You Met Me At A Very 'Putting Myself Out There' Time In My Life

On community and connection.

This post is a paid collaboration with Eventbrite!

I am guilty of scrolling my phone, standing idly by on the fringes of too many parties. (I open and close TikTok, only to open it again and think Was I expecting there to be another TikTok? A different TikTok?) Not “parties,” actually, which are collective gatherings of people who like the same pop stars and dislike the same influencers, but “brand events,” “brand dinners,” and that impossible-to-define word “brand installations” (which, as far as I can tell, is a gallery opening with bad art). When did every invitation become a night to manage and not a night to enjoy? Moving my room’s perfunctory pile of clothes is the difference between “hosting” and “just having people over.” Our brains are desperate for a connection that feels not just in-the-moment real but part-of-my-world important, a moment of real IRL connection that an open bar and name tag can’t match.

I am guilty, too, of going on dates that feel like networking events and attending networking events that feel like gulags. I miss how watching a movie at a slumber party was part of making a secret-handshake pact to be best friends forever, or the way my friends and I used to show up at each other’s dorms and text someone to bring us chips. One trip to the mall could turn into an entire day of hanging out. I used to pledge allegiance to (follow on Instagram) the girls I met in the bathroom line. The downside to being an adult and responsibly on SSRIs is that I forget to be spontaneous. (I go to bed at a reasonable hour, or I at least end up in bed at a reasonable hour, and then spend a few more hours laughing out loud alone to a bunch of stuff I just read on my phone.) The downside to being an adult right now is that we’re all siloed into online echo chambers where the fear of cringe outranks the desire to know and be known.

There is an alchemy to live connection, the way a semicircle of conversation at a party expands when someone asks what you think of Timothée Chalamet’s sexagenarian superfan, or for the opinion that is most likely to get you canceled. (I will trust you with mine: Everyone’s shoes should stay on while onboard the aircraft … except for mine.) Our calendars should be full of events that give you a reason to watch your Story like it’s a Sofia Coppola movie; we should have more earned social hangovers and regular hangovers. It is magic to make a new friend, to feel yourself slide from “you seem cool,” to “I need your thoughts on…,” to “I am dying to talk shit with you in a corner.” I want to talk about what it feels like to watch my parents get older or make a life for myself in a new city, not just exchanging memes back and forth in a group chat.

Eventbrite has identified five trends in how young people gather today and what we’re looking for: off-script energy, soft-socializing, neighborhood revival, show up to shape it, and layers, not labels. I’m chasing the genuine FOMO of we’ll never get these people in this place ever again, the off-script energy of a night that unfurls like you’ve stumbled upon the best, most unrehearsed good time. Think: a reading night at a magic shop, a silent disco at a train station, a comedy show at a barbershop. The best night genuinely replaces “we’ll invite you to the next one” with “you just had to be there.” Better than the invitation that name-drops a cool photographer who’ll snap a dozen shots and stay for 20 minutes is the invitation you read and don’t know how the organizers could’ve possibly pulled it off. I’ve toured obscure museums after hours and gone behind the scenes of my favorite local venue; now that’s how you get a fun fact.

A dozen people have my exact location (and that’s not even counting my assigned FBI watching me check who has watched my story for the ninth time today), but sometimes connection trumps attention. Instead of sitting at the same dinner with the same menu at the same impossible-to-get-into spot downtown, I want to make a new friend sweating through the same leg routine. Soft-socializing is what my dog’s trainer calls “parallel play,” or doing individual activities separately but side-by-side. Old people are onto something: I want to meet someone to make jokes with at a bingo night. I want to talk to the person asking the smartest questions at a museum tour. The allergies I’d get from a flower arranging class are worth meeting someone cool who reaches for the same fire lilies.

The internet is made up of affinity groups, the corporate boardroom-speak for “stans.” A group of BookTokers in the same room could solve the internet’s literacy crisis, or at least thoughtfully debate Dune and know the definition of third-person omniscient. I know Arianators who have served more active-duty tours than anyone in the Pentagon. The way my ex-model friend Madeline, fluent in Bravo and football, can host a sports trivia night is about layers, not labels, though she does say “go dawgs” every weekend, which I know to mean “there’s a game on.”

There is nothing like hanging out with someone who can complain about the bakery that never makes enough apple gallettes and sells out every single afternoon. (Just make more!) This is the privilege of knowing your neighbors. I never need to borrow a cup of sugar, but I do need to talk about the bodega owner who complains about tap-to-pay! The bliss of having someone three blocks away who also looks forward to the matching vests of the little school kids marching in a line, out for their morning walk! I want a neighborhood revival, to really know my neighbors, not just surreptitiously look them up on LinkedIn because I’m nosy. Didn’t we all move to big cities to live in these cities, to go out in them, to become regulars at the coffee shop with real straws, to make friends with the author who owns the best little bookstore and recommends exactly what you’re in the mood to read? Or even to contribute to this neighborhood as much as you enjoy it, helping out at a trash pick-up or helping with a stoop sale? Show up to shape it is about being an active participant in the kind of community you want to see.

This is the reset to real: about being vulnerable together, about saying yes before you ask who all will be there, about finding a night that’s an adventure, not just appetizers.