I am not joking when I say that I thinked for hours about how do people find each other in 2025.
Currently, the world is in very weird state. People online are either using social video platforms or they are reading news or lurking in online forums in it’s different shapes and forms.
Most chat platforms that I know had shut down and most alt social platforms are almost dead. Even Hackernews had started to see a lower amount of comments compared to previous years.
I want a serious answer, how should I find people online to talk to about anything really other than politics?
I met someone on Reddit about 5 years ago whilst talking about making a smart mirror for fun. Ended up not making the mirror but did end up in a relationship from it. Was random, I had never exchanged dm’s with anyone before that.
Look into your communities events pages or whatever it’ll be called and look for things that might be your interest adjacent. Go to community centers and look at their boards. Find a thing you’re vaguely interested in ago go. Then meet people there who can either tell you about other things that you might be interested in or continue what you’re doing. Churches often have good community boards too, depends on the church. Some are far less evangelical than others, your results may vary.
Try bellawhiskey.ca/trollegle. It’s a silly little chat site. Will not necessarily be alive when you join, but there are a few regular visitors. I would recommend to avoid speaking to _ though.
It’s pleasantly surprising to see it getting mentioned it at all. Loved the servers when they were Omegle chatoorms, and it’s a bit sad to see it sort of die out with the death of Omegle. But yeah, the people there are generally nice.
Also, since I mentioned Omegle: I do not recommend any Omegle clones, as they often have an account system in place, which sort of ruins the whole anonymity stuff and also leaves to some stigma to those who do not want to use the account system. Not to mention that these sites generally attracts horny creeps, and finding a good chat partner is thusly hard.
Seriously though the only places I’ve seen any kind of thriving community are invite-only private torrent tracker sites.
I have an IRL friend who always goes like "oh, sorry, its invite-only torrent (￣y▽,￣)╭ "
That’s lame, you’re only supposed to be inviting people you really know IRL anyway… Weak excuse from your friend, if you’re willing to seed.
Love yourself and be content in being alone, get to know the real you. When you do that, you will find the right people. It will be instinctual.
No offense, but “be content in being alone” is not a good answer to “how do I meet new people for a chill time”
None taken. I’m advocating for introspection, as in, why did they come here and ask the question in the first place? Why not just seek out a like-minded community? So, how can one possibly get directions from another when they don’t know where they want to go? At that point, any direction is valid.
Fair point.
Maybe I feel like this because I’ve been in the same situation before, where it felt like I had exhausted all social options in my comfort zone. Asking random strangers is nice sometimes, because it gives you perspective and feedback from people who are out of your own bubble. Or, at least, a way to vent your frustration without risking to alienate your friends.
Whatever you do, steer clear of meetup.com - all of their social activities on there now are scientologists thinly veiling their seminars as get-togethers.
I’ve gone to local meetups that were cool, but it seems like most of the events on there now cost money, and are hosted by some life coach or guru.
That’s not true everywhere, my city has a pretty good meetup scene for various hobbies. However the amount of people who sell their useless courses as “meetup, but I will ask for a 20€ fee from everyone” or shady “we will talk about investing/crypto…” groups has gone up.
play an MMO game. plenty of ways to break into friend groups there.
Videogames.
I want a serious answer, how should I find people online to talk to about anything really other than politics?
You don’t.
You don’t find people online (or IRL) waiting for strangers to start a discussion on some random topic you feel like talking about. Because people, unlike trolls, are busy with their live.
What you can find is people willing to discuss with someone they find interesting or, with any luck, intriguing on whatever topic you both are interested in.
So, what are you interested in? Have you any hobbies, interests, passions? Find small communities around those topics you’re interested in, and start posting. Do the work to show you’re there and that, maybe, you’re worth discussing with.
For me WebFishing. Some time ago I played VRchat.
Discord is also good but lack of 3d avatars just doesn’t provide the feeling of socialisation.
I posted on lemmy if anyone wanted to play games with me. Someone answered and we talk everyday since then, on most days we spend hours on video calls. Just try posting on whatever you use, you might find people you like.
Check out https://slowly.app/ - its a penpall service that simulates snail mail which makes for great connections! You can get a random pall or choose one explicitly and the community there is really wholesome.
In their terms of service, they share data with ad companies and marketers. But I can’t copy paste it here because JavaScript
Edit: grammar
I just quickly read through them, and it just sounded like the usual “we run as here”. Could you specify it a bit? Or take a screenshot of the relevant part?
You might be looking for this perhaps?
I can’t copy and paste the text from my phone, but under Privacy Policy > 4. When and with whom do we share your personal information?, it says the following in the first paragraph:
Vendors, Consultants, and Other Third-Party Service Providers. We may share your data with third-party vendors, service providers, contractors, or agents (‘third parties’) who perform services for us or on our behalf and require access to such information to do that work.
(Not verbatim…) It goes on to say the contracts are designed to safeguard personal information and can’t use any personal information without their permission. Third parties will not share personal information except with them and third parties commit to data protection they hold on their behalf and to retain it for the period they have been instructed.
Third parties information may be shared with:
- Ad Networks
- Data Analytics Services
- Payment Processors
- Performance Monitoring Tools
- Sales & Marketing Tools
- Testing Tools
- User Account Registration & Authentication Services
- Website Hosting Service Providers
- Cloud Computing Services
- Communication & Collaboration Tools
- Retargeting Platforms
- Social Networks
Additionally:
- During business transfers i.e. mergers, sale of assets, financing, acquisitions, negotiations
- When using Google maps platform APIs
- Other users: this seems to be mostly if you connect/interact via a social media platform like Facebook. It may be more nuanced than I understand.
i’m assuming it’s this part:
Unfortunate :(
Although, this still reads like “standard” stuff like using google analytics or a Facebook plugin. To me, this does not seem to be any worse than most mainstream sites.
Of course, modern internet sucks balls, don’t get me wrong.
Look for sections about sharing data. In an attempt to copy paste it seems I banned JS from that site which made it fail to load the body content entirely.
Meeting people is much possible in the real world.
I don’t have an answer about online methods… I went through the phase of how to meet people as well, and eventually decided to join / try out some group activities. I did some rookie dragon boating, table tennis, stand up paddle, and eventually met my forever spouse as she taught me scuba diving. PS: other than the scuba diving, those were all free activities for beginners. Good luck
I meet tons of people on Discord.
