Winning friends and influencing people, minus the emotional manipulation

Making friends isn’t always easy. Friendship requires compatibility, decency, and vulnerability, which are not things one can always provide on command. Luckily, Stranded is here to provide three surefire, tried and true, field-tested tactics to help you start making friends from scratch. 

1. A Jazzy Vibe Check 

One thing Jerry Seinfeld is never given enough credit for is the perfect line to get conversation moving: “You like jazz?” This is perfect for several reasons. Scenario one, you like jazz and they like jazz. Great! Something in common, and conversation has already begun. Two, neither of you like jazz. Common enemies make common friends, the perfect way to keep things moving. Three, you like jazz and they don’t, or vice versa. Maybe this one isn’t for you. Sometimes the arrow of friendship missing a mark is just you dodging a bullet.

2. Voter Fraud Lite

This tactic came in handy during the 2018 US Senate race. One half-completed registration for Tennessee landed me a years-long friendship, and it can do the same for you! Our main tool here is the colourful world of voter fraud. You’d be surprised how far you can get in the voter registration process without being forced to prove your citizenship; that’s plenty of time for someone to catch your eye and say something like “what are you doing?” or “that looks illegal,” or “Trump warned me about people like you.” These things, while not positive, are far better than silence. With any luck, they’ll join in conversation, and, depending how far you get, you two could be minting a new friendship in the back of a squad car that very evening! 

3. The Portuguese Gambit

Performed only once, albeit very successfully, the Portuguese Gambit is a high-risk, high-reward scenario. The first step is to become highly educated in a niche area of geography (originally, Portugal). Then, begin amassing things that allow you to pass as someone of that culture: clothing items, songs on a playlist, even a couple of swear words. From here on, proceed using our aforementioned tips on how to attract friends, passing yourself off as at least half of the nationality you’ve learned to adopt from. A year into the friendship, reveal the truth about who you are. This is the difficult part. There’s a 50 percent chance your friends will find this a huge breach of trust and leave you. But, there’s a 50 percent chance you’ll come off as such a character that they’ll be like “oh [your name], how funny!”