NEED TO KNOW
- Josie Stinson bought a ticket to a meetup for people looking to make friends, only to get stood up
- She shared her experience on TikTok, and the video got nearly 1 million views
- Stinson tells PEOPLE the viral video allowed her to connect with other people in her area.
Making friends as an adult can be hard. Josie Stinson learned this firsthand.
Recently, the 21-year-old decided she wanted to join a club to meet more people in Salem, Mass., where she’s currently based. After researching various social groups in the area, she came across an Eventbrite listing for an “Anti-loneliness Club” meetup that was happening at a local restaurant.
Thinking “what’s the worst that could happen,” Stinson tells PEOPLE she bought a $12 admission ticket to the meeting, which included dinner and an opportunity to mingle with other people in her area.
“I thought, ‘Worst comes to worst. I have a nice meal at a place that I already like,'” she shares. “The day comes, and I get a little nervous because I realized I got a confirmation email, so I know that I have my ticket, but there were no instructions on if we were meeting somewhere, or what to do when you got there.”
Stinson arrived at the restaurant early to make sure she didn’t miss anything. However, when she told the hostess she was there for an “anti-loneliness” event, they couldn’t find a reservation with that information.
She showed the ticket to four people at the restaurant, but none of them had heard of the event. They then asked the owner, and he said, “I think this is the cruelest prank I’ve ever heard of in my life.”
Josie sitting at the six-person table.
Josie Stinson
“The owner explained that if there was an event, that he definitely would have known about it, because they have to tell him first,” Stinson shares.
Still, she decided to wait for other people to show up, just in case they also fell for the listing. She was seated at a six-person table, where she ordered a drink, waited for people to come, and then ordered another.
Eventually, the owner of the restaurant brought her a free cake, apologized for what happened, and then she left.
Soon after, Stinson emailed the organizers of the event, but never got a response. She also asked Eventbrite for a refund, which they provided.
She posted about the experience on TikTok, and the video went viral, amassing nearly 1 million views. Since then, Stinson says people have reached out to talk about their own experiences trying to make friends as adults.
In the weeks since, she has been forming friendships with some of the people she met online as a result, with thousands of people suggesting different services she can use or clubs she can join.
While some people, such as the restaurant owner, suggested the meetup may have been a prank, Stinson notes that she has seen listings for other events held by the same club in her area, leading her to believe she “most likely just [got] stood up by my group” rather than the whole thing being fake.
Josie Stinson.
Josie Stinson
Still, she says the situation “hasn’t steered me away from joining if I saw something similar.”
“Now it’s instilled in me forever to triple check every plan I ever do in my life and make sure I know exactly where I’m supposed to be, because I’m assuming I definitely just missed something, or they forgot to send me something,” Stinson shares.
While she hopes no one else goes through a similar experience, it has taught her how to “laugh at bad situations.”
“Learn to laugh at yourself in the situations you end up in. Once they sat me at that six-person table alone my first thought was ‘This is the funniest thing in the entire world,'” she shares. “Learning to laugh at yourself in those situations is the best thing you can do, because if I got embarrassed, or wallowed, it would have been a worse experience.”
“Life isn’t that serious, you put yourself out there, you know you tried,” she adds. “It’s better than not trying at all.”
