When I moved to New York, I thought I’d get an apartment in Bushwick where all the artists lived, but it turned out everything there was too expensive. I ended up in Dyker Heights, in a fourth-floor efficiency with no air-conditioning and no space to work on my art. I’d hoped the city would be inspiring, but the only available job was a part-time gig doing window design in downtown Manhattan. It was a two-hour commute for a three-hour job, and I’d return every night depressed from seeing so many people who looked like they’d given up. So I quit the job, made my apartment my island of safety, and started doing online profile edits.

During that time, I found some solace in Live Online Parties. Someone on Blogger would say they were hosting a party, I’d pay the streaming cover, and people would talk to the camera like they were my friends. They’d smile a lot and say all the right things, and everyone would act excited and wave when the camera passed, but it felt phony. The pillows on the couches were always fluffed in the right way, the lights around the kitchen were twinkly like in Snapshot posts, and some dumb stranger would throw their arms toward the screen like they were my old friend and get my name wrong. I always ended up leaving the site after an hour to watch comfort porn, where at least the acting was better.

Eventually I joined Hang-Out, which seems like a good way to stay social. It’s $9.99 a month and though it feels like you’re paying for friends, Hang-Out reminds you that you’re only paying for the service, not the people. We’ll never charge you for extra friends, they say, which is a good motto, except you can’t access any personal messages that members send unless you pay the extra monthly fee. But I figured it was worth the cost. I read an article that said five minutes of actual social interaction is good for the lymphatic system.

There’s a group called Board Game Night. Every Thursday, people looking for friends get together in Astoria to drink micro-distilled whisky and play retro games like Monopoly and Sorry. I went a couple times, but everyone was trying to be buddy-buddy and overdoing it. They yelled “Oh my god!” when all I was doing was moving my car past Go. People were friendly and they pretended to like one another, but nobody asked for my number, so I joined a Volleyball Hang-Out instead to get exercise along with the social interaction.