There is no epidemic of loneliness, but there is an epidemic of scurvy(experimental-history.com) |
There is no epidemic of loneliness, but there is an epidemic of scurvy(experimental-history.com) |
> Over and over again, studies[0] find that people think that their past conversations went worse than they actually did and that future conversations will go worse than they actually do. But when you just make people talk to each other, they end up having a nice time and feeling more confident[1] about their conversational abilities.
[0]: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15298868.2020.18...
[1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002210312...
Repeatedly processing memory, recursively calling the same function without a limit or exit condition :)
Annual sales of antidepressants in North America are about $8 billion.
Not sure what the point of closing your eyes and plugging your years is
> People are more alone than ever, but they’re not feeling much lonelier than they used to. So maybe all this extra solitude is...fine?
Okay but the data examined for "more alone" is US data with unclear age range (most likely adults). But the data examined for "not feeling much lonelier" is UK data and US school teenager data. I feel like there's a massive blind spot with the fact there's no US adult data...?
My gut feeling says: don't ask me, I'm a gut.
There is an interesting phenomenon called "the Firehouse Effect" that is similar but on a group level.
The idea is that if you take a group of humans and isolate them, they will begin to believe wilder and wilder ideas and communicate those ideas amongst themselves. This happens because the group is not routinely "reconciling" with broader society which in turn is slower to adopt new ideas.
It's named after firemen who would spend a lot of time together in firehouses.
https://absoluteengagement.com/blog/are-you-stuck-in-the-fir...
Funny, I absolutely do develop a hankering for citrus whenever my body needs vitamin C. After a workout, and after getting sun at the beach, or just whenever I've gone a couple days without getting enough vitamin C, I absolutely develop a sudden craving for oranges/grapefruit/pineapple/orange juice/Emergen-C. And it doesn't go away until I have enough.
I assume that this is a kind of learned association, that you can recognize the feeling of vitamin C depletion and your body quickly connects that that goes away when you eat certain foods.
But my body absolutely tells me when I need vitamin C. And whether it's at a level of "it would be a nice idea to have some now" or "you need a LOT more vitamin C RIGHT NOW".
I don't necessarily disagree with this, but author, you just spent the article up to now complaining about people asserting that people are more lonely without evidence.
I'd enjoy it for fun, to pass the time, to read a dozen follow-up articles. But as a one-off post to learn and inform myself? Ugh.
Unrelated, but two of the many links have ChatGPT referals. I'm not sure what to think of it. I guess it's fine?
- texting has given me the ability to stay in touch with lots of my friends
- being a suburban dad with 3 kids who have activities has made it VERY difficult to see other dads in person
Couple this with a lot of the other families having two working parents, spontaneous "let's go hang out, dude" is effectively zero.
What's more common is having to either:
- have a routine scheduled "dads hang out" event
- scheduling a hang out 2-3 weeks in advance (which also sometimes gets cancelled due to "sick kid", "wife got stuck in traffic" etc)
[0]. https://worldanimalfoundation.org/advocate/pet-ownership-sta...
There is already an ecosystem of for-profit social events in European cities (and probably elsewhere) profiting off people's desire to meet up with other human beings when social opportunies have shrunk. Once has seen this on e.g. Meetup.com or Facebook for years now, where bot profiles are used to swell event-signup numbers so people think they will meet more people. Indeed, with the enshittification of Meetup, the only forces that prosper on that site are for-profit ones.
Social media, dating apps, even andrew tate was doing well till some point.
For Social Media and dating apps - both ran into similar problems: they are a small part of the means. Facebook only have 5-10 minutes of real friend content per day. Dating apps can perhaps fill more time per day - but success means you "find someone" and close your account never to return. If you want to get rich you need to find some way to extend the time people spend on your platform - and that means something other than your premise. Facebook is filled with garbage. Any mildly successful dating app will be bought out by a big player because that app is taking away from the big player.
They're called nightclubs and bars lol trust HN to be so insulated from the wider world
Cures both your scurvy and your social scurvy.
I think we are getting pretty close to that.
No but those who claim to have observed a worrying phenomenon will be interviewed by the press, invited to conferences, listened to by politicians, and will be first in line to receive further grants to study the worrying phenomenon. It's not corruption, it's just normal gratification for your hard work and a feeling of being relevant. Better than studying things and having to report on the absence of any finding.
Given that there's no strong regulation that forces fruit juice to be made from fruit, I'd wager that this is already a product line.
≈ "Just stop being so depressed!" reddit.com/r/thanksimcured
What's undeniable is the disgusting monetization (and control) of connecting people.
