There's a lot of people I like quite a lot, and significant obligatory-connections about. But gee man, I'd trade in a ton of these connections of solid friends/relations for people whose values I can more clearly recognize & that reflect my own obsessive geek interests than I could comfortably admit in real life. The really good people are not in high supply.

I find again and again a real & immediate need to work hard to connect the very good folk, to get those with deep interests talking. Many just bow out to the mundane. So be it for them, but it's a loss to see very high intellectual potential just inundate itself among the norm.