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I'm looking for someone, and I hope I can find such a person around Dallas. The problem is there isn't really any forum appropriate for my search.
All I want is a geographically local online bulletin board where individual people can find each other. And you know what? Despite zillions upon zillions of dollars (euros, etc.) spent over decades in the tech field, that basically doesn't exist. What I want is essentially the community forums on Craigslist. That's where someone else like me would look for someone else like me: just a simple straightforward way for people to quietly contact each other. The conundrum is that the only thing along these lines that exists in any meaningful way is the community forums on Craigslist, which means I would have to use... Craigslist! Oh boy.
Once upon a time Craigslist was admittedly somewhat useful. However, have any of you actually tried to use Craigslist any time recently? Tell ya what, if you have found success using Craigslist lately, well congratulations, I am happy for you. However, my take is that Craigslist is so many vast universes beyond utterly hopeless that the less I say the better. It just isn't a useful tool anymore.
Of course there are zillions of copies of Craigslist online, however they're all irrelevant because they all have approximately zero users. I would be perfectly willing to pay for some online forum along these lines, and indeed running something ultra simple like Craigslist would be outrageously cheaper than grandiose stuff like Netflix or Facebook or whatever, so it wouldn't have to be an expensive service. Yet nothing like this exists, so the point is moot.
What does exist is not really what I'm looking for. All the more "social media style" geographically local stuff is useless for my purpose, because it's exactly like the rest of social media: it's all a great big crowdsourced gossip column in disguise. The person I'm looking for would not even have an account on such services.
Most everything else with large active user bases falls under an umbrella I might dub "task-oriented services." One major category here is "buy and sell" boards like Facebook Marketplace. Another major category is dating, romance and hookups. Then there are also restaurant review sites; rating and referral services for plumbers and landscaping crews and such; people asking about school districts, or neighborhoods with nice city parks, or where they can find a friendly proctologist with a gentle finger; and that sort of stuff. If your need is anything along these lines, there are a number of reasonably viable options.
I suppose the closest thing remotely resembling what I want that isn't Craigslist is Meetup. It's not really the right tool for me, but maybe I could use it with some possibility of success? Well indeed, I have looked into this and made some attempts, but I don't think that's gonna go anywhere. I suspect the biggest problem is that Meetup is basically dead, except for an existing user base that is focused on very specific things. That is, I don't think Meetup is getting many new users anymore, and perhaps even more importantly the amount of usage by new users is very minimal: people may create accounts and join a few groups, but after that they mostly forget about it and barely ever visit Meetup again. Thus it only survives on "legacy" users who are narrowly focused on a few specific interests or hobbies or whatever, which they enjoy with an existing group of known friends and acquaintances. Thus Meetup is probably pretty useless for me to find a new person of the sort I seek.
I suppose I should also mention Reddit, which does have various geographically oriented subreddits. I don't think there's much hope there either, because local subreddits seem to be basically a combination of the "task-oriented services" and "crowdsourced gossip column" paradigms, with a moderately overwhelming dose of "Craigslist bottom feeder frenzy" to give it that extra touch of gruesome. So alas, I'm not really feeling a super warm fuzzy inside about Reddit.
And besides that there is, uh... beats me?!
Is there anything else I might try? I honestly don't know. Where can I look to find people who live around Dallas without wading into a bunch of stuff I don't want to get involved with? Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I haven't been able to think of anything. I've seriously started to contemplate just gambling on some random scattershot efforts. For instance, it would be nice if I could find someone who works with computers, so I've honestly considered creating an account on Micro Center's community forums and blindly asking: "Hey, anyone live around Dallas who fits the following description?" Maybe try something fairly popular but relatively removed from ideology and neighborhood gossip, like join some Ford, Chevy & Dodge forums and just blindly throw a few messages out asking if someone happens to live around Dallas and answers to my description? The Dallas Makerspace?
I don't know. If I wanted to fight with people who just like fighting, I'd be a pig in slop since I could take my pick from, well, the entire Internet. If my goal is otherwise, well, it sure seems like my options are rather more limited.
At this point I've truly no ideas other than start picking some "Hail Mary" long shots and see what happens. This forum is the first that came to mind. So, um, I guess I'll see what happens.
I'm looking for someone, and I hope I can find such a person around Dallas. The problem is there isn't really any forum appropriate for my search.
