Life
7 Ways to Make New Friends
In response to Drake's pledge to make "No new friends," let us turn to the sage advice of the Girl Scouts: Make new friends but keep the old. The Girl Scouts never gave specific advice on how to go about making new friends, though, and dammit, it can be hard. Here are a few ideas for broadening your circle.
Sign up for a lady friend site
GirlFriendCircles, GirlFriendSocial, and SocialJane work like dating sites and set up ladies with ladies for platonic fun. They are safe ways to find exactly what you want in a companion — coffee date or dinner date or bridesmaid — and are a perfect resource for women who move to totally new cities and need to get social, fast.
Join Grouper
Grouper is a safe, easy, and different way to meet people. You and a few existing pals apply, and then Grouper sets up your clan with another compatible group. You have the cushion of your friends there, but you also have the chance to find new people (and at the very least, they’ll be fodder for future mocking). As an added bonus, Grouper pays for your first round of drinks!
Go to a MeetUp
At MeetUp, you can sign up to join a group of people doing virtually anything you may like: running, skeet-shooting, flag football, flag soccer, praying. Anything you do alone (stuff like hacking websites), you can now do with a group.
Join a book club
Remember how much you loved undergrad English seminars? Let’s spend a moment being nostalgic. Ah… okay, the moment’s over. Go talk about books with new people! Zip over to your local public library and bookstore to find folks who like reading and being social and combining both — they’re likely to have info about book clubs you can join.
Cheat sheet for New York: The NYPL has regular book club group discussions in nearly every branch, as do many independent book stores, such as McNally Jackson. Or, try the musical stylings of the Bushwick Book Club, a monthly gathering of local artists who sing original songs about chosen books.
Go to a house of worship
I’ve been told that when you go to places of religious worship, you start to become a better person in a lot of ways, one of which being the social element of worship. There must be one young person there who with whom you can get a root beer float after the service (if root beer is not against the religion).
Take a class
Go back to school and get a certificate in typing. Or check out a crafts store and learn to quilt. Learn to make your own beer, soap, Nutella, whatever. Take a class in literally anything that interests you, and you’ll be guaranteed to find someone there with whom who you can talk about the weather.
Don't fear
Remember, people will be lucky to have you as a new friend, but it’s not easy work, so keep trying. You may meet people who are totally weird and slaughter their own bacon and brag about their new calendars. (I’ve met a lot of weird people.) But this is not reason to give up! Soon you will be the most popular girl in town and will forget about your days of trying to laugh with the mail lady about how much “mail lady” sounds like “malady.” New friends await!
