One of the things I got wrong for a long time was picking when to bond with people over negative stuff vs positive stuff. I think a lot of people get his wrong. 

As a rule - it works much better to meet and greet people with positivity and bond over negativity. 

Lots of people have a smallish network they’ve had for a long time and are doing more commiseration than celebration because most of their interactions are long durations with people they know. 

But new acquaintances get very put off by immediate commiseration. 

Say someone has a new baby. Some people might immediately say “gosh you must not be sleeping.”  That’s off putting to lead with. Instead you should say something like “omg what a special time it is with a newborn”. 

If you’re in the same convo ten minutes later, then maybe talk about sleeplessness. 

If you’re networking or schmoozing, you should almost never be immediately commiserating.