Making new friends as an adult isn’t easy, but one gal’s viral snubbing by those who she thought were her friends has lead her to a new mission to help others find new besties.
It all started back in May when a young man posted a video on TikTok letting a girl named Marissa know he had overheard her friends making plans for a birthday party and admitting they deliberately choose the weekend she’d be out of town to do it. He then pleaded, “TikTok, help me find Marissa.”
Well, they did just that and soon 23-year-old Marrissa Meizz’s phone was blowing up with folks telling her to check the social media platform. Instead of feeling sorry for herself she decided to out herself on TikTok, and that’s when things got awesome. "People immediately started messaging me saying, ‘Let’s be friends!’” she said. “‘Screw your old friends.’” In fact, she received more than 5,000 messages from folks who were also looking for new friends, so she decided to do something about it.
In June she held a meet up, posting a TikTok video inviting anyone who wanted to come to Central Park on a Saturday, with 200 people showing up, bonding and having a good time for eight hours. And that sparked another idea, the online community "No More Lonely Friends," which seeks to help people find new friends by hosting such meet ups around the country.
- So far Marissa, who doesn’t talk to those old friends anymore, has held them in Los Angeles, Washington, Boston, San Francisco and Philadelphia, with hundreds of mostly young people attending. The events are free, although to help cover costs Marissa has started selling merch, like T-shirts that read, “If you’re reading this, we should be friends.” Marissa is hoping to plan more of these events in the future and hopes to branch out internationally once the pandemic eases.
- “The cool thing is everyone there is to make friends, so everyone looks like they’re already friends but in reality everyone’s showed up alone,” she said, noting that she herself now has plenty of friends. “It’s kind of just turned into a big giant family.”
Source:Yahoo