All I want is a geographically local online bulletin board where individual people can find each other. And you know what? Despite zillions upon zillions of dollars (euros, etc.) spent over decades in the tech field, that basically doesn't exist. What I want is essentially the community forums on Craigslist. That's where someone else like me would look for someone else like me: just a simple straightforward way for people to quietly contact each other. The conundrum is that the only thing along these lines that exists in any meaningful way is the community forums on Craigslist, which means I would have to use... Craigslist! Oh boy.
Once upon a time Craigslist was admittedly somewhat useful. However, have any of you actually tried to use Craigslist any time recently? Tell ya what, if you have found success using Craigslist lately, well congratulations, I am happy for you. However, my take is that Craigslist is so many vast universes beyond utterly hopeless that the less I say the better. It just isn't a useful tool anymore.
Of course there are zillions of copies of Craigslist online, however they're all irrelevant because they all have approximately zero users. I would be perfectly willing to pay for some online forum along these lines, and indeed running something ultra simple like Craigslist would be outrageously cheaper than grandiose stuff like Netflix or Facebook or whatever, so it wouldn't have to be an expensive service. Yet nothing like this exists, so the point is moot.
What does exist is not really what I'm looking for. All the more "social media style" geographically local stuff is useless for my purpose, because it's exactly like the rest of social media: it's all a great big crowdsourced gossip column in disguise. The person I'm looking for would not even have an account on such services.
Most everything else with large active user bases falls under an umbrella I might dub "task-oriented services." One major category here is "buy and sell" boards like Facebook Marketplace. Another major category is dating, romance and hookups. Then there are also restaurant review sites; rating and referral services for plumbers and landscaping crews and such; people asking about school districts, or neighborhoods with nice city parks, or where they can find a friendly proctologist with a gentle finger; and that sort of stuff. If your need is anything along these lines, there are a number of reasonably viable options.
I suppose the closest thing remotely resembling what I want that isn't Craigslist is Meetup. It's not really the right tool for me, but maybe I could use it with some possibility of success? Well indeed, I have looked into this and made some attempts, but I don't think that's gonna go anywhere. I suspect the biggest problem is that Meetup is basically dead, except for an existing user base that is focused on very specific things. That is, I don't think Meetup is getting many new users anymore, and perhaps even more importantly the amount of usage by new users is very minimal: people may create accounts and join a few groups, but after that they mostly forget about it and barely ever visit Meetup again. Thus it only survives on "legacy" users who are narrowly focused on a few specific interests or hobbies or whatever, which they enjoy with an existing group of known friends and acquaintances. Thus Meetup is probably pretty useless for me to find a new person of the sort I seek.
I suppose I should also mention Reddit, which does have various geographically oriented subreddits. I don't think there's much hope there either, because local subreddits seem to be basically a combination of the "task-oriented services" and "crowdsourced gossip column" paradigms, with a moderately overwhelming dose of "Craigslist bottom feeder frenzy" to give it that extra touch of gruesome. So alas, I'm not really feeling a super warm fuzzy inside about Reddit.
And besides that there is, uh... beats me?!
Is there anything else I might try? I honestly don't know. Where can I look to find people who live around Dallas without wading into a bunch of stuff I don't want to get involved with? Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I haven't been able to think of anything. I've seriously started to contemplate just gambling on some random scattershot efforts. For instance, it would be nice if I could find someone who works with computers, so I've honestly considered creating an account on Micro Center's community forums and blindly asking: "Hey, anyone live around Dallas who fits the following description?" Maybe try something fairly popular but relatively removed from ideology and neighborhood gossip, like join some Ford, Chevy & Dodge forums and just blindly throw a few messages out asking if someone happens to live around Dallas and answers to my description? The Dallas Makerspace?
I don't know. If I wanted to fight with people who just like fighting, I'd be a pig in slop since I could take my pick from, well, the entire Internet. If my goal is otherwise, well, it sure seems like my options are rather more limited.
At this point I've truly no ideas other than start picking some "Hail Mary" long shots and see what happens. This forum is the first that came to mind. So, um, I guess I'll see what happens.
(I can't see how to properly post URLs here, sorry.)
Everyone is so self-contained these days, self-important, tone deaf. I probably would not want to talk to most people. No reasonable conversation, it's all about them, etc.
As Lyle Lovett said:
I live in my own mind
Ain't nothin but a good time
No rain just the sunshine
Out here in my own mind
I live where I can breathe
Ain't nothin but a cool breeze
Nobody that it won't please
Out here where I can breathe
Try being 67, no one wants to talk or listen....friends and so many relatives have passed......
