HN Explorer

Ask HN: Have you made IRL friends from HN usage?

35 points by hardkorebob ↗ HN
Hi all! Its me the resident weirdo...hardkorebob. Have any of you made a good pal, friend or bud on here this website we use everyday? If so, did you appreciate the odds of such luck? Thanks. Happy Sunday/Monday to all.

88 comments

[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 160 ms ] thread
catlover76
I have, yeah. Mostly kind of a professional friendship, haven't talked in quite a bit though.
moralestapia
I have, several people from around the workd that I was fortunate enough to spend time with IRL.

I owe so much to HN, I wish I could contribute back to it somehow.

hardkorebob
I owe a lot to HN too! Thanks HN! This is my way of contributing atm. I wanna tell you that you all are amazing people and smarty pants.
mburst
I've gotten a job through HN which has turned in to friendship if that counts. Every now and then meetups popup too which are cool
hardkorebob
Oh that is really great! A job thru the internet of programmers and engineers such a blessing. May it last till your end. Do you enjoy that job a lot?
mburst
It was a good time for sure. I worked there 7.5 years before leaving. Still keep in contact with a lot of people from that job. On the first work day of the month there are hiring threads on HN if you end up wanting to check those out
hardkorebob
Oh yes thanks for the info. Wow 7.5 years is a good run for sure. That's great you keep in touch.
SCUSKU
Where do you see meetups? I don't think I've ever seen them on HN but would be nice to go to one while I'm in SF!
mburst
They pop up every now and then. Wouldn't say it's a common thing. Fwiw the overlap between a random tech meetup and HN users is probably pretty high. I've gone to a few in SF from meetup.com
selimthegrim
No, the metro I live in does not have a preponderance of HN users. I can name maybe 3 or 4 (not counting one that dang banned)
hardkorebob
I live in small town too. I'm sure Richmond, VA has many HN users. Hello from FXBG/ <3 Be Kind
selimthegrim
I live in NOLA.
hardkorebob
Oh sweet. My friend has fam down there. I've never been there but have travelled thru LA
vgeek
Have you had Crabby Jack's on Jefferson Highway?
selimthegrim
Yes, I actually even applied to work there once as a side job, they didn’t hire me. It is good, but probably a little bit more expensive than similar food and definitely targeted towards tourists.
hardkorebob
Never been down there. Maybe someday. Sounds like a cool spot.
selimthegrim
It is a seafood restaurant just outside the city.
hardkorebob
Figured as much plus googled lol. My daughter loves crab
bestouff
You guys exist IRL ?
silisili
We're all 18/F/California IRL.
hardkorebob
lmao lmao: You sparked some cool memories! Thanks!
spacechild1
No.
hardkorebob
Do you wanna make some?
spacechild1
I have made IRL friends from other online communities, though. For me, HN is too broad and anonymous and there is little 1:1 interaction compared to, say, forums. Most of the time I don't even notice the usernames.
hardkorebob
I doesn't have to be anonymous. But I'm glad you have made friends off the web. I haven't yet.
spacechild1
In my case it had been a very specific community (computer music). It helps if you have the same esoteric interests :)
henriquez
Not me. I don’t have many IRL friends anyway because I roleplay “chaotic neutral” in every social situation. Turns out human beings have feelings and don’t want to deal with edgelord drama all the time.
hardkorebob
lmfa0. I don't have many local friends but I do have friends although not int(1) is good with tech in any way. Didn't know about chaotic neutral until now thanks for that. Drama is supposed to be funny not taken serious IMHO.
zimpenfish
Nope but I have known at least two other (infrequent) posters IRL in the past.
hardkorebob
Yeah I've never met anyone IRL that even knows what HN is. For context: I've been a Hospitality professional for 20+ years.
sneak
I’ve made the IRL acquaintance of two of the smartest and most well-known people on HN, thanks to HN.

I also made a close IRL friend because we wore the same (obscure, in-joke) HN t-shirt to a conference.

I’d love to meet more.

