Tonight my wife and I are heading out to dinner with a group of strangers. This group of strangers was found using Meetup.com. We knew (and a friend giving advice also emphasized this) that it would be important for us to get out there and try to be social right away … or we could easily fall into the trap of just hanging out with each other.
So! What will tonight bring? I can tell you what it won’t bring: privacy.
We recently watched an episode of the Morgan Spurlock show Inside Man (he’s the dude that did Super Size Me). The episode was about just how much of your information is out there, available for consumption by parties you would never know about or assume had your information (and they’re selling it for a profit to boot).
Motivated by this somewhat shocking but then again not-shocking-at-all episode, I decided to do some intense online research on our future dinner guests.
Here are some topics that might come up at dinner:
- Tom, why do you like to google shoes so much? I noticed that you have only bought 2 pairs in the past year but you google specific women’s shoes on average seven times a day.
- Barb, did the cops end up figuring out it was you that bumped into the car in the mall parking lot?
- Lisa, I notice you’re drinking wine. Is it one that pairs well with your surprisingly weird obsession with Alf?
- Joseph, you were adorable as a baby. I used Zazzle to make a photo album of you growing up, would you like a copy?
Wish us luck at dinner!!
DumbFunnery 
Comments on: "Dinner With Strangers" (4)
Warning: Meetup groups are often a drain hole cover for humanity. You’ll encounter a rainbow of flavors of social incompetence, attachment disorder, and general introverted twitchiness in the first fifteen minutes, then you’ll have to endure them attempting to “connect” for the next hour and a half.
Advice: Find one or two sane people right away (this will be easy as that will be all there are), exchange contact information, and get together outside of Meetup. Do not tell the Others where you will be going, this is key. If you found good people, your networking plan will kick in and soon you’ll have enough names in your phone for a nice barbecue by the Fourth of July. Good luck.
Haha a drain hole cover for humanity is an amazing phrase.
It seemed like there were a few nice folks, so we must’ve have good luck.
(To be honest I expected a bunch of weirdos … but not weirdos in a fun way, like I consider myself. But weirdos in a, “say, that’s a great costume” “…this isn’t a costume” kinda way.
If you made it out of there with less than three stalkers tailing your car, you did, indeed, have “good luck.”
Don’t worry, once you’ve set the meeting-people-thing in motion, the universe has a way of delivering in the most delightful, non-stalkery way.
Haha how right you proved to be!