Thank you for your advice!
It's simple but it's not easy. You'll get awkward moments, sometimes even rejections (the baseline for being good at dating is being good with people in general), sometimes you'll have to reflect and unlearn a lot of your old habits. But keep going, life's short, lol.
Admittedly, small talk is only part of the problem. There are other aspects such as eye contact, tone of speech and so on. Read a book like 'The Charisma Myth'. Practice on 'peripheral' strangers, those who you encounter regularly but are not close to. You'll be anxious, you'll feel awkward but I promise you that you will get better. Quite often now it's natural to me, but I can always fall back on learned patterns when I'm feeling awkward. People now tell me I'm very easy to speak to. 6 years ago I would have been described as awkward.
I recently was diagnosed with ADHD, primarily in attentive. Honestly, this explains my 'naturally' poor social skills. But I learned anyway. You can too!
I put myself in situations every day that force me to meet people, often the same people, over and over. I rock climb, I go to social clubs, I learn a language, I relax in the park — and then I talk to anyone who I find interesting (within reason.)
Something as simple as: “can I pet your dog?” (I love dogs) or “wait, are you speaking Italian? Di dove sei?” (I love Italy.) At the rock wall: “holy shit, you’re jacked! Whose children are you eating to get muscles like that?” or “can you show me the sequence? I’m stuck here.”
Bear in mind that these are sincere questions that also work as icebreakers and I think that’s the point, that people like honestly. Relax, don’t come off as a try-hard, and just let things happen naturally. I’m kind of a goofy guy so maybe only 1/10 people are receptive, and then maybe 1/10 of those people stay in touch. And then you gotta do your part and continue to put in the time to see these people, provided you don’t see them by default. Otherwise they’ll disappear.
Great friendships are often based on a shared sense of purpose, so do things you like to do, just around other people.
College ideas: fraternity, sports, classes, book clubs, study clubs, meditation groups, activist clubs, exercise in a public space.
Concrete action: try to do one of these things every single day, and try to interact with someone one-on-one every time.
You got this man. Go forth and be chill. (Also read Dale Carnegie’s book!)
You can reach out to me personally, if you’re interested. Reply to my message and I’ll give you an email.
At the end of the day friends share common interests and do stuff together. More time doing the same stuff will strengthen the friendship if you dont get too salty or annoying.
Shyness unfolds like a piece of paper. All new prople reveal little bits to each other at a time. Just a little bit of investment is suitable.
Don't reveal everything about you at once and don't trust people who tell you their whole life story straight away. You'll be right.
It has stuff that I found aligned with reality.
Just find your interest groups, could be drama, music, CS:GO, foreign policy, gender history, baseball, Trump- whatever- one or more. And regularly hang out with them.
Some friendships will naturally occur. Be honest about your feelings.
One thing that most people don't mention about friendships is a little bit of toleration of their small faults. You are not perfect, and your friends won't be perfect. Remember this. To be in any kind of long relationship, you need to be a little forgiving.
Also, sharing vulnerabilities (after you know you can trust that person enough), faults, and sharing in general creates closeness.
Apart from this two, there are regular things like shared interests and values, spending time together, etc.
If you spend enough time together, some people will notice you. And they will want to be with you. If you are not acting in an extroverted way, the potential friends you are missing out aren’t suitable for you anyway.
2-4 close friends and 5-6 not-so-close friends are enough to get through college. (Doesn't mean if you have only one, you will be in misery.)
How have you faired with potential romantic partners?
How do you find out what the other person wants to talk about? Listen. Look (their tee shirt will often tell you).
Or, if you're in a class with the person and you both actually care about the class, talk about the class. Talk about the homework. "I'm stuck on #8. Did you get anywhere on it?" will open some conversational doors.
The short answer is: your anxiety comes from the fact that you are focusing on how awkward and shy you are. When you notice your attention going this way, try to redirect it toward curiosity about the other person.
(I find that in order to do this, I still sometimes need to clear the air by stating outright to the other person that I am an awkward nerd.)
Then the more open and confident you are about them - the more genuine friends who are happy to share it with you you’ll find.
The goal “make friends” in itself is just a bad, shallow goal. It will not give you energy for real actions on a regular basis.
