Ask HN: Who's Seeking New Friends?
Weird story.<p>I&#x27;m a decent card player and have an interest in systems. I always want to know how something interesting works. I ended up making friends with a guy who was an expert advantage player, someone who knew how to flip the odds at casinos in his favor. Never did anything illegal, but plenty of things the casinos wouldn&#x27;t like you doing if they knew you were doing it, and they&#x27;re watching.<p>To keep our profile low we&#x27;d travel to different places. It looks bad to win too much too many times. Casinos notice.<p>Between travel and off times we&#x27;d end up talking a lot about a lot of things. He was always diving into odd subjects. One of them was Flat Earth. At first it was just curiosity about a peculiar subculture. We&#x27;d discuss how stupid it was, but we&#x27;d also note where they made points we couldn&#x27;t deny.<p>I won&#x27;t say I&#x27;ve swallowed the whole pancake but I&#x27;ve taken a few bites. I&#x27;m not going to get into it here and this is an alt account because it&#x27;s a topic that generates a lot of hostility from some.<p>But I have made a lot of friends in the FE community. They&#x27;re the new people I tend to relate to the best without a known shared background. It&#x27;s not the FE that&#x27;s attractive, it&#x27;s that they&#x27;re people who put very little value on social conformity and thus can be honest in a way that &quot;fit ins&quot; can&#x27;t.<p>I don&#x27;t wear FE tee shirts or proselytize. It&#x27;s just a thing I keep to myself and don&#x27;t trouble anyone with.<p>JADP.