I live in Berlin and Las Vegas, and I’m regularly in many other major cities (SF, NYC, LA, London, Tokyo).

sneak@sneak.berlin, hit me up for coffee. Signal number’s on my website.

hardkorebob
This is great. Maybe when you in Richmond we could have coffee. I wish. Unfortunately my current job is very hectic to say the least. But if the idea is solid for sure I could make a special coffee day ;)
kirubakaran
Yes I have! Several, in fact. If anyone is interested, I'd love to chat. My email is in my profile :-)
kcrwfrd_
I got my job from Who’s Hiring and have subsequently made friends / good work relationships there.
hardkorebob
That's great! I never check those since my skills/talents are not really keen for these types of jobs. Like someone else said, human emotion and feelings are an enormous barrier. Unfortunately I give off the wrong vibe when people place their eyes on me. So I never even try to apply for a computer job. Even tho I have been regarded a wizard by non-hackers smh. Maybe one of these submissions of mine may peek interest. I'm currently participating in Hoon Academy by Urbit Education on YT. I feel like a young person again lol.
ik97
In a way, yes.

I have checked Hacker News daily since I was 12, which is over 14 years ago now (excluding camping with no internet).

It gave me and some of my best friends growing up some great conversations topics. I’m also sure Hacker News has started many hobbies of mine and provided tons of education/entertainment over the years. By far, I think the best benefit of HN for me socially has been making me a more interesting person due to the topics I’ve learned about here.

I went from a homeschooled kid on a farm to->university->junior->mid-level SE->aspiring entrepreneur at age 26 while checking this site daily.

Great site, great community, and I pray it continues in the same way it has for decades to come.

hardkorebob
I pray with you. I love this place a lot. I have had many similar things happen to me. I have been online since 1996. Unfortunately never been able to talk to hackers IRL.
tmaly
Not HN, but we did the first indiehackers meetup in NYC and met a ton of people. At least one in the group hits front page of HN from time to time.
hardkorebob
That is awesome. I haven't gone to any meetups anywhere to meet anyone. Maybe one day since I am close to DC and Richmond
gardenhedge
No. The internet in general is pretty bad for making friends IRL. Even the apps dedicated to it like humble bff are pretty poor.
hardkorebob
The problem is the cheaters and liars. The people that hide behind Terms of Use and Policies and Charters and Corporations. The people who control the world understand the reality and it is the game they force on us to play. To the unfortunate nonhumans this is normal and it is needed and desired by them. But for true humans it is an utter cesspool of nonsense and piercing thru this disgusting film of garbage is gonna take some cojones. Simply because The Establishment likes to solve everything with making you into powder pieces using mechanical tools of destruction. The only Modern Tech we have is the speed to put someone in a tomb.
tacostakohashi
Yes, I did reach out to one person about their project, turned into a weekly drinks kind of thing, and eventually petered out after a year or two.

One of my frustrations with the modern internet is how infrequently it leads to offline gatherings and connections these days. It used to be very normal that mailing lists, user groups, etc. would gather online, but also have a weekly/monthly meeting, conference, or post job ads/things for sale, etc. and you'd just organically end up meeting people and hanging out.

These days, the internet seems to be for people who really just want to discuss opinions endlessly and anonymously, but never do anything about it offline.

One does, very occasionally, see posts on HN about meetups, but it's rare and just one-off and ad-hoc, you'd think a big city like London, NYC, Boston, Chicago, etc. could easily sustain an ongoing weekly/monthly thing.

h2odragon
Too easy to pick up feds / scammers / dealers / other predators looking for places to recruit fresh victims. Saw an acquaintance's "Art classes" idea fall to that last year: people would pay the $10 fee and then be disruptive with a crypto pitch.
prepend
I think the issue is there’s no reliable reputation system on the internet.

I remember when Facebook launched I thought it might serve as this (eg, “oh h2odragon has a year old account and seems not like a psycho, I’ll let them come to my art class”). But Facebook wasn’t interested and stopped providing apis and whatnot. I think it didn’t align with their business model as they kind of want scams as it drives lots of revenue (in that a significant portion of ads are misleading or scams that would be devastated if people could post reputation info like “this magic mouthguard doesn’t work and just a $10 drugstore version wrapped in $40 of social media ads”).

hardkorebob
Does the reputation then get established using the blockchain? Is this the problem that Urbit solves? Interesting that the reliability of the blockchain doesn't have to be attached to currency. The blockchain can then actually make an actor legit? Some ideas, questions and confusions I guess.
prepend
It doesn’t need blockchain. I mean if Facebook had just provided ubiquitous apis that people could use, that would be fine and public enough.