In case there's anyone who cares, I'll restate the reason I created this post in different terms.
The entire world is nothing but bread and circuses. I've been watching mostly in abject silence for many years now, and I've finally come to accept that this is just how things have always been, and how things will be for as long as I'll be breathing. The only thing that's really changed is that modern technology has made the bread and circuses bigger and fancier than ever before.
I have concluded that my only desire is to run away and hide from the bread and circuses as much as I can. I would like to discover if there is someone else who has made this same decision. Unfortunately, I don't know how I can realistically conduct this search. When everything is bread and circuses, how do you look for somebody else who wants out?
Step one is to create a message to serve as a sort of "filter" for prospective fellow evacuees, which I have done and it's up on WordPress. That's the easy part. Step two is getting that message to the person I'm after, and that's where I'm frankly at a loss. This has been simmering in my head for a long time, and I still don't have an answer. I don't know.
There is a reason I provided a number of specific details about specific sites, services, and so on. That reason is because the questions I asked toward the end of my initial post are NOT rhetorical. I decided to spell all this stuff out in some level of detail so the reader can be aware of what I've already considered.
So again let me ask openly: does anyone else have any other ideas?
Anybody got any suggestions?! I intend this as a legitimate question.
Let me add another detail I didn't mention in the first post. I have in all seriousness toyed with the idea of printing out that wordpress.com address *on paper*, and stapling it to telephone poles around where I live. Maybe someone will see it?
I have toyed with the idea of printing that URL on a piece of poster board and holding it up outside the entrance *at Walmart* until they call the cops on me, because maybe somebody going shopping will be curious and check it out.
I am out of ideas. That's why I'm throwing this out blindly just in case anyone can think of something I have overlooked.
How do I find someone else who just wants to quietly mind their own beeswax and ignore as much of this global transistorized parade of postmodern bread and circuses as possible?
This very thread turns out to be a perfect example of why I'm writing these words in the first place. The world in general but especially the online world is defined by the two "gentlemen" who responded to my post, and countless more just like them. It's an endless competition of being rude for sport, needlessly and often wantonly, and they're proud of themselves when they "score." It's life as a neverending college fraternity hazing ritual.
I stress: they are proud of themselves.
And any one instance of this can be dismissed as a molehill that shouldn't be turned into a mountain. Oh boy, I agree with that more than they could understand. The problem isn't one instance. The problem isn't a few. It's not even many. It's when there isn't anything else left in the world but boys in need of a spanking who are still shooting spitwads at the other kids even after they've started collecting Social Security. That's when it's time to pull the eject handle.
You watch: they'll have a smart aleck reply.
Makes me proud to be a member of this species.
Anybody got ideas how to find somebody who wants outta here?
I have a couple ideas for you OP. First, you might want to check out a Unitarian Universalist church. They tend to have discussion groups, and the crowd is often both older and prone to outside-the-box thinking. It's an interesting mix. Second, online philosophy discussion groups frequently feature these sorts of ideas. It's not the sort of thing actual philosophers often do, but that's okay. You might find a friend on some of those.
I learned a long time ago to not judge humanity based on internet discussions. You'll lose all hope.
Do you actually intend to meet these people? Or do you intend to strictly stick behind the computer screen, with the knowledge that the person on the other side of the screen you're typing to is safely within a 30 mile radius...
Do you actually intend to meet these people? Or do you intend to strictly stick behind the computer screen, with the knowledge that the person on the other side of the screen you're typing to is safely within a 30 mile radius...
The OP appears to be moaning that they can not find anyone to socialize with. Of course this about says it all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by troubleshy
How do I find someone else who just wants to quietly mind their own beeswax and ignore as much of this global transistorized parade of postmodern bread and circuses as possible?
The OP wants to be in someone else' "beeswax" but wants the other to mind their own "beeswax". Yes I am well old enough to know that word.
Essentially the OP can not find someone identical to themselves which appears to be a bit anti-social, loves to spout long flowery language speeches that can be descriptively enough stated in several sentences instead, prefers to live in a situation where only they and the other they are looking for actually exist, and yet wants all of the attention they can get from as many others out there that will indulge them.
I would fully expect your thought that the OP will sit behind a keyboard is spot on! What Rakin has suggested is spot on that the OP should start by getting a dog or a cat. The OP can project their thoughts and desires on the dog and cat and still live the way they want.
troubleshy, ...You might like to check out The dao bums website.
Last edited by dinooreo; 05-30-2023 at 09:24 AM..
Reason: Added OP
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