Meetup.com

[sentinel89]

Has anyone had success with meetup.com, for meeting interesting people in the states? I made an account and searched through all the groups in my city, but few of them seemed very interesting to me. Of the few I was interested in, most were either barely active or had only a handful of members (only 1 or 2 would RVSP to a given meetup). So I wanted to know if anyone here has had more success.

[jamesbond]

Maybe Winston should start a 'Happier Abroad' meet up group!

[romparoo]

Meet ups are dying a slow death just like the mail order bride industry.

'Meeting interesting people' is a cop-out from the true intention. Most social situations are heavily tilted to either strictly business or romance seeking. The concept of random strangers showing up, getting to know each other and possibly fall in love is not very unique. It happened in the past when we were attending college, university and friends' parties. It is obvious that these previous meet ups did not work for us otherwise we will not be in Happier Abroad forum.

Go to meet ups if you wish, but you are esentially repeating what you had done in the past. Without the appropriate mental shift among the local ladies, you will still be seen as a nice guy and get ignored just like 10 years ago when you started college, just saying. In fact, random meet ups are far worst than the college ones as far as I heard from those who had tried it.

Three bad scenarios that happen quite frequently (in Australia):
1) severe age mismatch among the group members;
2) the group is heavily dominated by asian women seeking white men; (it gets really frustrated because that is not what you join for)
3) bad boys / hot studs pretending to be lonely good guys (and predictably all women fell for this, just like in college).

I save the worst for last: pretty women who are friends of the organisers. These days a lot of meet ups or speed datings come with a joining fee supposedly to weed out the trolls, and as token wages for the organisers. Unfortunately it is not always possible to reach the desirable male to female ratio. Then it goes exactly like the mail order bride industry where pretty female friends of the organisers become a fixture to most meet ups since their pretty faces are the only thing keeping guys paying the joining fee.

[sentinel89]

Meet ups are dying a slow death just like the mail order bride industry.

'Meeting interesting people' is a cop-out from the true intention. Most social situations are heavily tilted to either strictly business or romance seeking. The concept of random strangers showing up, getting to know each other and possibly fall in love is not very unique. It happened in the past when we were attending college, university and friends' parties. It is obvious that these previous meet ups did not work for us otherwise we will not be in Happier Abroad forum.

Go to meet ups if you wish, but you are esentially repeating what you had done in the past. Without the appropriate mental shift among the local ladies, you will still be seen as a nice guy and get ignored just like 10 years ago when you started college, just saying. In fact, random meet ups are far worst than the college ones as far as I heard from those who had tried it.

Three bad scenarios that happen quite frequently (in Australia):
1) severe age mismatch among the group members;
2) the group is heavily dominated by asian women seeking white men; (it gets really frustrated because that is not what you join for)
3) bad boys / hot studs pretending to be lonely good guys (and predictably all women fell for this, just like in college).

I save the worst for last: pretty women who are friends of the organisers. These days a lot of meet ups or speed datings come with a joining fee supposedly to weed out the trolls, and as token wages for the organisers. Unfortunately it is not always possible to reach the desirable male to female ratio. Then it goes exactly like the mail order bride industry where pretty female friends of the organisers become a fixture to most meet ups since their pretty faces are the only thing keeping guys paying the joining fee.

I can definitely relate to number 1. That's what makes the majority of the meetups so silly. I cannot have fun doing anything with middle aged people going through a mid life crisis. It's just too awkward and unnatural.