Tales from Meetup

My experience with Meetup.com – AKA: the adventures of being ostracized in a public gathering.

First, a little bit of back story… Meetup.com is a site where people in a certain spot on this vast planet can decide to make a virtual group – usually themed – which allows any other person in the area to join up. Once a group has formed, this themed group of humans makes plans to meet in person. Thus, the premise being, that you get to meet people with similar interests, and you get to do something you enjoy in the process.

I had first heard of group meet ups from my lovely friends Kim and Edicson, both of whom had moved to a new area, didn’t know that many people, then ended up having some pretty good success in making local friends. Similarly, Luuk used meetup.com and was able to hangout with people all the way in the Netherlands, by joining a themeless group of meetup.com people.

So, last summer I decided to try and meet some people. I’d follow the formula that seemed to be working for my comrades:

Sounded simple enough. It had fewer steps than making a frozen pizza. I thought I had this one in the bag; if there were an election for person-who-could-make-most-best-friends I would have been president. Or at the very least…prime minister.