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I think a huge factor is the growing theme of social interaction being unacceptable. Back in the day you could walk up to and make friends with almost anyone, i
by Rotdhizon 8y ago
I think a huge factor is the growing theme of social interaction being unacceptable. Back in the day you could walk up to and make friends with almost anyone, it wasn't weird to interact with strangers, thus making new acquaintances.
Modern society stigmatizes that kind of interaction, don't talk to people you don't know if you don't want to be ostracized. You could want to befriend someone in a crowd, but come up with no good ways to go about the situation. See someone wearing a cool jacket and you decide you want to be their friend > Go up and introduce yourself > See almost every single person in the immediate area turn and spectate the interaction, instantly judging you as out of the ordinary. Really stretching the topic, even getting contact information is more difficult these days. 20 years ago you could meet someone, and they'd have no issue giving out their home telephone number. You'd ring them up and you could schedule to see a movie. Nowadays you are considered suspicious if you ask for someones phone number. I know people today that will absolutely not give out their phone number to anyone other than immediate family.If you are their friend and want to contact them, you have to do it over a social app like IG.
That and it can be hard to find people you fit in with well due to the rise of the internet and people staying inside. If you are a hermit and enjoy other hermits, you won't find them by going outside. Which means you are then stuck with trying to meet people online, and introducing yourself online is even harder than it is in person and met with the same hostility. I'm talking about guy > guy and girl > girl here. It's a whole different level of hell trying to befriend someone of the opposite sex these days. Most people assume you either want something sexual or unusual, not just friendship.
- fipple 8y agoPart of that is social interaction being less necessary. My dad made many friends asking random people on the street for directions to a gas station or for a restaurant recommendation. Now we get that all from our phones.
- ohyes 8y agoindeed, Steve Jobs should have called it the iFriend, the only friend you need...
- Nav_Panel 8y agoDo you see internet social interaction as being a sufficient replacement for meatspace social interaction?
- fipple 8y agoNot at all. I’m a much worse person on the Internet than in meatspace.
- Nav_Panel 8y agoOh, I see. I misread "not necessary" in your post as saying "people don't need as much social interaction anymore." Glad to clarify.
- goldenkey 8y agoI see it as a poor substitute. I'm in many many Discords and 95% of the active users refuse to join voice chat. Text is inefficient for resolving miscommunications and it, at least for me, is aggravating when 30 seconds of fast talk could have sufficed
- Nav_Panel 8y agoYeah, agreed. I'm also in plenty of Discords, yet I still recall my most meaningful online social interaction involved spending hours just chilling in a Vent server with my WoW guild. I think this is an underappreciated feature of "grinding": it gives players a great excuse to put in time and build social bonds.
- OP9000 8y agoFor some people like you, theres no mental cost associated with speaking on the phone. For the rest of us, the mental barrier is huge. Imagine the amount of mental effort required to, say, pack and move your house - the dread is on the same level. Why? I don't really know. I'm very social in person.
- hrktb 8y agoI don’t think they are a replacement in that they work on a different level. In a way we deeply lacked the level of discussion we get now online, a lot of opinions couldn’t be discuss effectively with neighbours (for better and for worse). I see them as a lot more genuine than any interactions we had before. Ideally we need both of them, but I think from now on there will always be a split between very personal online interactions and softer “human” interactions IRL.
- simmanian 8y agoI do think people tend to engage with strangers a lot less often than they had "back then," but I cannot agree modern society stigmatizes that kind of interaction at all. You can see people interacting with strangers on college campuses, at music events, and at grocery stores all the time.
- wenc 8y agoThis still happens but it can be geography-specific. Chicago is one of the few big cities that is still relatively open to these types of spontaneous interactions. London on the other hand is not.
- tomazio 8y agoAs a current Chicago resident of 2+ years, I agree. Although I always thought this was just a Midwestern thing, as I grew up in Ohio and this was pretty common there as well.
