this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2025
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Greentext

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This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.

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If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.

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[–] kartoffelsaft@programming.dev 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The part where he talks about video games definitely feels like my experience, at least when it comes to meeting people outside of the context of a specific game and its community.

When I've gotten into convos in these situations, usually it'll be evident they mostly only play some set of the following games:

  • Overwatch
  • Rainbow Six
  • Genshin Impact
  • Stardew Valley
  • Helldivers 2
  • Last of us
  • God of War
  • GTA
  • Red Dead 2

That's not a complete list, but for the most part it will be a bunch of games like that with a sizeable, committed, "normie" following that I don't play. I can't bond with these people over games even though on a surface level we're both "gamers", because the only game we'll have in common is Minecraft.

I think the gap here is that for someone like me or anon, we have interests and want to find people who are also interested in that thing, but from the sounds of your post you're finding people and getting your interests from them. In the latter case, of course there's no trouble connecting with people, because you're more willing to mold yourself to do so.

[–] Eq0@literature.cafe 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I have been mulling over your comment for a couple of days.

I think the set up is different. I have a lot of things I am interested in, but none that is fundamental. So I can easily start a conversation over a shared interest, even if the other interests do not align. Sometimes I pick up extra stuff on the way, but mostly I use a limited shared interest to set the foundations from which to develop a friendship. I find that once you get talking for a bit, you don’t need a specific shared topic anymore.

Do you aim to build friendships fully connected to your interests?

[–] kartoffelsaft@programming.dev 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Everything you just described is my experience too, minus the part about having a lot of interests already.

The thing that I was describing is that, for whatever reason, the things that I find interesting are niche enough to others that I won't find people who already know/care about the same things organically. That's not much of an issue if you have enough interests to balance that out, but I don't really have that.

To put it another way, I'm not filtering for people who already have most of my interests, I'm filtering for people who share any of my interests, but that's already filters most because I'm into few things with little popularity. So, "connected to [my] interests?" Yes. "Fully"? No.

That probably sounds really lonely, but I honestly don't mind that much. Like you've described, most of the friends I've had for a while I can talk about whatever with. What I'm describing is mostly a mild inconvenience when meeting new people.

[–] Eq0@literature.cafe 1 points 3 hours ago

Thanks for being willing to share your experience!