How Do I Make A Friend

I am lonely, how do I make friends?

For a moment I thought I was the one asking this question; it sounds like something I would've written not such a long time ago.When I was in highschool, I barely had any friends, and most of the people I thought were being nice to me turned out to be flakes. They only wanted to be friends with me because I was able to help them on homework, or because they thought it was cool to know someone who was good at martial arts, or because they needed someone to show off to their other friends. I was pretty cynical back then, and it was hard to make any new friends because I thought all of those people were out there to use me.Fast forward a year or so, I was in my last years of highschool; this time I had entered a school for students who were among the top performers in NC. Point is, I thought there would be no different than my old highschool. You'd have classes, albeit more challenging, and you'd have students who were undoubtedly trying to take advantage of each other, even more so because of the difficulty. So when I got there I barely left my room for the first two weeks; my room mate, who went to school with me since 2nd grade, finally exasperated, pushed me out of the room to eat food and go out to talk to someone. Like a fish on land, I was completely lost and (forgive the pun) floundering. That was when I turned around and found this girl, in a red shirt with a cartoon panda on it. To her credit, she was nice enough to say hi to me when I just stood there mouth agape, unable to form words. I managed to say hi, and we talked, for like 5 minutes. And after that a lot of different things happened with me and her, but the important part of this story is not that. No, the important part of this story, is this: In order to find true friends, you first need to go out and talk to people. If you don't, there's no way you can ever find friends. When you're looking for friends, it's best to join social groups (different school clubs/orgs) that you are interested in. By doing so, you ensure that the pool of people and you have something in common to talk about. It also increases the chances that you and they will be like minded. True friends can not be found, they can only be built from our existing friendships. So one step at a time; find some friends first. Then invest time and effort and care in each other to build up trust and loyalty. Best wishes to you!

How do I make friends on Facebook?

I would say it's pretty much the same way that you would in real life. Choose whatever Facebook friends with whom you share common interests (movies, music, video games, knitting, whatever) and scroll through their friends list. Invite anyone who looks intersting to be your friend. Don't try to keep track of who accepts/declines your requests - it's not about you, it's about them, if they decline.  My #1 tip, though - Use the Facebook search engine to find GROUPS with your interests, and send friend requests to people in those groups. It helps to add a short note to your friend request - "Hi, I see you also enjoy crossword puzzles, would you like to be my FB friend?" is much more appealing than a friend request from a random stranger with no explanation.  If you're trying to make friends with pretty girls, to chat or cyber or meet up...just don't. That's creepy and unacceptable in any culture and means you don't have the confidence and/or social skills to meet girls in real life. If that's what you're looking for, then go someplace in real life that girls with similar interests congregate (library? Comicon? AA meeting?) and talk to them in person. Try a unique approach, tailored to the girl you're speaking to, rather than a practiced line. I hope this helps. And remember, the number of friends you have on Facebook has NOTHING to do with your popularity in real life. A lot of the most interesting, attractive people I know have little to no online presence, because they are too busy living and enjoying their lives to be cyber-friends with strangers.