23[M4A] from Polokwane How do I actually make friends, meet people and eventually date?
Sorry for the paragraphs but I wrote this to vent
I'm a 23M from Polokwane who finds himself almost always at home unless I have to go to campus.
I'm usually at home learning IT stuff or gaming. I'm into games like Valorant, Battlefield, Counter-Strike, etc., but I spend a lot of my gaming time playing benchmarks on Kovaak's. I also love learning about and testing hardware and gaming peripherals like mice, mousepads and keyboards.
Music is another thing I feel isolated over. I don't really listen to what most people around me listen to. I'm into atmospheric wave phonk like LXST CXNTURY, SVDNESSMANE, iGRES and FLONEX, as well as darker rap like $uicideboy$, Bones, Night Lovell, Ghostemane and R€SENTVUL. People have called my music taste weird for years, so it's been difficult finding people with similar interests.
I've tried socialising at school, but I often feel like people aren't interested in me. I've had situations where people would ditch me to go with their other friends. I understand that people have their own friends, but it still hurts when you're left alone and asking to come along starts feeling like you're begging to be included.
I've also hung out with people I've known since primary school, but sometimes I can feel from their energy that they don't really want me around. Maybe some of it is just my anxiety, but it's difficult not to think about it.
Going out can actually make this worse. I recently went to the movies on a Saturday and seeing everyone outside with their friends, dressed up and having fun made my anxiety kick in and I just wanted to go home. I'm also pretty simple with how I dress. I like streetwear, but I'm not really into following fashion trends or buying loads of clothes. I'd rather spend that money on a new mouse or keyboard.
At campus I'm usually alone. Sometimes I'll literally sit in the bathroom for an hour just to avoid people because I feel like I'm being a nuisance.
One thing that genuinely hurts me is that most of the people I've met who actually understand me tend to be from other provinces, or even overseas. I've connected with people from Europe, Australia, North America, etc., and sometimes I can have a much easier conversation with someone thousands of kilometres away than someone who lives near me.
It makes me wonder why I struggle so much to find people around my own area who I genuinely click with.
Even when I'm in Johannesburg, it somehow feels like everything I've described gets multiplied by 10. There are so many people around, but I somehow feel even more disconnected and out of place. Seeing people everywhere with their own groups can make me feel even more alone.
When it comes to dating, my last serious relationship was in 2019. For a while I compared every girl to my ex, but eventually I accepted that she had moved on. Since then I've had basically no luck with relationships or dating apps.
I'm not particularly tall or confident, I'm not naturally funny, I don't party or drink/smoke, and I'm not really into the whole "goofy" internet/social scene either. I dress clean and simple but I'm not someone who cares much about fashion. I've tried going outside my interests just to meet people, including parties and grooves, but it never really worked.
I've basically been an indoors person since I was a kid. I'd rather be on the internet, watching something, learning about technology or playing games.
I'm in my last year of college now, and I know I'm still young, but I'm worried that if I keep isolating myself, solitude is eventually going to consume me.
How do I actually meet people and make genuine friends when I've become so used to being alone? And how do I eventually meet someone romantically when I don't really have a social circle?