The attitude “i dont like my shyness” is a bad, weak attitude.
The attitude “f..k you, im shy and im okay with it” is a strong, attractive attitude (without being a jerk of course)
I know this to be true because I had no friends growing up. Now I’m a “social butterfly”.
Also, you'll find that college is full of very social people. Connect with them and ask them for advice. How, you wonder? Just ask them. From the perspective of an introvert, the idea of flat-out asking someone "Can I buy you a cup of coffee and pick your brain about your amazing social skills?" might seem crazy or even rude (because if a stranger asked you to grab a coffee, it'd stress you out). But super social people are different--they're energized by socializing and enjoy making new friends. I think you'll find that most would not only be willing but friggin' thrilled to chat with you.
As for making friends, the most important thing is to find topics of common interest. Like you mentioned, small talk is hard. It's hard because it's forced (you don't really care about the weather, or if the other guy has weekend plans, do you?) But talking about stuff you're interested in is easy. So do that instead! Talk about your hobbies. Talk about things that you're reading and studying. Things that you're enthusiastic about. Enthusiasm is a people-magnet. Eventually you'll find someone who's interested in the same things and the conversation will take care of itself. To this end, join clubs/groups that are devoted to topics that interest you.
Another thing--you've got to be willing to put yourself out there. Back when I was a freshman in college, I went on a road trip to a football game with some strangers. Me and one of the other guys hit it off and had a lot of fun together. Once we got back to campus, we all unloaded our bags from the car and were heading our separate ways. I was just going to say 'goodbye' and walk away, because I was too afraid of embarrassing myself to ask this guy for his phone number. Luckily he asked for mine, because we've been friends for almost two decades and he remains one of my favorite people in the world. Ask people if they want to hang out. Ask people for their phone numbers. Put yourself out there. The worst case scenario is a brief moment of awkwardness. The best is a lifetime of friendship.
It would be great to connect, you can send me a message at mitchhankins AT icloud DOT com
A couple key things that I think made it work out for me:
1) Once you find a few groups with people you like, keep going to those group's meetups. It's not that important how much you speak, but how many times people see you. Repeated exposure seems to lead to people just recognizing you and being happy to see you. I eventually learned a bit about people just being around them at a dozen or so meetups, and you start knowing things to say to bring up conversation if need be.
2) Choose meetups with activities. That way it's not a big deal if you don't say much, you can mostly just focus on the activity. I've had good luck attending meetups for board/video game nights, movies, hikes, mini-golf, scavenger hunts, karaoke, trivia, etc. If you go to enough of those with the same group, you'll give #1 a chance to kick in, even if you barely say a word.
3) Try not to be annoying. This sounds more daunting than it really is. I actually was an admin of a group before (took up the reins after the original creator left), and there's a handful of things that caused drama with individuals in the group that people complained about, so if you don't do anything in this list you'll probably be fine:
a) hygiene (yeah some people never really showered before and smelled pretty bad, there was a couple in particular that were both consistently smelled bad that people hesitated to host meetups because they didn't want them to come, and privately complained to me about it)
b) making unwanted sexual advances (However, I've known many people who have coupled up from meetups, so you should feel free to ask someone out, I just wouldn't advise trying to directly hook up with people at meetups, especially activity meetups. bar meetups might be a bit different expectations)
c) having a toxic or hostile to other members personality (like we had one woman that got pissed and yelled and spammed admins whenever they scheduled something that didn't fit her schedule, as an example).
d) not respecting people's property. don't go overboard getting drunk and start destroying shit, or if you're playing someone's board game, don't get greasy fingers and then handle/bend playing cards in the game, etc.
Actually being the quiet, easy-going person in the group is probably good for longevity, as long as you shower before meetups :)
Me just doing these things led to eventually people inviting me to private events outside of meetup, and once that starts happening that will help lead to more friendships (like my main friends don't even really use meetup groups anymore, they just invite people they met from them, like me).
I hadn't done in-person meetups with strangers for the past couple of years because pandemic, but I did start going to a couple meetups again recently, and it seems like I might be able to use this strategy to meet some new interesting people (there's one group in particular I liked hanging out with, I'll start going to more of their meetups).