Making friends online - advice needed

It used to be possible in the 90s and 00s. I'm not sure it is anymore. I remember one of my best online friends was made through another webforum. But this one allowed you to put your AIM details on your profile. This particular girl and me always ended up in the same threads having interesting discussions so one day I just messaged her on AIM. Some friends I made through friends. I'd have people say 'oh I've just been speaking to X on msn, you'd probably get on with them, let me introduce you.' then add us both to a group chat. Something similar applied to facebook although normally you wanted at least one face to face meeting before adding people there.

Online dating used to be good for making online friends. Because you'd make flirty connections with people which often didn't pan out romantically but you made a friend. This was in the days pre-tinder when you could message basically anyone who's profile you liked the look of and if you bombarded someone with boring / offensive messages they'd just block you. It promotes a model of interaction that incentivises you to be interesting.

Alas society has changed and the idea of putting your contact details online or passing out a friends contact details, or even a dating service that allows unsolicited messaging is a huge no no for most people these days.

Facebook used to be really good for making friends IRL. For starters by default you could see if people shared a common activity with you. By which I mean they were on the same course at the same university.

people would post events with a more the merrier attitude. House parties, nights out, a trip to the cinema. And even if you weren’t invited if a friend was going you could usually see the event and ask if it was ok to tag along.

now Facebook hides almost everything by default because privacy. 

you see I realised the act of actively trying to make friends is basically indistinguishable from most normies definition of stalking. You are by definition actively collecting information about people on the fringes of your social circle who are not yet your friends and attempting to engineer greater contact with them.

the normy mindset these days is so paranoid that the way they think about stalking now overlaps with the process of trying to actively make friends. (And heaven knows for most of us autistic people making friends isn’t ‘just happening naturally’)

Facebook used to be really good for making friends IRL. For starters by default you could see if people shared a common activity with you. By which I mean they were on the same course at the same university.

people would post events with a more the merrier attitude. House parties, nights out, a trip to the cinema. And even if you weren’t invited if a friend was going you could usually see the event and ask if it was ok to tag along.

now Facebook hides almost everything by default because privacy. 

you see I realised the act of actively trying to make friends is basically indistinguishable from most normies definition of stalking. You are by definition actively collecting information about people on the fringes of your social circle who are not yet your friends and attempting to engineer greater contact with them.

the normy mindset these days is so paranoid that the way they think about stalking now overlaps with the process of trying to actively make friends. (And heaven knows for most of us autistic people making friends isn’t ‘just happening naturally’)

I don't disagree that facebooks adification has caused issues. In lining ads with user newsfeeds and promoting 'influencers' content has pushed people more into interacting with what they don't like than what they do. Turning facebook into the comments section of a newspaper website. ... However I don't think its the driver around the cliquization of facebook. I think that's partly the demographic shift as more users became old crusty types. Basically millennials and gen X got middle aged and either left or just started using it to keep up with distant friends. They mostly no longer go to house parties etc and their friendship groups are so established that when they organise stuff they just use a group text or a what's app group instead of facebook.

The zoomers on the other hand came to social media pre-jaded having grown up being told social media was out to get them and the internet was full of sex criminals etc. So facebook wants to keep its most active users happy so the way it sets things up more and more shifts to minimum visibility of what you do to anyone outside of your immediate friends group by default. Its sad because this loss of functionality for making new friends out of strangers will probably shrink the site off the map given enough time.

You make many excellent points here, in my opinion.  I can unreservedly support your assessment of what Facebook was in the early days - just how effective and wonderful it was at allowing humanity to connect and expand amongst itself in a self-selecting fashion.  It WAS, virtually, utopian.

It pained me in those early days to be so opposed to it - purely on the "paranoid" basis that I could see what it was inevitably destined to become.  I really did look and sound like a frigging loon - "yes, I love it, I think it is brilliant but why can't you all see the inevitability of how this will end.....etc"

Who you see and what you hear on Facebook is now SO closely controlled, curated, monitored and monetised that I feel wholly vindicated for my early perceptions.  It is tragic, but was wholly foreseeable/inevitable  in my opinion.

If I may also go a little further too, Peter, and caution you against believing that the cause for this malignant transformation is "privacy concerns" driven by paranoid nut-jobs (a charge often laid at my door due to my beliefs and perceptions.)  In my opinion, the kindest conceivable reason for the "new" Facebook is greed for money, but I actually fear that the real reason is a lust for power and control by 'understanding' how everyone "ticks."

DISCLAIMER - I am not a "scream it from the lamp post" evangelist type.  I am very measured in my evaluations of these matters and I remain wholly open to discourse and discussion without passion.  To me, it is simple logic - accordingly - when the opportunity presents itself for me to mention my perceptions, I do so and hope that all will forgive me for expressing them.  Thanks for presenting me with this opportunity Peter.