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For about four years now, my thing has been trivia night. It helps that I enjoy it, so I’m almost always there. It’s super low-pressure, and I don’t have to overthink it. Meet a couple at a coffee shop who seem cool? No need to try setting something up, “I’m at the same place the same time every week. If you want to hang out, that’s where I’ll be.” You work through the chaff and start finding a core group of consistent people. Really this is what church was but that's just too much for most people to bite off.
Another key, though, is that if you want to develop a social circle, oneself has to show up when others put on events.
I think this is one thing people don't realize. With all the discussion about "third places" in recent years, it's almost like the writers complaining about them are essentially asking for bars without admitting they want bars. I'm a member of a local VFW post. I go several times a week. I don't go because I like drinking, I go because I like the people. If you're a regular at a bar, you know you can show up any time and you're friends will be there. Not all of your friends, but at least some of them. It's the ultimate low commitment social life, because there's never any obligation or expectation to show up, but it's always there if you want to do it. And if you just want to sit there and read or look at your phone, you can do that, too, because, even if you know everybody else in the bar, you didn't specifically go there to meet them specifically, so there's no obligation to entertain them.
For all this lack of obligation, though, it only really works if you commit to it; you have to go there often enough that everybody knows your name for it to have that kind of effect. If you only go a few times a year, you won't know anybody well enough for it to be worth it. The only time you can really get away from this is if you slowly back off after having gone regularly for years, at which point you can do the minimum to keep in touch. So when writers complain about the lack of some amorphous "third space" that I imagine they picture being like a college student union, I wonder if they realize that they don't work unless enough people are committed. Is there going to be a critical mass of people who show up several times a week solely out of routine to make it attractive for a stranger to want to join the community? What's the default activity? Bars have pool tables, dart boards, trivia nights, etc., but most people default to sitting around the bar bullshitting.
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Whoah now buddy, that could turn me into some kind of... extrovert?
More seriously, the type of friends I make tend to be introverted nerds so generally speaking they don't like planning and holding events, so I do most of the heavy lifting there. But when somebody is putting in the effort to coordinate something, be it trivia or just hanging out at a park and tossing a frisbee, I want to recognize that effort and show up for it.
I'll be honest, its a good way to sort high agency people from low agency ones. The sort who actually plan events and put out the word and do the legwork to 'make things happen' are generally high functioning and reliable, which is a signal correlated with other good traits, generally. That is the signal I'm trying to send.
In my experience, planning tends to go a lot smoother if it's the kind of event where your own personal attendance isn't contingent on other people showing up. If I'm trying to get a group together to ride bikes, and I make it clear that it's a group ride, if I don't get sufficient interest then the few people who are interested will probably drop out as well, if only because of a perception that we need some kind of critical mass. If I simply say that I'm going and if anyone wants to join they're welcome to, then it seems clear from the beginning that it wasn't intended as a big group blowout and if only one other person is interested they won't feel weird about showing up, and in turn pressure on the group isn't as much so more people will show up overall.
Yeah its almost paradoxical. On one end, if there is extremely high pressure to attend/not flake then attendance seems to be more reliable (maybe there's a nonrefundable charge of some kind or some other major cost for not attending). Or its an extremely desirable event that isn't repeated often, like a popular band's concert or similar.
On the other end, if its lowkey, minimal cost, and you just invite as many as possible and don't really put much pressure on attendance then you also get pretty decent turnout (although oftentimes people will happily arrive 'late' or leave 'early.'
Its the middle zone, where you invite people to an event with a CLEAR expectation that they will show up if they agree to, and where the main 'cost' of flaking is losing social points, and you put in at least a medium amount of effort to following up with people/'securing' commitments to come where people are most likely to cancel on the day of. Probably a combination of feeling pressured to accept at the time they're being asked, and then 'deciding' later that its really not that serious and cancelling.
There's also a particular dynamic with females. I specifically try to have mixed-gender gatherings (part of my goal is to get people of opposite sex to form connections and maybe create dates and relationships), but with females in particular, they tend to only want to come if they can 'know' that other females will be there. And if they aren't coordinating directly with other females but instead through me, the organizer, there's an information asymetry. If I tell them "oh yeah plenty of women are coming" how much do they trust my word? So last minute flakes are probably the rule there.
And the end result seems to be that usually NO (single) females attend an informal event unless there is some other major enticement. Some girls will attend with their boyfriend, and sometimes a lone female shows up and ends up being the only female there and hangs around somewhat awkwardly then leaves early, unless someone manages to engage her in a friendly conversation and puts her at ease. I've gotten decent at that.
The trick I've tried lately to some success is to try to invite two females at the same time (i.e. approach both simultaneously so they can both see/hear the other accept the invitation). And likewise if I have a female friend that I'm sure is coming I ask her to follow up with/confirm other females attending. It feels like an interesting game, trying to lure a woman who is extremely skittish about going to events with unfamiliar people out long enough to gain her trust.
I'm sure there are more secrets to getting women to attend but its a very consistent pattern at this point.
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