Riiya said:
That's one reason I'm hesitant about going to a SA-based MeetUp group. Going to a message board for people of SA is one thing, hanging around with a bunch of us for hours..? I'm not sure what we're even going to talk about, to be honest. "Let's see whose SA is worse: yours or mine"?
In my vast experience of one meetup, that certainly wasn't a problem. The other three people were very talkative, one pretty much a motormouth who prompted me with questions to make me talk from time to time. They were talking about past experiences, books, CBT/ACT, ways of getting into society more, life in general, even other meetup groups they were in or considering. Very friendly people, exchanging phone numbers, planning the next event where they were going to learn a card game, and so forth. And that's why I never went back, I was the only anti-social freak and felt pressured to move too fast because of their vastly superior social skills/experience.
For me, the point of going to a meetup is to say that I made it there and didn't die. That's very rewarding to pull off every once in a while, the warm afterglow and feeling of being human lasts me a year or so. If you're more socially advanced and that isn't challenging for you then perhaps there's not as much point for you (though the socially advanced people at my meetup seemed to think there was).