- drb91 8y agoAgreed. While I get the fear of interacting with strangers, I’ve never gotten more than mild annoyance from someone when I actually do it. I have never felt like I was overstepping bounds—people rarely mind being spoken to with respect, even if they don’t respond and engage. Camaraderie is harder, and making jokes others don’t like can be stigmatizing. I wonder if one’s culture of informality is just less assumably universal than it has been in the recent past. I also wonder if living in a city can desensitize you to how exhausting it can be to invest in a social interaction with no clear payoff.
- bunderbunder 8y agoBut, still, it seems to be a big enough difference that I could see it easily engendering a lot more loneliness. Even 10 or 15 years ago - at the time I had a job that was 100% travel time, and found I could generally bootstrap a decent social life in a new town by just going to the nearest cafe and striking up conversations with neighbors. Nowadays, though, most people are engrossed in some piece of electronics or other, and seem more inclined to regard attempts at socialization as an interruption.
- godot 8y agoI feel like these interactions go through phases of 1. Being ok and acceptable and even enjoyable at first; 2. People abuse it more and more; 3. Gradually turns into a negative experience in general; 4. The ordinary person will then avoid it and that becomes the norm. Taking your example of meeting people online. I was on the internet in the late 90s as a teenager and it was incredibly easy and fun to meet people on IRC or ICQ and just chat. Some of those people I even eventually went on to meet in person. There was no motives, no romantic interests, whatever gender people were. Fast forward to now, these things seem unthinkable to do now both for adults and adolescents, safety concerns, predators, etc. Take real life neighborhoods for example too. Growing up in the 80s and 90s in both Asia and America, when someone rings the door bell, you open the door and see who it is and talk to them. Nowadays this is almost not the norm anymore. In the past 2 years I have been assaulted and robbed as close as a block away from my house. I'm not opening the door to any stranger ringing my door bell, even if 99% of time they are harmless solicitors. There's far too many incidents of people abusing the trust and trying to cause harm when you let them in. I am not risking that. I don't know what the answers might be to all of this. Is society actually getting more dangerous? Is it just that we're hearing more thanks to more news and internet? Is it overall income inequality in society that causes more crimes to occur? I have no answers to any of these.
- ryandrake 8y agoIsn’t violent crime (particularly from strangers) at historic lows, at least in the USA? “Stranger Danger” is blown way out of proportion. You’re less likely to be attacked by a rando walking on the street than by Uncle Phil, and far less likely than “back in the day.”
- digi_owl 8y agoIRC in particular was great for this, as it was rooms not P2P, and quite often one could find quite local rooms. ICQ and IM in general ruined that, IMO, as it was more invite based.
- StillBored 8y agoYou forget that IRC has person to person messaging too. It was pretty easy to start a side conversation with people on IRC that wasn't public.
- kazinator 8y agoTo be fair, social interaction with people whose faces have been buried in their phone all day since they were in kindergarten is unacceptable.
- rhizome 8y agoI think a huge factor is the growing theme of social interaction being unacceptable Does this actually exist? Could it be that it's become more acceptable for people to be dicks to each other, so why risk it?
- jschwartzi 8y agoI think if you want the world to be this way you should just do what you want to do anyway. Life is too short to care what some random group of strangers at a concert thinks, anyway. You're not hurting anyone and I think you're normalizing good behavior. Nobody is going to call the cops on you for complementing their jacket. I've stopped letting myself be bothered and it's actually done wonders for my social life. And most of them are staring because they wish they could be that open.
- skookumchuck 8y agoI'm a very socially inept person and in recent years I took to practicing striking up conversations with complete strangers on the street and in the park. Some will get a sour look and resolutely look away, but many will smile and say something back. I haven't had a bad experience doing that.
- 15155 8y agoI think this hits the nail on the head: who cares? Who cares what these people (who are judging you for meeting someone in public) think? They're very unlikely to be anyone meaningful if they're doing that, since being a good conversationalist is a trait that most successful people possess.