The key is that there’s some public store of identities, and some level of social graph or complaints that lets you know if it’s a real person or not.

I think it’s better if it’s not blockchain and tied to some natural identity that people use- like Facebook- so there’s a virtuous incentive to keep it active. A blockchain wouldn’t really be self-sustaining as no one really uses identity as part of random stuff and it would need some way to pay for itself.

hardkorebob
I'm learning more each day. Seems we all have to get together somehow and fix this situation we got.
hardkorebob
Oh man that's the crap I hate. It's terrible we have these thoughts and even worse that there is actual actors doing this kinda bst. I am truly to the end of my core and up to my neck had it with this terrible 75% of the world being utter nonhuman. When will it stop?
gnramires
I think HN deserves far more discussion on hackerspaces/makerspaces and such! My local hackerspace is Garoa Hacker clube[1]; unfortunately I haven't had the time to participate much. If you're in São Paulo, I recommend a visit (for the 'Noite de Processing' (Processing nights)) on tuesday, and if you live here, what are you waiting for? :) (those spaces can always use more participation!) ... and maybe someday we'll meet there as well.

Noite de Processing is also streamed online as well usually by the great Alexandre Villares. The next one is tuesday 28/11/2023![2]

[1] https://garoa.net.br/

[2] https://garoa.net.br/wiki/Noite_de_Processing

[3] On youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@GaroaHackerClubeSaoPaulo/streams

hardkorebob
This is great! Love Brazil! Its an awesome location on this here fine rock.

caras, vocês são incríveis

Love from VA <3 Be Kind

softwaredoug
Sort of.

I made professional connections. I was, in 2017, building a machine learning plugin for Elasticsearch (google Elasticsearch Learning to Rank). In a post about Slack's use of machine learning for search, I commented sharing the project. The Wikimedia Foundation search folks replied. We started collaborating professionally. As a consultant, I had access to many applicable use cases in the community. And Wikimedia of course had massive scale to make it bulletproof. We ended up co-creating the plugin - still relatively active for both OpenSearch and Elasticsearch.

hardkorebob
Phenomenal! Love this very much. Good vibes sent to all of y'all.
mikewarot
No, I doubt I would... it seems HN is centered in Silicon Valley, and I'm in a suburb of Chicago, where there is a very low density of fellow programmers, hackers, etc. We're so spread out here, we had to invent the BBS to stay in touch.
hardkorebob
I guess thats true. But Its a cool BBS we have nowadays tbh.
sebnun
No, but there's always a first time. If you are in Stockholm, hit me up at pablo at injavascript dot com
luthMan
No, not yet. But I think that few users are from Europe, so it's not that easy to find people.
hardkorebob
Best of luck! I'm not close but you may contact me for anything. Info in my profile.
hoodwink
Met my cofounder on HN in 2017. We’ve since been working on a consumer saas app called Readwise for past 6 years.
hardkorebob
That is such great experience. Much success to ya'll.
olegp
I met my co-founder as a result of him posting a Show HN and my comment on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1262380

We've been working together on Toughbyte, our second venture, for more than eight years now: https://www.toughbyte.com

hardkorebob
This is so great! It's a great place and time to be alive in. I simply hope we can use these tools to bring peace to regions who never experience 1% of what the US quality of life has to offer. Let's start building code that makes war obsolete. And please let's save the idealism for the dreamers.
lakotasapa
Never. Fulltime dad since 2019. I've been lurking here and on Reddit but never got anyone to respond :(

Little sad. However an impetus for mother of all inventions: social network for plutonic relations? ;)

Loneliness is a crisis and becoming an epidemic. There needs to be a way men in particular needs to find a way to connect without making them feel...may I say... despairing or desperate? :(

hardkorebob
I hear you bro. I feel the same way. Glad you expressed it on the money. For sure loneliness is rampant and the connection to be had with other men of fellow interest is a very difficult thing for me as an American. Super social and friendly dude but the major issue in this here fine country is the ignorant mass as an ideology, people reject what they don't understand and everyone is assuming on a constant basis, everyone on defense. It is very sticky film of ... sadness for sure. But get my info off the profile man and hmu anytime.