Not yet unfortunately! I don't think I'm very good at forming connections online no matter how hard i try
Same! But I would argue that making friends online through intentional effort is actually incredibly hard.
Personally, I am very passionate about the topic of "Friendology" (and yes that is a real academic term, haha) I.E. the scientific study of how humans make and keep friendships-
SS clearly has a lot of users who would like to be able to make connections on the platform, but as most people on this thread have already expressed, the vast majority of them don't exactly get the results that they are looking for.
Forums like these are definitely a very useful outlet for
communication, but they are actually quite bad when it comes to
socialization.
Statistically speaking, the two biggest determinate factors involved in the formation of friendships are
repeated exposure and the
accomplishment of shared goals, which is why most people make the vast majority of their friends during school, in clubs, at the workplace, etc-
-as these are all environments where shared goals are universal, repeated exposure is constant, and "making friends" is treated as a natural
side-effect of the environment rather than something you are EXPECTED to do.
There is much less pressure in them than in environments where socialization itself is the only goal, like while online dating or communicating through DMs.
That is also why social GAMES tend to be much better environments for making new friends than social FORUMS… and why I think that threads suggesting that SS have official servers or groups dedicated to specific online games would be a big step in the right direction.
Personally, I would also like to make a long-term thread on this site designed to provide a long list of studies/resources relating to the science of friendships… but I've admittedly been putting it off, lol.
Rant over