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- ghthor 8y agoFuck that yeah, do what you want, fuck what people think about who you are or what you're doing. You'll at least give them a good story to tell about that nut who walked up to that guy on the subway and said, "I dig that jacket, wanna get some coffee together?"
- acali 8y agoDoes anyone else get the sense while some people will claim they desire more social interactions, the're also very quick to judge each action, looking for indications of in-authenticity or hints that they're dealing with someone nefarious.
- marnett 8y agoAll people have defense mechanisms that cause this. They judge the very things they wish they themselves had the courage to do. It's overwhelmingly natural and very hard to realize in the moment.
- selestify 8y agoWhat's the point of such defense mechanisms?
- marnett 8y agoYou can't get anxiety over missed experiences that you have convinced yourself to despise, I suppose. Too many rejections after trying to make new close friends? I don't need them. Too many rejections trying out for an improv troupe? I don't feel like doing that anymore. Etc, etc the list goes on and on.
- saudioger 8y agoIn the past you had to interact with other people more. In today's world you can do nearly everything without needing to talk to a single human being or even leaving your house. In public people wear headphones while walking, on public transportation, and even in grocery stores.
- ryandrake 8y agoI think we can learn a lot from kids in this area. My six year old is so much more open and tolerant than I. Her thought process: “you look like my age, let’s play and be friends!” And now the parents are arranging playtime next week. Just like that! We adults could learn a lot from that outlook.
- irrational 8y agoI've tried going up to women that look my age and asking if they want to play or arrange a playtime, but they keep turning me down :-(
- tux1968 8y agoYou made the mistake of not being George Clooney.
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- digi_owl 8y agoAnd then a few years later X don't wanna play with Y because Z don't like them etc etc etc...
- astura 8y agoSeinfeld did a bit about this: >Of course when you're a kid, you can be friends with anybody. Remember when you were a little kid what were the qualifications? If someone's in front of my house NOW, That's my friend, they're my friend. That's it. Are you a grown up.? No. Great! Come on in. Jump up and down on my bed. And if you have anything in common at all, You like Cherry Soda? I like Cherry Soda! We'll be best friends!
- godelski 8y agoI don't think it is any harder to meet random people today than it used to be. But then again I'm under 30 and so don't know what it "really" used to be like. But I deleted my Facebook (really only social media I had) and I haven't had a hard time meeting new people. Really I'm doing a better job. I think this is more because I'm not using Facebook as a crutch. I used to just say "Oh I'll add you on Facebook" (which ironically is way more invasive than a phone number) and then never message them. We'd both like each other's posts and whatnot but it felt really disingenuous. But since I haven't had that crutch it actually makes me work and focus on building real relationships. This even includes plutonic relationships with the opposite sex. I'm not saying go out and delete your Facebook and other social media (at least for this reason), but that a lot of us just rely on it as a crutch and real relationships require work. I just think social media makes it easier to be a hermit and kind of tricks you into thinking you are building relationships when you aren't. I often here "I'd delete my Facebook but there are so many people that's the only way I can keep in contact with them." Liking somebody's status and photos isn't keeping in touch nor is it relationship building. But I think most people think treat those actions as if they were. And I feel like now because of this people think it is weird to talk to someone they haven't talked to in even a few weeks. Hell, I'm okay if I haven't talked to someone in a few years. Life is busy. Life is strange. It is okay to not have to keep in constant and instant contact with people. And I think we forget this because we have technology that no longer makes this the norm. Because in the past instant and constant contact with someone meant you lived with them or extremely near them. tldr: Relationships take work
- abledon 8y agoI'm learning elixir and ios/android development to try and conquer this problem via friendly geolocation games which include lots of mandatory icebreakers like talking about favourites colors, current books being read and other harmless dumb stuff that helps get that social brain muscle pumping.
- worldsayshi 8y agoI like that. Would be nice with more games like that.
