Matthew Kulesza, a 28-year-old student from Melbourne, is on a quest to get coffee with all of his Facebook friends.
I plan to have a one-on-one coffee with every single one of my 1000+ Facebook "friends" over the space of the next three years, or as long as it takes to complete.An exercise in remembering to socialise with and get to know people outside of the 'book.
So far Matt has caught up with 23 of his Facebook friends, meaning there's A LOT more to go.
Choosing coffee was a conscious decision for Matt, who wanted to catch up with people without the social lubricant of alcohol influencing him.
I think there's also a big difference between the way we socialise when we drink alcohol under the cover of darkness and socialising in the day on a caffeinated level. Catching up with people without the social lubricant of alcohol to help things along is more of the interaction I'm going for. Plus, I don't want to assume that everyone drinks, and coffee / tea is a pretty universal way that people socialise.
Matt told BuzzFeed that he was "initially going to cull down [his] 1000+ 'friends'," before incorporating a rule into his decision making.
"Before culling I asked myself "could I get a one-on-one coffee with this person?" I just decided to put this rule into practice. It started as a private photo album on my own Facebook but got quite a positive response from people, so I decided to make it a public thing."
Sometimes, they don't even take a photo. Here's a drawing Matt drew with his artist / musician / awesome friend, Ben.
Unfortunately [there's] no real deep meaning behind the project apart from being genuinely interested in people and wanting to spend time getting to know people outside of the way we present ourselves online. Putting the "social" back in "social media."
Matt has a role at a digital strategy company, as well as working for The School of Life where he runs a course on 'how to have better conversations." He got both jobs through the 1000+ Coffees Project!
You can follow Matt's 1000+ Coffee project here!
1000pluscoffees.tumblr.com
Only 950+ coffees to go!