So I moved back to my city after 7 years where my family lives.
It’s been 2 years but I never really enjoyed people here. Mostly people I met were from my previous circles, family, school friends and their partners.
I always thought something was off and maybe over time I will figure things out but it was just not happening.
Yesterday I went to dinner with my partners friends and damn it was whole different vibe. As if it’s a different culture. I really enjoyed talking and was genuinely interested in next meeting.
Resparked my joy in meeting people and I guess I was with wrong people and there are people who are out there who vibe match with me but it’s so hard to find them.
this made me laugh. That’s precisely what I deal with all the time. Everyone is weirdly superficial and the second you try to go any deeper they freak the fuck out. Apparently everyone is operating on a level of immediacy and impulsiveness that I can’t comprehend. I ask people all the time, why they like something and they look at me like I’m a freak and reply with ‘i just like it’. Then I tell them why I like something they look at me like I’m mentally ill for actually giving reasons or explaining the context that informs my interest.
I used to go on dates in the 2000s and 2010s and have cool conversations and feel like I was getting to know the person on a deeper level… that basically disappeared about 8 years ago. Every date I had from 2018 onwards was just endless shallow bullshit or the other person complaining about politics or money. Zero substance, zero curiousity, zero depth. It makes socializing/dating feel totally pointless.
It just feels like people have collectively mentally regressed to toddler-like thinking and communicating any hint of adult conversation is terrifying and bizarre to them.
YES. Exactly!
“Oh, what a WEIRDO for wanting to know about my insert obviously favorite thing / something they enjoy here!!!”
I’ve complimented peoples nails, their tattoos, their outfit/shoes, their accessory or any number of things you can think of that a normal person would consider a nice thing to be asked about, and even then some people just say thanks and then we sit there in silence when the door was wide open to say something, elaborate why the enjoy so and so, or ask something themselves.
That’s just the iceberg of course, I could rant and rave about the myriad of ways people are just so rude and/or self centered these days! It’s maddening, truly.
In a somewhat funny outcome, while I was reading into ways to become a better conversationalist (because I wanted to be better at it, since I never seemed to make friends very well LOL) everyone else was studying the book of “Isolationism, and You, the Main Character”.