- abledon 8y agoI'll ping you when I have a rough mvp :)
- irrational 8y agoJust this morning there was a new item in my feed, "Axe attack: Woman guilty of trying to kill strangers". Now, is it likely that I'm going to run into an axe-wielding stranger today? Statistically no. But after being fed daily news stories about the crazy people that are out there... well, better safe than sorry. If you are a stranger you'd better not even make eye contact with me or I'll be bolting in the opposite direction.
- Broken_Hippo 8y agoI disagree. I'm 40, and had life pre-internet. Cell phones were still expensive when I was in school. A portion of my friends were too poor to regularly have home telephone service. I'm bisexual, and paid for that bit with a middle school not talking to me most of a school year. I lost friends because I dated folks with a different skin color. I didn't really tell folks I was atheist back then, but it didn't really matter because my parents required I go to church every sunday. I lived in the midwest. The town sizes ranged from 3000 to around 50k. I've never really had more than 2-3 friends at once, and sometimes didn't have that. My ex wound up with schizophrenia, but that's another story altogether. I started being lonely at 10 or 11. That's only gone away in the last 6-10 years. Regular internet meant I've met folks I can simply be myself with. I moved - across an ocean - to be with one of those folks. I'm rarely lonely anymore, even with the internet. Even with the language barrier. Even with my weirdness. For the first time in my life, here I feel like I kinda belong, and it is a mix of offline and online stuff. I'm even in a country that is "difficult" for folks to make friends with - or at least they say it is. On the other hand, it actually fits my personality better. I don't find it hard to talk to folks online. Male or female (I tend to have more male friends than female, and don't care about the distinction. My male spouse is the opposite). sure, some folks are simply there to flirt, but I can shut them down pretty quickly.
- rainbowmverse 8y agoFamiliar! Some of it, at least. Asking the "wrong" people out in middle school ('90s) sure was a fast track to being an outcast. Paradoxically, the rising positive presence of LGBTQ+ people in media in the '90s made things worse. People were on the lookout for us! I don't know if it was worse than the '80s where our presence in the media was almost universally negative. Later, I found Twitter, and met a friend (also bi) who had lived mere miles away all my life. We probably never would have met without the internet. Having backup when we hang out has actually made me more social because I'm not worried about being alone up against a crowd who decides it's time to make an example of someone.
- Broken_Hippo 8y agoHah. I didn't even get to asking the wrong person out. I was caught looking. Oops. :)
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- wolco 8y agoMovies, news, media all push the message bad things happen if you talk to strangers. It's weird we are told not to trust anyone online but for some reason started using our real names/address/geotagging our events publically.
- chiefalchemist 8y ago> "Modern society stigmatizes that kind of interaction, don't talk to people you don't know if you don't want to be ostracized..." I agree there's some truth to this. But even more so think it's simply a lost art. Why strike up a cheap quick chat when all you have to do is stare at your device. I'm old school (read: over 50 y/o white male) and I interact with people all the time. But it a skill to read someone and ideally make them laugh / smile. I think you also have to have a certain amount of empathy (which I feel most ppl lack). "Hey. Nice shoes." or "I like you jacket" goes a long way. But that's more than clicking an icon. And it means you're taking a __small__ risk to engage someone else instead of waiting to have your own ego stroked.
- rb808 8y agoI dont think is less acceptable. I do think that previously people waiting in a line probably had nothing to do and were more likely to talk, where now they're on their phone.
- 0x4f3759df 8y agoI think you have to be a regular somewhere (gym, your kid's soccer games, dogpark, neighborhood bar, etc), people generally won't warm up to you until they've seen you a few times. Of course we've made it really easy to stay indoors.
- grosjona 8y agoIt's because people now see each other mostly as competitors; socializing is a tool for manipulation; the purpose of which is the acquisition of material resources and procreation. Only fools think it serves any other purpose.
