How to Meet New Friends in This Day and Age
This post is based solely on my own personal experience; however, I must say I have had some amazing success in meeting besties through unconventional ways on the interweb! I have had to move several times, either for work or university and starting over with zero friends is scary and honestly quite lonely. So if you're in a similar circumstance or you're just open to finding new people in your city then please read on, you wont be dissapointed!
My beautiful best friend shown above I met actually through rentfaster.ca when I was looking for a roommate. When we met we instantly clicked, I was actually so excited and was hoping she was too. She was also a fellow British Columbian which gave me a sense of home. She called me back shortly after saying she liked my place the best out of the ones she saw and I think I just cancelled the other viewings I had, so needless to say we became roomies! She has come to Costa Rica with me, I either go visit her or she comes here and we may be going to Europe together! I could go on and on about our special forever friendship but I'll keep those crazy stories between us.
My gorgeous friend above and I actually met through probably the most unconventional way, using Kijiji. For those of you in the US or elsewhere that don't know what that is, it's basically like craiglist. I had just moved to Calgary, and was friendless and bored. I happened to be perusing the different categories on kijiji and saw under the Community tab one called "Friendship & Networking"...Obviously that intrigued me as I thought who the heck meets people off kijiji other than creepers. I read some of the ad's which surprisingly seemed pretty normal... I soon was creating my own ad to express who I am and what kind of friends i'm looking for. Francine had reached out and sent me a message, we soon met in person and we've remained really close ever since! I also met my friend Jessica on kijiji here in Edmonton recently using the same method, luring them off kijiji haha.
The girls above we all met using Bumble BFF. For those of you who don't know what that is, it originally started out as a dating site but then evolved into basically what I would call "tinder for friends". You swipe right to people who seem up your alley and left on people who don't. Some people have multiple photos of themselves and sometimes have a little blurb about their hobbies and such.
We all happen to be BC girls living in Edmonton and have our careers here, so thank god for Bumble BFF or we probably wouldn't have met since we're all in different sectors. B (girl on the left above) was actually my first friend here in Edmonton, we had our friendiversary last month and I'm extremely lucky to have her in my life. Changing cities multiple times takes a toll on you, especially since you leave your best friends you just made and have to restart all over again.
The lovely lady on the left I also met on kijiji. I'm not going to lie I used to feel weird about telling people that I've met a friend of Kijiji but now I honestly don't care. You meet people from all walks of life in all kinds of weird ways and who's to judge. At least you're actually meeting meaningful human beings who hopefully positively impact your life.
If you feel like meeting people online is intimidating, don't. It's really not. Of course you'll probably meet some duds that are flakey people, but that's just like in life in general take it with a grain of salt and don't take it personally. Who knows whats going on in that person's life and truth be told if they flaked do you really want that person as a friend...NO...Next lol
I will say this though if you're meeting someone please have your wits about you, meet in public places etc. I'm not trying to scare anyone, I haven't had any problems but that's my disclaimer about friend making and dating for that matter.
Now go out there and meet your future besties and please let me know how it goes! I am truly interested!