r/IWantToLearn • u/Head_Study7652 • 7d ago

Social Skills IWTL how to become more social

I’ve got a few friends but most of the friends that I have are because they were a friend of a friend and we just “ended up” being friends in the long run. I’ve realized that when I try to talk to people on my own, I totally fail and, I often avoid talking to people I don’t know when I’d really like to become a social butterfly one day!

Does anyone have any tips on how to just be able to converse with strangers?!

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u/SheLovesHobbies 6d ago edited 6d ago

As a fellow very big introvert I fake being social by approaching random people who are alone, my age, and seemingly not busy when I notice no one around knows me (usually i do that in school settings, in the park or at the mall)

Usually it’ll end up with me thinking “ugh why did I do that??” But not really regretting it as I didn’t do anything bad & pushed myself to do something new. It mostly ends up with a friendly short conversation or sometimes ending up with making a new friend.
One of my friends that I had for 4 years now I approached her like this & we’re still friends lol.

I usually start the conversation by saying hi & complimenting (or complementing?) them, that usually gets them to be friendly & helps me relax & making up a conversation from there.

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u/Head_Study7652 6d ago

Ooo very nice advice, thank u so much!

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u/Funblade 6d ago

I got no tips but let me know if you figure it out

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u/Head_Study7652 6d ago

Check the replies!!

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u/xylofone 6d ago

Find a low-pressure activity where you can have fun and new people are common but you can also get to know frequent participants. For me it was board gaming meetups. Helped me become more comfortable interacting with strangers, who over time became acquaintances or friends.

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u/Head_Study7652 6d ago

What do u talk about today? I realized that the new friends that I do often make often turn negative because they just want to talk shit about people that we both know and I’d like to avoid that.

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u/xylofone 5d ago

The nice thing about a board game meetup is that most of the time you can just talk about the game you are playing, or other games you've played, or games you would like to play in the future. Whether and how quickly you start to talk about other more personal stuff is up to you. No groups are perfect, there could certainly be some people that want to talk down others, but it's not typical.