Post-college software engineer in Syracuse ran a 5-week experiment approaching 35 gym strangers daily to solve adult friendship isolation.
Key Takeaways
Opening line “Hey I see you here all the time. You’re pretty strong. What’s your split?” worked as a repeatable cold-start script; later personalized per person.
Out of 35 approaches, 2 turned into actual hangouts (dinner, movie night); 5-6 became regular brief social contacts.
Diminishing returns hit after week 3: nurturing 5-6 existing connections outperformed continuously acquiring new ones.
Key behavior fix: approach immediately to prevent the mental abort loop; waiting seconds allowed chickening out.
Awkward rejections (short replies, no follow-up) stopped stalling the experiment once treated as expected base-rate, not personal failure.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters broadly validated the compliment-first cold-open as genuinely disarming, contrasting it with manipulative “networking” tactics; Carnegie’s How to Win Friends was cited as aligned reading.
The Ben Franklin effect (ask for a small favor rather than offer one) was proposed as an alternative gym opener, but skeptics noted mid-workout favor requests often backfire more than compliments.
Several commenters flagged that structured-activity venues (climbing gyms, CrossFit, running clubs, volunteering) have structurally lower friction than standard globo gyms because shared tasks replace the need for a cold opener entirely.
Notable Comments
@aurumque: questions the real ROI – “5 weeks / 35 people / no new recurring friends” – and treats thin outcomes as evidence of how thick adult social shells are.
