I posted earlier about how people started conversations with me more than usual when I was playing a musical instrument in public. I noticed that this positively affected peoples’ perceptions of me and in a way of my “status” in a setting where I otherwise would have blended into the background.
Today I took the day off and found myself in a separate public place (coffee shop). I noticed a fellow bring a cylindrical electric lighter he’d gotten as a holiday present from his family. He was showing it off to the staff at the coffee shop and got a lot of positive attention from both the baristas and other customers.
This reminded me of an experience I’d had at a kava bar I frequented in a past life where I had some ant candy and scorpion candy (ants and scorpions petrified in hard candy) on me. I offered some to the staff members at the venue and was greeted with curiosity and enthusiasm.
***itt tl;dr*** if your goal is to make friends, bring something with you that will serve as a conversation starter or show off your unique interests and experiences in a positive way – and perhaps that you can deliver a “performance” about with an engaging story. The more that I think about this, this is what show and tell was trying to teach us to do in school though I never quite picked up on it until now.
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To add on this, bad magic tricks are really great for this. And by bad I mean poorly performed or obvious how it is completed. I will take a rag I keep on me and drape it over some small object. When picking up the rag, I will pick up the item and act mystified on where it went. It usually gets a chuckle followed by occasional follow up questions. The best part of it is you can do it anywhere and it takes no effort.