to strangers. when im old and withered, i will mark my years by how many little threads i’ve woven into my life, how many gold links i’ve started by an innocuous interaction with somebody i simply hadn’t known yet.
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@rafs
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