"I wish there was an app to help me connect to my niece" is a really fucking weird vibe. Not every problem you have can or should be solved with a piece of software.
I feel like Facebook used correctly is more like social broadcasting, updating your entire social circle on your goings-on, alongside messenger and WhatsApp for one-to-one constant contact. Of course, Facebook used wrong is a similar weird vibe when you pretend you have friends because you constantly "like" the statuses of people you used to be close with.
This is a similar feeling I got while reading the story.
> Well I thought that we'd spend a lot of time doing things together but that's not how it turned out. She's always in her room, and I'm always at work or doing my own thing.
Maybe she just doesn't enjoy his company anymore? People's relationships fall apart, and not much can be done. Maybe they are at different stages in their lives, and there's not much of a connection and need in each other anymore.
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There's another comment up the chain, I thought of replying to it but deemed too off-topic. Why would Gen-Xers and Millennials would want to connect with each other in a social setting? I get the mentorship/work related networking/etc part, but other than that, why would those 2 groups talk to each other if they are not relatives?
Even being just a few years apart with your friends can be weird.
Sometimes it's better not to connect to each other.
Yeah I know that's what they said, to which my response would be: "Just talk to her, ask her what she's into. Failing that, pick a social thing that people do like mini-golf or a Starbucks or a restaurant, and invite her to do that".
The pain point of "I can't connect with my niece" is not solved with "I need an app to recommend social venues I can invite her to". That's just not the problem you're trying to solve - but it is a bullshit yarn you can spin to try to pitch yet another local venue discovery app.
Chiming in to say it might also be the thinking that quality is more important than quantity in social relationships - true to point, but when your quantity is zero, ANY interaction has quality. Just knock on her door and go out for a coffee, almost any random thing would work. Not even out of 0 and freaking out to achieve the local maxima.
Except that sometimes talking with someone doesn't yield any results aside from "I dunno", "whatever", etc.
They're looking for the piece that says "here's an attractive idea" that gets that someone involved.
Sometimes I have a similar issue with my son. It's usually as simple as saying "here's what we're doing this weekend" as opposed to getting the brick wall response to "what do you want to do this weekend?" of "I dunno."
There are tons of different websites that offer "Things to do in ____" but most of them are so spammy. Something that was personalized based on your preferences/interests, or based on a group of people's preferences, would open up a lot of doors.
This is not a technical problem. If anything, what you would really need is a seminar or paid course to teach people how to interact with other humans instead of trying to rely on some app... Some people really don't know how to just talk to other people and express their feelings / figure out plans. No app is ever going to solve that.
Perhaps there's value in a business of "teaching humans how to human".
>Perhaps there's value in a business of "teaching humans how to human".
If you hire people, the answer here is yes. My experience is that technical skills are 'easy' to teach, but interpersonal skills are almost impossible.
If you figure out how to train people from a wide swath of humanity, different backgrounds, and disparate experiences to be human people and communicate effectively and efficiently, you'll literally, not figuratively, be the king of the planet.