- skookumchuck 8y agoI was sitting on a bench waiting for the bus in Denmark one day, and a very attractive young lady came up and said she'd like to give me a hug. I'm old, and I was instantly very suspicious this was some sort of scam, or she had a partner that was going to rob me, or whatever. I couldn't believe she was just trying to be nice. She talked with me for a while, and was not put off by my suspiciousness. Eventually I agreed to the hug, and it was very nice, and then she left. That was it. She didn't want anything from me, she just wanted to give. It's a unique experience in my life. And a much appreciated one.
- scotty79 8y agoI was once walking down the street in the middle of the day. There were 3 young men very cheerful and little bit drunk walking towards me. As I was preparing to pass them, bit worried if I'll have any trouble with them one of them in drunken cordiality looked at me and opened arms for a hug. We briefly hugged smiled and continue going our separate ways. Experience was very weird but pleasent. I think bit of positive human contact with no strings attached is missing from my usual daily life.
- grawprog 8y agoHow much of that is in your head though? I learned a lot from a friend of mine who is completely and entirely unabashed when it comes to talking to anyone and everyone in public. Most people responded positively. My friend would compliment random people's clothing, ask random questions to people point stuff out randomly. Any time i'm out with this friend we end up talking to random people and 99% of the time it ends positively. I take public transit a lot and I always see people start random conversations with strangers over little things. People usually don't even respond too badly to the crazy people who talk to everyone. Unless they're being rude or agressive the worst reaction I tend to see is people politely ignoring people like that. I also have random people come up and talk to me fairly regularly, i've had some great conversations with random people i've met. My dad gave me a piece of advice he got from a friend of his when he was young about interacting with people in public. It helps to remember most people are just as nervous and afraid of you as you are of them, but at the same time, most people are looking for someone to talk to. Paying attention to people's body language and reactions helps. If you pay attention you can usually tell the difference between someone who's nervous and someone who just doesn't want to talk. People really aren't so bad. You gotta remember humans are social animals interacting with eachother is something we naturally do. Today's society may make it difficult, but those drives for human companionship are there.
- ironjunkie 8y agoI think you hit the nail on the head. I would also add that the whole minefield of communicating with someone of the opposite sex, especially if you are a man. It seems that you have a high risk of being called up for harassment if you want to start a friendly conversation with a female as a male for example. This is a direct consequence of the whole metoo thing. Over the last 15 years, society has been more and more strict into defining what is an acceptable social behavior. You are supposed to stay in your lane and not talk to anyone basically, except in accepted places like a bar, sometimes. I think in 20 years nobody will talk openly on the streets. All the interactions will take place in well defined "apps" or in defined places like a bar. Everything outside that will be looked down as weird. This is already half happening with dating. You have a higher risk of creating an incident in real life so everyone is now using well defined dating apps with a well defined flow and a well defined experience. The world is becoming more and more tasteless. Everything has to take place into well defined boundaries.
- callandreturn 8y agoHm. As a woman, I can't say I've ever thought of harassment when men have started friendly conversation with me. Is that not a bit of an exaggeration? If a man catcalled "nice tits" or something, then yeah, that would be harassment. But conversation? Not nearly the risk your describing, I don't think.
- ironjunkie 8y agoI agree with you, but I think people avoid even the possibility//higher risk associated with the awkward start of the conversation. I work in tech and some of my male coworkers privately tell me that they avoid talking to womens they don't know at networking events or at conferences because of the way it might be interpreted nowadays.
- callandreturn 8y agoI think there's a difference between initial awkwardness or fear of rejection -- which are totally valid feelings in social interaction, and not just limited to men -- and fear of being accused of harassment for making polite conversation. I also think that it's easy to get sucked into circle-jerks that promote and exaggerate these fears of being accused of harassment. As long as you're considerate and respectful, no reasonable person would think you're harassing them. There are always unreasonable people, that shouldn't divide us into men vs women, into groups that fear interacting with each other.
- pnathan 8y agoOutside of specific venues, no one I encounter has similar interests. Really disincentivizes me to talk to them. To counter that, I try to keep up with the local sports, as a base for small talk.