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[MrRoboto75]

Oh no, or yes. At least in my experience. Reality has a big chunk of subjetivity on this matters.

What it seems is that if you keep failing at making friends is either you have really bad luck, try on very few people or you are doing something wrong, or a combination of this things.

For the first and second points, well just keep trying. You have to understand not everyone is looking for a conversation all the time. Other people are even more introvert than you and shy away from any aproach. Maybe is a bad time or whatever. Just keep trying.

For the third point, as we already told you there are resources in books to help out with this. Maybe you are doing something wrong without realizing. What could it be? Humala migth know, it is hard to tell over a phone screen, but what you must know, and I have been trying to convey perhaps in the wrong ways due language barriers is that while you could be DOING something wrong that DOES NOT mean you HAVE something wrong with you.

At any rate please, I tell you again, you can consider me your friend.

Its an objective fact that something is wrong with me, I have a diagnosis for it, I've been institutionalized over it (and I'll probably be back soon enough), its destroyed most of my chances at a proper career among other essential parts of life.  I'm a disabled person and I utterly hate what that is and how it affects me and how others see me.

Again, you are repeating yourself, you're telling me the only reason flapping my arms doesn't result in flight is because I didn't try flapping my arms, and didn't believe hard enough in how flapping = flight.  I'm tired of arm flapping, I'm never going to fly.

That's literally what I did today.  I tried to talk to someone about manga at a bloody bookstore.  It didn't work.

I have done that before myself, but standing in an aisle of a bookstore talking to a random person about books isn't the ideal social situation unless stars align and you have perfectly aligned taste or something. General manga is way to broad a topic and involves too many genres for that to go well. There are so many series that you can say "series X is so cool" and maybe it is cool but the listener is going to be skeptical if they don't already know it because of the sheer glut of series out there and the fact that for any terrible series, at least some people will claim it's really cool, so why should they take Mr Rando's word for that?

Hell, it wouldn't go that well even if they were into Marvel and you were into DC Comics. Basically you have to be enthusing over the same series for a conversation like that to work.

EDIT: just talking about manga is far to broad as an opening in a manga shop. For example say you were down the street, talk to a random person and discover you both have a love of sci-fi novels. At that point you could probably have a conversation about it. However, say you were standing in the aisle at the bookstore for sci-fi novels and discover that the other person browsing has a love of sci-fi novels, you can't really go "wow I love sci-fi novels and I see you do too" because the correct response to that is "no fucking shit, we're both looking at the sci-fi novel shelf". So it's far less organic. In that scenario the opening needs to change to match the social situation. Something like "hey, Philip K Dick is really cool" if they pick up one of his novels or something would be more appropriate. Because it's not an interesting coincidence that you both like sci-fi novels if you're both standing there looking at the fucking novels. But having the same favorite author or something is more interesting.

But at a certain point nothing at all is acceptable.  No matter what even pretending there's another person in the room is inherently the wrong thing to do.  No matter what I do or what situation I put myself in its just another failure.  Nothing is spontaneous anymore.

[LordBaal]

Dude, to put it bluntly, even rapists and the like, which are people that have things wronger than you are bound to make friends of some sort.

Thw fucking unabomber had a clique in prison!

What Im trying to tell you is that you are not as hopeless as you think you are.

We could practice here if you like.

Besides DF, what else do you like?

[MrRoboto75]

I've tried D&D but I've ended up outside of group dynamics either due to playstyle or how I do/don't roleplay, or both.  The attempts I've made at DMing ended up awkward or worse and never went beyond the first session.  The open D&D (adventurer's league) occurs during when I'm at the game store for other reasons (Heroclix), and I haven't seen them really post pandemic anyway.  I disagree with how adventurer's league does adventure design, anyways.

I've tried MTG there but the game's current design is god awful, and the local meta so to speak is to high a level to have any real fun with without just looking up an expensive deck online and copying it.  Once the pandemic hit I just switched to the virtual version and just play whatever cards it gives me for free.

