Culture Study Local Friendship Matchmaker, Volume One
People who want to make friends with people who want to make friends, let's find each other
Quickly: the intimitable (and recent Pulitizer Prize nominee) Gustavo Arellano came on The Culture Study Podcast to talk about SoCal Culture and it’s A DELIGHT. If you want to fight about how he defines Southern California, don’t fight me! I can’t defend San Diego, I’m from Idaho! But if you want to hear about making diaromas of missions out of sugar cubes, car culture, and crunchy fascists, this episode is absolutely for you.
This thread is a long time coming, but specifically prompted by an ask in the comments of my piece on The Most Infuriating Friendship Hack from a few weeks ago. Namely: there are a lot of you out there who are trying to do the hard work of friendship and community-building, and one difficulty is feeling like you’re the only person who’s actually committed or interested in it.
But what if you could connect with other people in your area who were also trying to do that work? To be clear: this is not a best friend matching service (although who knows what might happen). It is a way to connect you with people who are community-minded — who actually want to figure out how to exchange plant watering responsibilities, or occassionally go to a speaking event, or do the next Culture Study Cookbook Club together. It’s about forging loose connections that may or may not become close connections, with the understanding that loose ties are as essential to our understanding of a friendship safety net as close ones.
I wish there were a regimented and easy way to do this, but here’s what we’re going to try: write a quasi-personal ad about what you’re looking for in terms of friendship and connection (and, to be clear, this can also include connection that’s not in-person, at least initially — this is also a space for long-distance friendship and support), what sort of things you’re into, and where you live, and how others can get in touch. Message you on the Substack App (I know, ugh, but it does work); email you; email *me* so I can connect you (I have access to email addresses on the backend and am happy to perform this service).
Don’t feel like you have to sell some awesome version of yourself. Be honest and be explicit. If you’re really looking for someone within a 15 minute drive, don’t hedge. If you want a bookclub where everyone really fucking reads the book, don’t equivocate. If you want to take a walk every Friday at 8 am and want to see who else would be game to join, speak your truth. If you want to start a casual crafting hour, amazing, describe your vision.
I can’t vet every paid subscriber of Culture Study, so proceed with the same sort of caution you would if you met someone who seems pretty awesome while on vacation). And I beg of you: don’t make my life and others’ difficult by being skeevy. This is not a dating app. And if someone is being skeevy to you, please let me know (annehelenpetersen at gmail) and I will remove them from the community. I mean it.
It’s gonna be chaotic but I think it might also be awesome. For reading ease, let’s put our general area (particularly if you’re looking for people in your area) in caps. So I’d say: THEREABOUTS WHATCOM COUNTY, WASHINGTON. If you’re not looking for location specific, I can’t wait to see how you define what you’re looking for in ALL CAPS.
And to reiterate: this is a private, subscriber-only space; don’t be butts while trying to make friends and let’s keep this one of the good places on the internet as we try to make connections off of it!