Loved this piece for the style and rumination, though I focused less on the "did it work? were the approaches reasonable?" aspects that other commenters seem to be highlighting.
Not quite the same, but for years I moderated a few big subreddits for friendmaking, and was part of such communities myself. ('til the API fiasco neutered the tools I had for catching bots, harassers, and pedophiles.) At risk of sounding absurd: I think friendmaking subreddits were awesome, but they did put pretty broad swathes of people in a hellish loop. People fall for a lot of the same known traps described in the article like fear of rejection. You need a paradoxical combination of thick skin, patience, effort, and also willingness to play the "numbers game"[1] to succeed with any amount of expediency. (And time can be of the essence for some people, particularly the depressed/suicidal.) Some people simply don't want to deal with that shit (fair enough). Very loose observations on this in the digital world:
* Some people are lonely / don't really click with many others, but find someone they do click with, only to blow it by clinging hard.
* High-effort users who spend a lot of time and feel little return get burnt out, meaning that a lot of posts in the new queue are low-effort shotgun posts; your best bet at finding high-effort friends is catching new posters in their first few posts.
* Reddit's "front page" mechanic works well enough for a first-approximation on who MIGHT be a high-effort friend but very often falsely bubbles a bot to the top (especially now). If it's not a bot, then the poster is likely overwhelmed with responses and even if they're otherwise high-effort: they're treading a tightrope between responding to everyone (with cut corners or delays), or responding to a subset of respondents. If you're a high-effort respondent, neither feels good to be on the receiving end of.
* In general, men don't get as many responses as women. Though the responses they do get tend to be from women. Men just don't use those sites to make other male friends much.
[1]: "numbers game" referring to seeing value in maximizing the quantity of interactions with unique people (there's kind of a distasteful red-pill-ishness about this when taken too far wrt dating, but really: people are so different that there really is an effective upper bound on how quickly you can find the people you're looking for without just talking to more people.)
Not quite the same, but for years I moderated a few big subreddits for friendmaking, and was part of such communities myself. ('til the API fiasco neutered the tools I had for catching bots, harassers, and pedophiles.) At risk of sounding absurd: I think friendmaking subreddits were awesome, but they did put pretty broad swathes of people in a hellish loop. People fall for a lot of the same known traps described in the article like fear of rejection. You need a paradoxical combination of thick skin, patience, effort, and also willingness to play the "numbers game"[1] to succeed with any amount of expediency. (And time can be of the essence for some people, particularly the depressed/suicidal.) Some people simply don't want to deal with that shit (fair enough). Very loose observations on this in the digital world:
* Some people are lonely / don't really click with many others, but find someone they do click with, only to blow it by clinging hard.
* High-effort users who spend a lot of time and feel little return get burnt out, meaning that a lot of posts in the new queue are low-effort shotgun posts; your best bet at finding high-effort friends is catching new posters in their first few posts.
* Reddit's "front page" mechanic works well enough for a first-approximation on who MIGHT be a high-effort friend but very often falsely bubbles a bot to the top (especially now). If it's not a bot, then the poster is likely overwhelmed with responses and even if they're otherwise high-effort: they're treading a tightrope between responding to everyone (with cut corners or delays), or responding to a subset of respondents. If you're a high-effort respondent, neither feels good to be on the receiving end of.
* In general, men don't get as many responses as women. Though the responses they do get tend to be from women. Men just don't use those sites to make other male friends much.
[1]: "numbers game" referring to seeing value in maximizing the quantity of interactions with unique people (there's kind of a distasteful red-pill-ishness about this when taken too far wrt dating, but really: people are so different that there really is an effective upper bound on how quickly you can find the people you're looking for without just talking to more people.)