I used to go to the local community center for a board game night but my work schedule got in the way of that.  Most often it was very frustrating, as in spite of presumably large amounts of time spent playing board games amongst them, they had an incredibly poor grasp on learning new ones, and so most of the night would be wasted on figuring out basic rules.  It ends up with a ton of games in my possession but no one to play with, and most of the games I enjoy are too complex for just anyone to enjoy, much less try to teach them how.  Like I was obsessed with Dominion but as the only person around who even understands what deck building even is, anyone I could play with may not even understand what makes the game interesting.

[scriver]

One of my favourite actors and celibrities, Sven Wollter, has passed away from corona.

[LordBaal]

I understand dude. You feel isolated and that is something I can relate to. No one I know really shares some of my hobbies, not that would make a change since I have no money or time to pour into a hobby.

Have you tried Magic over internet. There are several ways to play, up to completely free non official apps for phones and computers

[MrRoboto75]

I understand dude. You feel isolated and that is something I can relate to. No one I know really shares some of my hobbies, not that would make a change since I have no money or time to pour into a hobby.

Have you tried Magic over internet. There are several ways to play, up to completely free non official apps for phones and computers

Magic Arena, the most recent... incarnation? of online Magic.  Unfortunately either due to curbing "toxicity" or programmer laziness, Arena has basically no chat function whatsoever.  Either way nobody in any of the online games I play talks, much less remember you when the game's over.

The banter was one of the better parts of playing in meatspace, but without a couple hundred bucks you wouldn't ever win.

[LordBaal]

I see. But there are others that arent the official ones that have active communities.

Besides that what do you like to do? Or work into?

[Bumber]

Nobody mentioned Alex Trebek? Died 2 days ago.

Edit: Looks like he got mentioned in the mildly upset thread.

[bloop_bleep]

Nobody mentioned Alex Trebek? Died 2 days ago.

Edit: Looks like he got mentioned in the mildly upset thread.

Oof.

[MrRoboto75]

I see. But there are others that arent the official ones that have active communities.

Besides that what do you like to do? Or work into?

There are others, but I'm imagining it means getting into older or more esoteric formats.  Older formats are generally faster but more broken, and it helps to be a player for a longer time and basically grandfather into them.  Then there's commander, which I find wayyy too social in a bad way, and mostly about big dumb combos.  Then there's cube but that's a draft format which is practically a different game.  I just want to play standard (really poorly at that).  I'm not sure it replicates the local game store scene either.

There's not much else I do that could really involve other people.  A lot of stuff I've tried it seems I don't have the time or space for, or I end up dropping them because I just lack any sort of talent for it.

[JoshuaFH]

You might not like this suggestion of mine Roboto: Go read a book. Specifically "The Four Loves" by C.S. Lewis. The book describes all the major affections one can feel and loosely categorizes them into four groups, with detailed analysis and a rough hierarchy of lesser loves and greater loves. Lewis is a Christianity-oriented writer, and therefore considers loving God to be the highest and greatest love. Now, this forum is filled with high-minded atheists that consider religion to be a laughable hoax, but stick with me here, go read it and maybe you'll understand the fundamental problem that I see in your defeatist reasoning when it comes to interacting with other people.

Now, I could just tell you, but I think you'll absorb the message better if you read the book and get everything that Lewis has to say, as my paraphrasing it can't do it justice. I really love this book, and I think you'll like it too.

[LordBaal]

You know what, I'm gonna read it too. Sounds like it can help me, and if not it sounds interesting at least.

[ChairmanPoo]

Jesus wept, I loathe CS Lewis

[Frumple]

Eh, he's a better writer than most christian apologists, for what it's worth. That's just generally not the highest bar to hurdle, heh.

[ChairmanPoo]

I went to a catholic university. No biggie for the most part, but bioethics were a bit heavy-handed. And for some reason the folks at bioethics had a massive boner for CS Lewis. I had to read his "philosophical" books. I remember all that stuff. I think the worst IMO was "A grief observed" which made me bang my head against something.


I didn't like Narnia either, as a kid. I ended up reading Prince Caspian for some school thing (my school was nonreligious btw) and I found it incredibly stupid too. Later I learned that the same guy wrote both and I was utterly unsurprised.