Connector Field Notes #3

Strangers shouting at me on the street, in a good way

I'm a Buffalo Bills football fan. We're a fan base known for our dedication, our heart, and our tailgate antics. But I think we should also be known for our connection to each other.

Anywhere I go in Boston in a Bills hat, I get a "Go Bills!" from a stranger- a fellow Bills fan I haven't met yet. It's an instant commonality with another fan, spanning pretty much all demographics. It happens in other cities I visit, too.

Just in the span of one weekend, I shared quick moments of connection with someone at another table in a restaurant, someone stuck in traffic in their car who rolled down their window to shout to me on the sidewalk, and someone else walking past me down the street.

It's an interesting phenomenon, this unspoken social norm that we Bills fans acknowledge each other in public- especially in a city where we're certainly the minority. It makes me feel more connected to the broader fan community and to my own local community.

Connection in motion

Go to things even if the only person you know who will be there is the host.

I recently had a weekend that was particularly busy with social events- two different friends' birthday gatherings and a dinner with old friends in from out of town. All three carried a common theme of seeing and meeting people from extended friend of friend groups.

There were people I hadn't seen in ten years, people I had met once or twice or seen peripherally at other events but never really talked to, brand new people. All three social events were a large enough group of tangentially connected people for there to be multiple combinations and permutations of people for conversations, creating the experience of evolving, moving connection- moving between rooms of a house, from one end of the table to another.

"Tangentially connected" is also important. Everyone there had been invited there by someone I knew, and that made everyone feel familiar. A group this size could even form the basis for a community.

Some of the friend groups originated from broader communities, and doubled as an additional touchpoint with those communities. I also ran into another group of people I knew at the same restaurant as the dinner.

Going out and doing things in places where other people are also going out and doing things has a ripple effect, creating an outsized impact on potential relationships to build and on feelings of connectedness.

Go play in the snow

I have to imagine the pickup hockey games in the snow last weekend on the frozen Public Garden ice were spontaneous gatherings. A Saturday snow day, what luck!

And half a dozen different groups of adult friends met up, swept snow off the ice, and made goal posts out of the snow boots they had traded for skates. The joy was palpable.

There's something about spending time with people unplanned and in person, doing something off our screens.