The Virtual Villages Helping Digital Nomads Find Real-World Friends
“Anyone want to meet up for some steak?” This was the message posted by a man named David in the Digital Nomads Buenos Aires Facebook group five years ago. I responded, and upon meeting in the leafy Palermo neighborhood, David and I bonded instantly, became thick as thieves, and have since solidified our friendship with reunions in places like Zurich and Playa del Carmen, a bonafide digital nomad hot spot.
Loneliness is one of the challenges of the digital nomad lifestyle, where location-independent professionals travel while working online. However, a variety of virtual communities are helping these remote workers see the world and make friends along the way. There are online conferences where participants Zoom in from everywhere, digital nomad subreddits, and Slack channels where folks can connect. There are also city-specific Facebook groups like Rio Digital Nomads for people living and working in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
While I lived in Playa del Carmen on Mexico’s Caribbean coast as a digital nomad, WhatsApp groups were the lifeblood of my peripatetic existence. There were WhatsApp channels for all sorts of meetups, whether it was board games, ice baths, or sunrise sessions with modern mystics.
Belgian entrepreneur Julie Renson similarly made use of WhatsApp groups while she lived in Playa del Carmen, relying on communities like “Beach Volley in PDC” and “Salsa and Bachata” to fortify her in-real-life social network. She has also lived in warm weather spots like Ivory Coast, Panama, and Thailand, and employs various buddy-building strategies depending on the location.
“Bangkok, for example, has a lot of MeetUp and Facebook groups, but some places like Marrakech don’t have a lot going on,” she says. In those lesser-trammeled places, she posts on Facebook groups before arriving, sharing her travel dates. “Honestly, for me, the best way to meet people is to go to events I find online, which is probably why I’m now working on a tool, Tukioo, that allows people to meet and go to them together,” Renson says. “People are what will make your experience magical.”
Far-Flung Friendships
When she’s living in Portugal’s capital, a haven for digital nomads, British citizen Saskia Hadley uses the Facebook group Lisbon Digital Nomads & Expats. “Having been remote for the best part of 10 years, Facebook groups are a great fallback when you need a hive mind,” she says. Hadley is the chief marketing officer of Noma Collective, a group travel company that provides people with a plug-and-play community of other remote workers in countries including Belize, Kenya, and Sri Lanka. She also typically joins specific-interest Facebook groups like hiking, kickboxing, or European parties to make the most of her location independence.
Connection-seeking nomads also turn to premium, purpose-built communities—some of them with member rolls numbering in the thousands. Nomads.com (formerly NomadList) costs $200 to join, and it is the first port of call for many working wanderlusters, as it gives a popularity ranking of various nomad destinations along with a solid breakdown of living costs, the safety of the locale, and the availability of good Wi-Fi. The members-only platform has an active Telegram chat and hosts as many as 400 meetups per year across the globe. For roving female business owners looking to tap into a peer network, Digital Nomad Girls offers a “virtual sisterhood” with over 39,000 members for $100 per month or $600 annually. Perks include a monthly book club, sharing circles, tandem digital decluttering, and a platform to invite would-be friends on adventures.
While some digital nomads are content mingling during internet-enabled happy hours and Zoom coworking sessions, many of these virtual communities see real-world get-togethers as the end game. This is the case with NomadBase, an online community that for the past two years has assembled borderless workers in Tarifa, Spain, for three weeks of kite surfing, aerial yoga, communal dining, and networking.
NomadBase was founded by Johannes Voelkner, who is also behind Nomad Cruise, the world’s first conference at sea for digital nomads. “Life as a digital nomad can be very isolated,” Voelkner says, “but our program helps nomads become part of an incredible community of like-minded people in a short time.”
