When I was doing an associate degree sometimes back, I would make friends with the younger students who were obviously way smarter than I was and dedicated to passing exams.
The reason was because being friends with them, means I can get help from them and study with them, I could do tests, field work and assignments with them, and even though I was the weakest link in the group.
I made sure to use my means to make myself very important to them, and as such, they saw me as the one who should make the important decisions, and as such, we became a very powerful group.
I was the oldest too, so I left the rough and smart work for them, while I acted as their critical thinker. It was a very flexible and beautiful relationship between 4 or 5 people and it worked.
As someone who was very social in the past, I knew my weaknesses, and I knew that having the right people in my corner was how I was going to get by.
Making the right people indebted and willing to be available to you is not something that comes easy, because in every relationship that feels symbiotic, no matter how crazy it is, you have to be willing to add a certain value to remain important to the group.
Women can be more socially powerful to have in your corner
Apparent women are another social group that gets things done.
I never joked with my female friends, they had ways of getting into tight corners that men wouldn't dare to go, and this is how they actually get things done, and if you get yourself a group of female friends, they helped you in ways you wouldn't even know they would.
I had female friends that I made friends with their boyfriend, this way they don't see me as a sort of competition, just a guy who just wants to girl to do random college stuff for me without it getting weird.
I would agree that being friends with women can be weird, it got really weird for me at some point, but the goal was to get them to be indebted to me by doing them unique favours.
A judge of character
I know how to always read people by looking at how they talk, how they dress, what they say, imagining what their thought process feels like, and these things are how I get to pick the people I wanted to be close with, and most times, it works.
Most times, i can't help but remember how I did all these. It was a pleasant experience because I got to learn how the minds of people work. Predicting their response, preparing a potential response should my prediction of their response be correct, or something else, if I was wrong, and even though I no longer keep a lot of friends obviously because of the trajectory of my life.
I realise that there's nothing as good as having people you can depend on, sometimes, and who can you can also call upon.
Recently I got some money about last year, and I gave a 400 to 500$ phone to someone, this wasn't because I had a lot of money, infact it cost me a lot to give it to them, but I remember they've been there a lot for me for more than 5 years....
doing things they wouldn't necessarily do, taking risks for me and well, hell no if I actually decide to be in a friendship where I get to be on the receiving end all the time, that is not who I was or am.
Sometimes I think people should try it, you'll gain a lot more by gaining the trust of people and somehow giving back some sort of value to them, it always works like a charm all the time.