Meeting new people isn’t always comfortable, but it’s the only way to make new friends.

We all heard on the news last month that Los Angeles, for the second year running, has the worst traffic congestion of any city in the nation. Was anyone surprised? I wasn’t. But it did make me reflect on how ironic it is that with 10 million people living in L.A. County, many of us don’t even know our next door neighbor’s name and some of us refuse to leave the house (once we’ve finally managed to get back in from fighting the freeways).

So you take the hell of gridlock traffic, add to it the low-level of social paranoia that makes it improper etiquette to say, “hello” or “good afternoon” when you pass someone on the street, introduce the convenience of digital social communities delivered over high-speed Internet connections and you have all the ingredients for social isolation — and we who are single are particularly vulnerable.

Social media websites provide a sense of human connection without having to get dressed and comb your hair. They deliver a no risk, no effort way (some would say an artificial way) to be part of a human community. But they’ve also become a substitute for what used to mean I saw you, you saw me, we shook hands, we looked into each other’s eyes and had a voice audible conversation — in other words: had a real human interaction.

Part of the design of SingularCity is to provide an online community, but it’s also to provide real-time opportunities to meet people — not with the agenda of finding a mate (although that could happen) but to make new friends and expand our connections to other successful single people who share our singular commonality.

But getting people to actually show up, even when they’ve made a “virtual” commitment to come, takes a ridiculous amount of effort. I hear this from people who plan events and mixers of all kinds all over this city — and it’s especially problematic with the over 30 crowd.

Yes traffic sucks, yes it can be awkward to meet new people for the first time, yes it’s easier to just stay home and post comments on Facebook. But it’s your life and despite the hassles, we do live in an amazing city with some very amazing human beings. Isn’t time you started to really meet some of them?