What I've noticed in many of these meetups created for other people to mingle, is that a lot of people who drop by and don't have a loneliness problem, make the atmosphere worse for everyone else who does. Instead of fostering genuine connections, they just "don't see the issue" and shoot down genuine attempts of others (who might be introverts, shy, whatever) to connect. Such a thing is completely out of place, because the whole motivation for said meetup is to get people to know each other.
I have started placing notices like "if you have friends, don't come" lol, which is a bit controversial but actually upgrades the experience. An analogy, imagine a married guy dropping into a singles dating event to talk about how great a relationship he's in and giving "tips to survive a marriage" and whatever (and also, if it is that good, then why are you here?). You get the idea.
And I also agree with your last sentence.
On the surface it can seem similar to Depression: "What do you have to be so sad about??"
It can be similar internally too: a vague sense of not-quite-doom, or just an invisible wall in your ability to feel "happy"
That all the people who hang out with you and laugh with you, are not really your friends if push ever comes to shove, that you're going to be alone in the things you care about, even if you have a loving partner, etc.
Or maybe just even simply feeling out of place in the overall culture you live in..
https://www.bmj.com/content/385/bmj.q781
FTA:
> Some 57% of US doctors received more than $12bn in payments related to medical drugs or devices from manufacturers between 2013 and 2022, an analysis has found.1 “Despite evidence that financial conflicts of interest may influence physician prescribing and may damage patients’ trust in medical professionals, such payments remain pervasive,” says the letter in JAMA.
It’s a major issue I have with nonfiction in general though. Most of the words are superfluous. Unlike fiction it’s not prose-poetry or storytelling art either, just dry filler.
That and powerpoint, obviously.
The male loneliness epidemic is also known as the growth of incel circles and the influence of supposedly masculine influencers who will do literally anything but treat women both as equals and with respect. And the way these groups work is that they need to keep their membership up, so it's in their interest to keep you away from women by turning you against them.
Whatever narrative there is about young men being left behind by progressiveness, it is a big lie over a smaller truth (the system fails everyone and now it is sometimes failing young white men, in terms of education). Not so different to the great replacement theory I would imagine, but based on gender not race/religion.
It's reframed that way so it can be dismissed out of hand.
It's already difficult to get anyone to care when men experience troubles (because they should "man up" and solve things themselves), and when you make it sound like it's because men expect something from women, not only does it cease to be a problem worth caring about, but it becomes a threat we need to shout down.
The issue of male loneliness isn't just that men are having a hard time forming relationships with women: it's much broader, and more importantly, it's inclusive of hardships starting and maintaining friendships with other men.
Part of this is due to the fact that most spaces men used to have for socialization have long since been shut down.
However, the small grain of truth buried in the reframing is that women are better at cultivating and maintaining friend groups, and a lot of men currently maintain their social circles through their wives. Of course, the solution is not that we should assign women companions to men like the military would assign a firearm to a soldier, but rather our society needs to start teaching men how to better maintain friendships on their own.
For us, it is a matter of not being able to build and maintain meatspace social connections - reasons vary, including severe social anxiety, poor socialization (in part due to issues with physical development), and physical isolation; if there is a common thread, it is a history of a dysfunctional family life that disrupted development.
It's very frustrating when women center themselves in these kinds of conversations, and use that spotlight to assume and project the worst. There is a consistent unwillingness to even try to understand the perspective of socially-disadvantaged men, or to engage genuinely with the notion that their needs are unique, and uniquely unmet, when compared to that of women and better-adjusted men.
It makes it difficult to get genuine grievances taken seriously; people are always looking for ways to wash their hands of persistent and onerous social issues, and being told, by someone perceived as socially-successful and authoritative, that they can is all the reason they need.
I really wouldn't. If you don't know anything about him, count yourself lucky.
Usually when I want pure facts I now want concise and to the point. If I want art I read fiction. Fiction can convey other things, even facts and new ideas, but the main reason it exists (at least for me) is that it's art.
I was taken seriously for about a week and then it dropped, because it was my sister's boyfriend who did it and he was already going to prison for something else. So why make it worse for him? I got sidelined in favour of that.
My own social connections dropped off at about that time because I became scared. The guy who attacked me was already due to be imprisoned.
So, I was well embedded in that dysfunctional family life, and at every step of the way I was 0 priority compared to the boyfriends of my sisters.
As stated in the article, we do have evidence that people are more alone than ever, and there's a correlation between being alone and loneliness. It's perfectly reasonable to ask whether (but not assume) people are more lonely than ever.