The Best Ways to Get to Know Someone

Being online is a great way to meet new people from all over the world, whether it’s through a game, a forum, or a chat site. Sometimes, it can be hard to approach someone if you don’t know whether they’re even interested in making new friends. That’s why we’ve put together a few tips to help you start a conversation and figure out whether they want to be your friend too.

Sparking a conversation

Before any communication can happen, you first need to figure out how to actually reach the person you want to approach. If you’re playing a game online, you can usually find their profile through their account name and send a message directly. The same generally applies on a forum. In a live chat, you’ll often have the option to send either a private message or a public one, depending on the platform.

How do you send that first message?

Sending the first message is easily the hardest part of the entire exchange you’re about to have. That’s exactly why it’s worth making a good impression right out of the gate. Start by mentally listing out why you actually want to talk to this specific person. Do you like their playstyle, their profile pictures, or the way they come across in their bio? Figuring that out matters, because while a plain “hi!” will usually get some kind of reply, it rarely leads anywhere near a full conversation on its own.

Pinning down the actual reason you want to talk to someone tends to make for a much more interesting opener, and it sparks a deeper conversation almost automatically. Say you’re playing Overwatch and you genuinely love how they play a particular character — you could open with something like:

“Hi! I just saw you play as Mercy, and I loved how you pulled off [insert specific technique]. Would you mind telling me how you did that?”

Everyone likes being complimented, and they’ll usually be happy to help you out. From there, you can suggest playing together online again sometime, chatting along the way as you play.

If it’s someone’s photos or profile description that caught your eye instead, a message about a game obviously won’t land the same way. Complimenting them still works here too, but you want it to actually invite a conversation, not just land as a one-off compliment with nowhere to go.

“Hi there, I just noticed your profile and really like your style. I’m into [insert something from their profile or interests] too — would you like to chat sometime?”

A message like that shows you’re genuinely interested in them without coming across as unsettling. If they’re interested too, they’ll reply, and the conversation can take it from there naturally.

Subjects to talk about

When a conversation first kicks off, you’ll usually stay focused on whatever topic sparked it in the first place. After a while, though, you’ll both notice things starting to slow down. If you’d rather that not happen, it’s worth having a few reliable subjects and questions ready to keep things moving. Just keep in mind that if the other person genuinely isn’t interested in continuing, you shouldn’t force it — in that case, it’s usually better to spend your energy finding someone else to talk to instead.

Here are a few reliable ideas for keeping a conversation genuinely active.

Culture and language

If the person you’re talking to is from a different country, it’s a genuinely fun angle to ask about their culture and language. You can share a bit about your own in return. They might even be interested in learning a new language themselves, which gives you both a natural excuse to teach each other something alongside just chatting.

Food and drinks

This one overlaps with culture too. Ask someone about their favorite foods and drinks, how they’re typically prepared, and what makes them special to that person specifically. Trading recipes is a genuinely good way to bond, and if you ever end up meeting in person, you can offer to cook each other your respective favorite dishes.

Hobbies

This is probably the most common topic when getting to know someone, and for good reason. Asking about someone’s hobbies helps you understand them better, and gives them a chance to talk about something they’re genuinely passionate about. You might even discover you have far more in common than you initially assumed.

Religion and politics

These topics can be a bit more sensitive, but they can also lead to genuinely interesting conversations when approached with care. It helps to stay open-minded toward opinions that differ from your own. Above all, keep it friendly — if you notice the tone starting to shift negative, it’s fine to steer things toward a different topic instead.

Say you’re Christian and the person you’re talking to is Pagan — you could ask how they came to their beliefs, and what they do to honor their gods. In return, you can share something about your own religion, comparing where the two overlap or differ. The same logic applies to politics. If you’re an American Democrat chatting with a Dutch left-leaning voter, you could ask about their political system, what they see as its strengths and weaknesses, and which causes they personally support and why.

Family and friends

How often have you actually met your friends’ parents in real life? Probably only a handful of times. That’s exactly why it’s completely normal to ask about family and friends when getting to know someone online too. Ask if they have siblings, what pets they have, or what animal they’d choose if they could have any pet in the world.

Reading the pace of the conversation

Not every conversation needs to move at the same speed, and it’s worth paying attention to how quickly the other person replies, how much detail they include, and whether they’re the one asking questions back. A slower, shorter reply style usually just means someone prefers a more relaxed pace, not that they’ve lost interest — matching their energy rather than pushing for more tends to keep things comfortable for both sides.

Additional tips

Most chat sites and in-game chats have rules you’re expected to follow. Make sure you don’t cross any lines, and keep every conversation friendly, whether you agree with the other person or not.

If you and the other person genuinely click, you can eventually suggest moving to text messaging or a video call. Only do this once both of you feel comfortable with it — you’re always allowed to decline, and so are they, without it needing to be a big deal either way.

Lastly, it’s completely okay if someone doesn’t want to talk all the time. They have their own life going on, and there are plenty of other people out there to get to know too. Conversations can feel a little awkward at first, but the more of them you start, the easier it eventually becomes to genuinely get to know someone new.

Ask better follow-up questions

A lot of conversations stall not because the topic ran out, but because the questions stayed too surface-level to actually go anywhere. Instead of stopping at “what do you do for fun,” follow up with “what got you into that in the first place?” or “what’s something about it most people don’t get?” Layered questions like these signal genuine curiosity rather than a checklist, and they tend to pull out the kind of specific, personal answers that make someone feel actually heard.

Share something back

Getting to know someone isn’t a one-way interview, even though it can start to feel that way if you’re the one asking most of the questions. After they answer something, offer a piece of your own perspective or experience in return, rather than immediately firing off the next question. This back-and-forth is what actually makes a conversation feel like a connection instead of an interrogation, and it gives the other person just as much of a chance to get to know you.

Conclusion

Getting to know someone online really just comes down to genuine curiosity, a bit of patience, and knowing a few good topics to fall back on when the conversation needs a nudge. Start with something specific rather than generic, keep the tone friendly even on trickier subjects, and let the pace follow whatever feels comfortable for both of you. The rest tends to follow naturally from there.