A young man has turned to social media for friends after moving from Melbourne to Sydney six months ago and reaching “breaking point” over the realisation he did not have anyone to hang out with.
The TikTok, captioned “Who in Sydney wants to be friends?”, has since garnered almost 60,000 views and hundreds of comments inviting him to social events in Sydney.
“I feel like I was at breaking point,” Harald Hugo told news.com.au.
“I was like: I am desperate for some friends and some interaction”.
The Coogee local had just returned from a social-packed Thailand trip and realised he was coming home to an empty social life.
“I just felt like: oh my god, I’m back here now and yes, it’s nice to be back in Sydney, but I just need that kind of interaction again and I was realising I don’t have that source of friendship,” the 28-year-old said.
“I thrive on social interaction, I recharge by being around people and talking.”
The UK-born model and TV producer who moved to Australia two years ago said he saw another TikToker make a similar plea and felt inspired to do the same thing in order to book out his social calendar.
“I found it so much easier to make friends there (Melbourne) than I have here,” Mr Hugo said in a deflated tone in his post on Thursday.
“I mean I know a few people but either, I have friends that are in relationships, so they don’t really do anything, or I don’t know … they don’t reply to me.
“So, if anyone wants to be friends and hang out in Sydney, please let me know.”
Mr Hugo admitted that it “does not help” that he works remotely, and will be alone most of the time, but rattled off a list of activities he is willing to do.
“But, look, if anyone wants to go for a drink – I love a beer, swim, beach, go to the pool. I love it.
“I want to be friends with you guys! Who wants to hang out?”
His plea was answered, with a fellow Coogee local inviting him on a coffee catch-up the very next morning. Others invited him for a swim at the South Coogee Mahon pool, asked to meet at the pub for a beer, and one person even asked for a Yo-Chi catch-up.
“It worked,” Mr Hugo told news.com.au, and he now has made genuine plans with people off the back of the viral video.
“I’m going to a pub trivia next week in Bronte with these lovely girls, I’ve been invited to a house warming party, and I’m going to a language exchange social next week which is so up my street.”
The challenging social landscape
Associate Professor Michelle Lim and CEO of Ending Loneliness Together said Mr Hugo’s story of struggling to find friends is something that she hears “day to day”.
When asked if it had to do something with Sydney as a city, she promptly disagreed.
“It’s not about Sydney,” she said.
“It’s not one thing, it’s many. It’s not just digital connection being favoured over in person, but the lack of funding to community spaces, the high quality green spaces.
“It’s being financially strained. It’s battling health conditions, both chronic disease, mental health issues.
“It’s a variety of different things … making this world an incredibly difficult social landscape to not just make but to maintain high quality friendships”.
Ms Lim said young people should push themselves “to have friends of different people of different ages”.
“You might have all your friends scattered everywhere, some are overseas, so, how do you maintain those ones?” she said.
“We all need to be a little bit more diverse in our friendship groups. If we have a few friends and say they are going through something or they’re in a relationship or they’re travelling, then you’ll be at risk of feeling like you don’t have connection.
“So it’s about building complexity into our networks, building different kinds of relationships.”