Serendipity has been lost. If you aren't at least open to talk to randoms, you are stuck in your own network. People you know from school or work, and people they know, that's it.
You won't be approachable when you are paying attention to a phone.
And it's valuable. There's a lot of people you'll find interesting, but they happen to not be within 2 hops of you. If you want to put a number on it, look at what people pay (opportunity cost) for educational or work opportunities. The social network you'll get is often touted as one of the main benefits of private school, for instance.
Despite being a bit of an introvert, I often reach out to randoms. Just to see what's there. It's been a great strategy thus far.
Theoretically, the serendipity part of it could be replicated online (see Omegle etc.) but I feel that the current regulatory regimes in most countries have a preference for building social media that simply serves up anodyne engagement porn, etc.
The internet is a low-trust environment. Any scammer can reach you from anywhere in the world and try to take advantage of that desire for serendipity. You mention Omegle specifically, which was a hunting ground for sexual predators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omegle#Child_sexual_abuse
It's the things that don't scale and instead have high barriers to entry that are most likely to produce actual healthy human connection.
I live in a vacation area upstairs from a bar frequented by tourists. I’m friends with the bartender. I’ll go down there when it’s not too busy sit at the bar talk to the bartender and whoever else comes around and is interested in talking. Mostly other guys or couples.
I usually avoid talking to women because I’m obviously married wearing my ring and no matter what, it might come across as creepy and women usually have their guard up and are probably there with spouses somewhere around.
Those are unknown to you, but not completely random. They are at least rich enough to go on vacation, and outgoing enough to go to a bar (and either have friends to go on vacation with or be coupled up), and the bartender is helping you screen them.
Many people typically want to chat with people unknown to them, but not completely random either (especially for women).
There are certain environments where you can randomly talk to people and it’s considered a social norm and certain environments you can’t.
Sitting at the bar is one of those places. I usually go, get one drink and sip on soda the rest of the time and just talk. The bartender doesn’t mind because we are friends and I bring him a lot more business just from other people hanging around and ordering drinks.
On the other hand, the gym is usually not a place where people want to talk and especially where women don’t want to be approached by men. I use to teach group fitness part time in another life and the exception was as one of the few straight men (and at the time single), women naturally came up and spoke to me or I could start conversations with them and thier guard would be down.
Also airports, planes and other public transportation are places I generally don’t strike up random conversations.
You won't be approachable when you are paying attention to a phone.
And it's valuable. There's a lot of people you'll find interesting, but they happen to not be within 2 hops of you. If you want to put a number on it, look at what people pay (opportunity cost) for educational or work opportunities. The social network you'll get is often touted as one of the main benefits of private school, for instance.
Despite being a bit of an introvert, I often reach out to randoms. Just to see what's there. It's been a great strategy thus far.