Ask Lemmy

you need hobbies

An important bit of information that's missing here is what kind of culture are you in/from on the coconuts/peaches scale?

(Coconuts - hard to get to know initially but very warm once that hurdle is overcome. Peaches - warm to everyone but very difficult to get truly close to. Finland vs. USA, for example)

The key is common interests. I'm into theatre and roller derby, so I participate in those communities, and friendships result from enjoying shared interests.

The biggest thing is that if you want to hang out with people you will need to take the initiative to make it happen and not rely on being invited. If you are already doing that, keep it up! But that is frequently the second hurdle for people after not going out and being social which is the biggest barrier to meeting new people and it sounds like you are going out.

The other thing is being a little more open with new people while avoiding an info dump. Mention a couple things and see if they respond, and make sure to express interest in things they bring up when possible. Like I simply don't care about sports but can talk about someone else's enjoyment of sports instead of dismissing all sports talk.

But I can also relate to how some people feel like a chore to talk to and others come easy. But not everyone who is easy to talk to shares interests, which kinda sucks. That is why I haven't really made new friends for years as I have four friends who are easy to talk to and we interact daily online, and honestly expanding my friend group is intimidating after the last attempt to expand based on a hobby ended up with most of them being maga idiots. It was worth the try though!

I'm also in my late 20s, and I'm an immigrant (changed continents)

When I meet new people, ai usually have a hard time coming up with something to talk about, so I had (still have) a hard time making new friends.

What helped me was to have continuous contact with people in a focused environment, for example: with around 6 months of office attendance I started warming up to my new colleagues (which eventually became friends), even though we were usually talking about work back then, we started to talk about it less and less up to a point where we don't even work together anymore, but keep in touch

I found another of such environments in sports practices as well: don't want to talk about anything? Fine, let's just keep this ball rolling back and forth" but then eventually (again after a few months of continuous contact with the same group of people) things started to warm up a little

So to sum it up I'd say: patience is key, it usually takes a while before prople start to get along well

I can certainly relate to you, but unfortunately don't have any tips to offer.