Say the word "networking" out loud on most campuses and watch half the room flinch. That reaction is not irrational. Most of what gets called networking is transactional, rehearsed, and see-through: collect the contact, extract the favour, move on to the next name tag. People can feel that happening to them, and they resent it, correctly.
The part everyone gets backwards
The cringe is not caused by talking to strangers. It is caused by talking to strangers while treating them like a line item on a list. The fix is not becoming more strategic about who you talk to. It is the opposite: talking to people you would want to know anyway, for a real reason, and letting anything useful follow from that instead of leading with it.
What actually works instead
Proximity does most of the work networking advice pretends a personality can do. You do not need a pitch to talk to the person in your own hostel block, your own society, or your own project team, because the reason you are talking to them already exists: you are both there. Shared context removes the need for a script.
A few things that hold up better than any "elevator pitch" advice: follow up on something specific the person actually said, not a generic "let's stay in touch." Offer something small before you ask for anything. Treat the conversation as the point, not the means to an ask. If the only reason you are talking to someone is what they can do for you, they can usually tell, and so can you, uncomfortably.
Networking stops feeling like networking the moment it stops being about extraction.
The Signal
This is also the part a real-time, proximity-based app can actually help with, not by teaching a script, but by removing the cold open entirely: matching you with someone nearby over a real shared interest, and writing the first message so neither of you has to manufacture a reason. The awkwardness people associate with networking is mostly the awkwardness of the opener. Remove the opener, and what is left is just two people who happen to have something in common, talking.
Stop Scrolling. Start Connecting.
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