I'm sure this is more a reflection on me but I try to go out to meet strangers at meetups and I find I quite often don't like the people.
You might get the random ultra woke person who makes it impossible for others to have a conversation because they're just waiting to be triggered by anything anyone else says and find a way to spin every comment into an offence.
If anyone brings up politics then the meetup is over, at least for me.
I struck up a conversation with the person setting next to me at an outdoor cafe. He was probably 84-ish. He'd married someone from Japan he'd met there in the 60s. They had not had any children. I brought up the population issue in a light way (Japan's population is declining), something like making the joke that they didn't help Japan's population decline. He replied something like "anyone who tells you there's an underpopulation issue is lying. The planet has 8 billion people which is way too many". And that was when I knew I wasn't going to continue the conversation.
Perhaps it is more a reflection of you, or of US (?) attitudes.
This 3,000 person study [1] in Germany matched pairs of strangers for private face-to-face meetings to discuss divisive political issues. It found asymmetric effects: conversations with like-minded individuals caused political views to become more extreme (ideological polarization); by contrast, conversations with contrary-minded individuals did not lead to a convergence of political views, but significantly reduced negative beliefs and attitudes toward ideological out-group members (affective polarization), while also improving perceived social cohesion more generally. These effects of contrary-minded conversations seem to be driven mostly by positive experiences of interpersonal contact.
> You might get the random ultra woke person who makes it impossible for others to have a conversation because they're just waiting to be triggered by anything anyone else says and find a way to spin every comment into an offence.
> If anyone brings up politics then the meetup is over, at least for me.
> I brought up the population issue in a light way (Japan's population is declining), something like making the joke that they didn't help Japan's population decline. He replied something like "anyone who tells you there's an underpopulation issue is lying. The planet has 8 billion people which is way too many". And that was when I knew I wasn't going to continue the conversation.
You brought up an intensely political issue (population decline), they responded, and then you got mad at them and felt like they brought up a political issue?
It sounds like you are doing exactly the thing you are complaining about "ultra woke" people doing.
You might get the random ultra woke person who makes it impossible for others to have a conversation because they're just waiting to be triggered by anything anyone else says and find a way to spin every comment into an offence.
If anyone brings up politics then the meetup is over, at least for me.
I struck up a conversation with the person setting next to me at an outdoor cafe. He was probably 84-ish. He'd married someone from Japan he'd met there in the 60s. They had not had any children. I brought up the population issue in a light way (Japan's population is declining), something like making the joke that they didn't help Japan's population decline. He replied something like "anyone who tells you there's an underpopulation issue is lying. The planet has 8 billion people which is way too many". And that was when I knew I wasn't going to continue the conversation.
(not Japan but same topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk)