18 ms·
Loneliness is pervasive and rising, particularly among the young
- ada1981 8y agoIf anyone is looking for adventure and connection, I run a group called Founders Hike, which is what it sounds like. Founders get together to mastermind, hike and support each other about once a month. We have some really successful and amazing Founders. Nature is it’s own medicine, the community is great, and the wisdom runs deep. NYC / SF and chapters forming in other cities. Email me if you’d like to join, and I’ll gift you a ticket. A@175g.com
- mkoryak 8y agoHow many non founders do you have?
- ada1981 8y agoEveryone is running their own show in some capacity. Startups to billion dollar brands.
- travisjungroth 8y agoI think they were going for an absolute number, not a percent.
- ada1981 8y ago0.
- travisjungroth 8y agoI thought the comment above asked how many founders, not how many non founders. Thank you for your simple answer to by dumb comment.
- compcoffee 8y ago>Founders get together to mastermind, hike and support each other about once a month. Maybe the world "mastermind" is throwing me off, but how do you prevent something like this from devolving into "yet another networking activity"? There's value in stepping out of the always-on, startup culture and interacting with the other half.
- ada1981 8y agoA typical hike is that we hike, stop along the way to do some deeper intimacy and connection work (I coach some of the top tech company founders on empathy, spirituality and leadership), we share what we’ve learned recently and what we are working on, we offer support. We do some meditation. These are hand curated and I’ve been building communities for over 20 years across a variety of disciplines. We also have our own Island to adventure and co create on! Majagual.org
- refurb 8y agoThis reminds of the saying “During the gold rush, it wasn’t the prospectors who got wealthy, but rather the people selling shovels.”
- 0x4f3759df 8y agoI keep thinking along these lines. Like Friday night run and beer. You do a 5k run and then you all get a beer and you can bond over the run.
- matwood 8y agoThis is basically what everyone is doing at these kickball/softball/whatever leagues.
- dclowd9901 8y agoI can think of nothing more insufferable than being surrounded by wealthy people who are business-driven. Why does it have to be a “founders” hike? Why can’t people just fucking get together and hike?
- rgrieselhuber 8y agoI would be very surprised if anyone who would join a Founders Hike is wealthy as a founder, especially if they are suffering from loneliness.
- ada1981 8y agoYou’d be surprised how many of the billion dollar company founders I coach come in the door with deep loneliness.
- claydavisss 8y agoYou're right, we would be. Well, I don't doubt that some rich people are very lonely....I doubt you actually come into contact with them. Feel like you're just a wannabe Bill Campbell. I went to your site - you sell Ultimate T-shirts.
- dang 8y agoPersonal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how right you are (or feel) about an underlying point. Please don't be a jerk on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ada1981 8y agoLol. This was the first domain I bought back in 2001 when I was running an ultimate frisbee clothing brand in college. Those were the original designs and are there for friends / fans from college and as a nod to my first online business. I was also the founding cohost of Summit.co I created The Love Game (PlayTheLoveGame.com) AnthonyDavidAdams.com has a video of me coaching the founder of Ben & Jerries, but most of my work is of course confidential. What I find interesting is that a free offering to help someone that is feeling lonely is met with such vitriol and projection.
- prolikewh0a 8y agoDo you dance around a giant wooden owl wearing still warm severed sheep heads while 1998 Alex Jones records on VHS in the woods?
- ada1981 8y agoDude. You know the first rule of Founders Hike is not to talk about Founders Hike.
- marksomnian 8y agoLinked study: https://www.kff.org/other/report/loneliness-and-social-isolation-in-the-united-states-the-united-kingdom-and-japan-an-international-survey/ https://www.kff.org/other/report/loneliness-and-social-isola...
- PeterStuer 8y agoAnother thing I wondered about is the impact of automation and volatility on, for lack of a better word 'involuntary' micro social interactions. Until fairly recently people had 'forced' social interactions when doing their finances, shopping etc. Even if involuntary they 'trained' people's social skills and withered away at their acquired/innate social anxiety. Furthermore, even in these situations the persons you interacted with, the cashier at the supermarket, the bank teller, the shop assistant, were often there for a fairly long time, so that all those social-micro-transactions added up over the years. Yes, they were 'strangers', but stangers you to some extend 'knew' or where familiar with. Being around those made you less lonely. Now you do your banking through an app and a teller machine, you shop online, and if we are to believe the proponents soon your pizza and beer will be delivered by a drone and your online groceries and other purchases by a self driving van. The few contacts in those situations you might still have are not with the same person, but with randos fulfilling a 0 knowledge scripted for efficiency procedure. These interactions can't compound into a latent unspoken social bond and thus contribute nothing to alleviating the feeling of loneliness.
- yters 8y agoThis was commonly understood in medieval times. Aquinas says our mutual dependency forms social ties.
- madeuptempacct 8y agoThis is kind out of scope, but ever since Deus Ex (the game), I have wondered what the big deal about Aquinas is. Never found his work all that interesting.
- NotCamelCase 8y agoI've watched Friends last year for the first time in my life and it was shocking to me, among other 90s things, how everyone is dating left and right, one after another as if they were in a race or something. I don't know your social circle but in mine, currently it's quite the opposite. I observe that less and less people go out/date/interact with each other socially, which is sad.
- brobdingnagians 8y agoI agree. I was fortunate to be in an area and group where that sort of dating was still alive; I didn't end up marrying any of those people in that area, but I learned _a_lot_ about people; how they think, what kinds of people there are, a lot about interacting with members of the opposite sex, gained a lot of confidence in just being around people and making social requests. I think it is invaluable experience for understanding people.
- robbyt 8y agoIn NYC, even the most "undatable" can still have a busy dating calendar.
- prolikewh0a 8y agoSame in Seattle. There are people from all walks of life, genders, anything.
- trukterious 8y agoMy take on Friends gets more reactionary the older I get. I now see it as very much a part of the Sexual Revolution: the drive to normalise dating and casual sex. On the one hand the friends treat sex as no big deal, plenty of humour, no judgement, etc. Just occasionally rationalising it as part of a necessary quest to find a husband or wife. On the other hand you notice from a distance that their whole lives revolve around sex. So it is a big deal, de facto, and of course in real life loneliness can be a very real penalty for messing it up.
- djsumdog 8y agoTo be fair, that's a sitcom. I think modern shows like BoJack Horseman are really good interpretations on how poorly those types of stories represented reality.
- throwawayperson 8y agoI guess I'm involuntary lonely.
- culot 8y agoWhy?
- hashkb 8y agoIt seems obvious that screen addiction is mostly responsible. Take cigarettes as an analogy- it took decades for everyone to admit they kill you. The fact that so many people immediately recognize the screen problem is huge, and the rest are behaving like addicts who need intervention.
- djsumdog 8y agoThere's no indication in this short write up if they also surveyed how often people get out. I think it'd be a likely hypothesis that people today do hang out more with friends, simply because it is easier. Remember the 90s? You're waiting in a parking lot to go caving. "Where's Will?" "I don't know." "Call his house, there's a payphone over there." "His mom said he left 30 minutes ago." "Well I guess we'll just wait for him." Today we can use speech-to-text to quickly tell people we're running late, organize impromptu outings very quickly and probably end up hanging out more. Even those with families and kids probably find it easier to organize events with other families thanks to shared group chats. I wouldn't be surprised if these two things aren't really correlated and part of me wonders if our interaction may have gone up and our loneliness also gone down. If that's true, it could be more of an indication of us not _really_ talking to one another. Maybe there is less we can say today, or there are other factors that, in the age of acceptance and commodified outrage, make use feel more isolated. A find thought, another really big factor should be online dating (Tinder, OKCupid, Grinder, POF, etc). Are people romantically lonely? Do average individuals have a harder time now that everything has been reduced to an image? I personally have observed that online dating really only works for attractive people, and for everyone else it's pretty much a wasteland.
- dannyw 8y agoI think you’re spot on with online dating. It’s not a stretch that it only works for attractive people, when the whole screening test is attractiveness.
- 80386 8y agoIs the whole screening test attractiveness? I tried OKCupid a while ago, and came away with the impression that most people have their profile filled with political shibboleths. Maybe that's just because I live in a major coastal city, but...
- JeremyBanks 8y agoTinder for looks. OKC for ideology. POF if you like your partner skewed to the wrong aspect ratio.
- wallace_f 8y agoI recall in a freshman sociology course the text noting refrigeration increased isolation and loneliness as people spent more time indoors. As I have traveled, I have noticed a lot of further examples of technology doing the same. Especially in countries with less wealth, people go outside and share public spaces/activities/infrastructure with each other more, and that seems to have a lot of positive externalities.
- minipci1321 8y agoLOL. For an anecdote -- I was working once on an TV-related product, and our product manager was persuaded it would fail in these countries you mention (well he was speaking about the country he was native of). He was saying: "no chance they spend time in front of TV, however good. They will all be out having fun as soon as weather is good enough".
- TangoTrotFox 8y agoThere's also something to be said about extensive rules and regulations really hurting relatively normal social activities. I really enjoy living in developing nations because you can actually just live. You can go buy some random food from somebody selling stuff off the street, pick up a beer or two..., and go sit down by a lake beside the street and have a little picnic type thing with a friend -- or even cast a fishing line out or go for a swim if the mood strikes. Enjoy yourselves, clean up after yourself, be considerate of others, and nobody cares what you do -- as it should be.
- hardwaresofton 8y agoThis problem seems like it would be perfectly solvable with an app, but one could argue that it's the increased usage of apps (rather than the in-person meeting) that got us here. Even apps like LivingSocial seemed to fizzle out relatively quickly, but mostly-messaging-and-narcissism apps like Instagram/Snapchat are the ones that came to stay. A part of me still wants to believe that some app that did nothing but match people (friends or otherwise) for in-person events could actually buck this trend of loneliness, but a directly adjacent part of me thinks that after a seed round or two, or some press, that same app would just find some way to actually make the problem worse. What a time to live in, humanity has access to the greatest amount of knowledge it's ever had, and we're have the greatest ability to connect to each other that we've ever had, yet somehow loneliness is rising.
- furi 8y agoI read a very insightful comment on a previous similar thread about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17682648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17682648 The short of it is that any platform you build to make friends (at least if you take the naive approach and just build a dating app for friends) turns into a dating platform. It certainly matches how I interested I am in new people I meet online despite having a partner already. My hypothesis is that you typically have friendships with people of the same sex in a group (I certainly hear about people hanging out with "the lads" or "the girls" more than I hear about them hanging out one-on-one with same sex friends) and that isn't something any dating-app-for-friends has provided thus far.
- jfk13 8y ago> The short of it is that any platform you build to make friends (at least if you take the naive approach and just build a dating app for friends) turns into a dating platform. I think this is largely true. And the followup is that any dating platform [that shows even a hint of success/growth] tends to turn into a platform for scammers and spammers.
- yorwba 8y agoAnd if that platform doesn't take steps to rate-limit its users, it will likely become a dating platform only for gay men. At least that's what I observed when I tried WeChat's "people nearby" feature in Berlin. The first thing I noticed was that almost everyone was male. The second, that many of those men had a signature that implied they were looking for gay sex. My guess is that such a feature will be abused by some men who send messages to a large number of women, causing them to feel harassed by the onslaught and leave. Then the straight men notice that there are fewer and fewer women, so they stop using it as well. Then the people left over are mostly gay men.
- jcadam 8y agoIt's a problem... for now. It's possible natural selection will just cause humans to become increasingly introverted until we're living in a world similar to Asimov's Solaria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaria
- 0xcde4c3db 8y agoI have a really hard time finding any kind of social connection that seems genuine and not a front for some kind of business/religious/political pursuit. It's like social connections are seen as merely a resource to exploit rather than being valuable for the actual human connection.
- bittercynic 8y agoWhen the explicit goal of the event is social interaction, it usually feels that way to me, too, but when there is something else going on, the social interactions are somewhat optional, and feel way more natural/less forced. I highly recommend finding something you're sincerely interested in doing, and then finding a group to do that thing with. Could be cycling, robot building, 3d printing, softball, etc. I've had the best luck when it is an event that is not generally attractive to people trying to "network" or hook up, etc; not that it's a problem if some people there are doing those things, but if that's what the majority are doing it detracts from the atmosphere for me, and you, too, from the sound of it.
- mg794613 8y agoI am going to say something very unpopular just for discussion reasons: What if, IF, by having so much information at hand and telling each other how much live sucks, we've created a situation of mass induced depression based on hypochondria?
- fiblye 8y agoI honestly can't bear opening up any sort of social media sites other than HN because it's all absolutely full of people "joking" about how miserable mere existence is and how funny wanting to die is. There are many people out there with depression and who struggle with this everyday. Some people joke about it as a coping mechanism. But too many people are latching onto it as a joke, and I think they're turning it into their own reality. Seemingly everyone my age "jokes" all the time about wanting to die and it's becoming "normal" humor. That can't be healthy.
- kazagistar 8y agoKinda, but note it takes an somewhat willing receiver. These concepts are perversely attractive or addictive, but with a recognition of their negative effects you can cut them out of your life and heal.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- badrabbit 8y agoHave you seen the movie "Shawshank Redemption"? It makes an interesting point about becoming institutionalized. There was an inmate that was released after ~50 years,he committed suicide because he couldn't adopt to living outside of the prison system. What they call the loneliness epidemic these days is a bit like that. In fact,I would say loneliness is social imprisonment. For one reason or the other individuals end up lacking the skills needed to develop meaningful social relationships,the opportunities are there but the skills are lacking. Much like becoming institutionalized, prolonged loneliness becomes a dependency in itself. At first you try everything you can to escape from the prison,then you learn to tolerate it,then you can't function outside of it. I said all this to make one important point: For most people who experience prolonged loneliness,It's not lack of solutions or opportunities that keeps them lonely. Not just in the US or the west but for all people,the importance of teaching children proper social skills needs to be communicated much like communicating the importance of good nutrition and hygeine has reduced preventable diseases throught the world. For adults,I honestly don't know of any solution other than to continue creating opportunities for social interactions. It takes a lot of time,patience and practice to learn to make more friends and socialize once you settle down as a working adult.
- treespace8 8y agoVery interesting. I wonder if the shift of placing babies in daycare is a factor. A Dad or Mom will want to interact with a baby. In a daycare situation it's their job to interact with the babies. And at times if a baby isn't causing a problem, they are left alone. Could it be an early connection is being missed?
- goodJobWalrus 8y agoI don't think so, I come from a country where a housewife is not a thing, and I didn't know any growing up. We all went to child care and people socialize a lot, then and now.
- Thriptic 8y agoThis is very true and I see it even in myself. I used to have several friends where I live and they subsequently all moved away. Now I have no real friends here and the work required to get more seems to require a huge activation energy to get over. Sure I could go out and have random conversations with people or join clubs, but very few of those are going to result in anything interesting; of those, a few may result in an acquaintance; of those, a few may progress to a friendship; of those, a few may progress to a meaningful friendship. So I could bang my head against the wall generating unhappiness and frustration for years with no guarantee of success at any point, or I could just chill in my room, smoke some weed, and read hacker news / watch Netflix / play games and be guaranteed some base level of immediate happiness. That's a very hard feedback loop to exit once you get started. I'm willing to put in a lot of work and have had great success at things where there is a clear goal and highly probable success if I put in the work: weight loss, fitness, studying, career changes, financial management, running a business etc. Relationships are so irritating to me because acquisition is a probabilistic, even random process which seems to have a very low success rate. I'm not fundamentally sold on the idea that it's worth the effort.
- octosphere 8y agoThere have always been people who wanted to be lonely though, just as there have always been people who wanted constant socializing. Both have their own problems when taken to extremes, i.e: Extreme socialization leads to group-think and collectivism[1], and extreme loneliness leads to despair and becoming overly withdrawn. I (personally) try to find a balance between the two, often withdrawing back into a hermit existence after some socializing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivism
- djrogers 8y ago> There have always been people who wanted to be lonely I think you’re conflating ‘lonely’ and ‘alone’. Wanting to be alone is healthy, wanting to be lonely would be very unhealthy. It’s the difference between wanting to sit by the fire and wanting to be burned - the latter invites/desires pain and harm.
- octosphere 8y agoThanks for explaining the subtle difference. I always thought alone & lonely were synonyms!
- djrogers 8y agoI find a stark and surprising contradiction from some people these days - they simultaneously insist that social media, most specifically Facebook, helps them feels ‘connected’ to their friends and family and yet they feel increasingly lonely. Maybe if you live your life in Facebook you don’t have as much to talk about with your friends when you interact in person?
- tcbawo 8y agoMy theory is that people put a brave face out in public on social media, but have nobody nearby when they need emotional support.
- raffael-vogler 8y ago> But this need not make them lonelier. Snapchat and Instagram may help them feel more connected with friends. There is an important difference between being connected in a shallow digital sense and being emotionally connected. Staring at screen looking at attention seeking pictures and clips from peers and then clicking on a like button or writing a comment is not going to come even close to something that will leave participants feeling spiritually connected.
- r-bit-rare-e 8y agoSurprising that HN wasn't included in the survey
- sandworm101 8y agoSmartphone use is the symptom, not the cause of loneliness. Young people today are forbidden the tools used by past generations to counter loneliness. Ask an urban highschooler how often they just hung out at a friend's house, or in a public place, for more than an hour or two. Teenagers today are busy. They have homework and courses to do after school. They are supervised, chaperoned, by adults far more than previous generations. The smartphone is the place they get to chat with friends out parental earshot. Even when they have the time, many normal activities are now forbidden. Parents don't leave teenagers home alone on weekends anymore. House parties are unheard of. Teenager-friendly places like arcades, malls, even local movie theaters are disappearing. And the personal transport, cars, that once knitted teenage culture together are disappearing. Cars are expensive, risky, and put kids in more regular contact with police than is safe. So they stay home. All of these things are replaced by the new malls: whatsapp and snapchat. Teenagers are not being drawn to smartphones, they are fleeing to them,
- iamcasen 8y agoThis is an interesting hypothesis. I can definitely see this being true outside of major urban centers. Public transit seems to be the remedy for teenagers doesn't it? When I was a kid, my parents had to drive me everywhere, and I'm thankful they did! I would have had zero friends otherwise.
- sandworm101 8y agoAre kids allowed to take public transit anymore? The parents I know, admittedly all in the suburbs, drive them to school. Allowing kids on public transport seems to have disappeared along with allowing them to walk to school.
- dorchadas 8y agoI'm from outside a major urban center, and I don't really see it being true. Yes, those things are gone, but cars are extremely common, and it's unusual that someone doesn't get one at 16, especially if they're the oldest sibling and can take the younger ones to school, etc. And even when people wreck, they're generally looking for new ones fairly quickly. And this is in a rural area with 20% of the population below the poverty line. I do think smartphones are a lot of the problem. The kids have grown up not having to interact with anyone, so they rarely do. And they also don't know how, since they never had to learn. It's funny, as you can usually tell which students got their phones first from how they interact with other students. And they still do hang out together a decent amount. Going to school sporting events, playing Fortnite at each other's houses, going out to eat, or even partying each weekend. I see the loneliness issue creeping up more in the urban areas for the reasons listed above, actually. Or with those who grow up in an area and then leave it. Even if they come back, not all their friends will, and the people who stayed will have vastly different life experiences, which makes it difficult to make friends. While I do see smartphones being an issue, as here kids don't really want to talk with each other but just be on their phones, even when "hanging out". That's what increases loneliness. Despite hanging out and doing stuff together, they're not interacting with each other nearly as much, nor on as deep a level.
- ronnier 8y agoMy opinion is that likely mostly impacts men. I see men struggling to find women to date (and the opposite for women, too many men to pick from). The internet and apps have made the dating market very difficult for men in general. Women literally have 100's or 1000's of choices at any given time while men will struggle to have a single option. There are just more men now than ever it seems, and it's really exaggerated in the Western US tech cities. When I go out, I sometimes count and I'll see 20 men to 1 woman at places.
- gbear605 8y agoFor people between 25 and 54, in America, there are almost exactly as many men as women, to within less than one percent. [0] So if you see more men than women around you, that's a filter bubble that you've artificially put yourself in. Therefore the converse must be that there are many other places in America where there are more women than men. So go out, socialize, get away from your bubble, and meet other people. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio
- ronnier 8y agoLooking at this, singles between 18 and 44, there's just a massive amount of men compared to women: http://jonathansoma.com/singles/#1/6/2/0 http://jonathansoma.com/singles/#1/6/2/0
- androidgirl 8y agoThis all hits home, and I agree with a lot of the points on social media. Unfortunately, it's not as easy as just quitting. When I stopped using Facebook at the start of this year, my loneliness got much higher. There's less ways to meet people outside of the internet now. For awhile, I was visiting a hacker-space outside of $WORK, but everyone is already involved with everyone else and it's tough to break into a social circle.
- iamcasen 8y agoI feel this really acutely right now. I'm finding that it takes about 3 years of conscious, dedicated, effort to build a small circle of friends as an adult. It feels like all forces are against you in the process because there is nothing tying anyone to anyone else. Everyone is free to just change course, leave town, get into a new hobby. So keeping a group of 10 folks together? Be ready for some monumental effort!
- tcbawo 8y agoIf you have children, it seems that many parents make friends with similar ages to their own. Once those groups are baked in, though, it's harder to crack. People seem to be more open to new friends with their first child than last.
- mikestaub 8y agoI'm working on a new app to help solve this problem, feel free to sign up for the beta. https://peapods.com https://peapods.com
- culot 8y agoReally excellent work on the graphics. Adorable!
- baursak 8y agoAtomization and social alienation has long been a charge against capitalism as a system. It's interesting that this trend is similar in both the US and Japan, so can't really be explained by something like American car-centric infrastructure. A tangentially related article that this brings to mind: http://julesboykoff.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Boykoff_Leaf_blower_CNS_2011.pdf http://julesboykoff.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Boykoff_L...
- knbknb 8y agoMaybe another influencing factor is parents who prefer that their toddlers only have contact with children of other parents who are somewhat like them. Thus, children are encouraged to create fewer friendships from an early age on. The parents are not overprotective, or rather in a very specific way. If that is so - (I'm just speculating here) - what we're seeing now is just the beginning of a trend that will continue for a very long time.
- bbrian 8y agoThe real culprit, IMO, is the automobile. By allowing people travel further, the frequency your life overlaps with other individuals' decreases exponentially. Relationships with strangers are much easier to start with familiarity. I'd like cities to be planned foremost with walkability in mind.
- abledon 8y agothats the premise for the book "the big disconnect the story of technology and loneliness"
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoAnd hyper specialisation which forces many people away from home to find work.
- Buldak 8y agoI would have thought that we've lived in a car-centric culture for generations now, though. How would cars explain why loneliness and isolation have risen just recently?
- bbrian 8y agoThe report doesn't say loneliness is rising recently. It says technology use is rising and then measures individuals' loneliness, following up with a survey on technology use and a self reported ~"Do you think technology is contributing to loneliness?". I think for a large part the Internet is replacing television. Is there a suggestion that those spending over two hours/day online (correlating more in the report with loneliness) are being affected by the medium or content or they're just using PC rather than TV? I'd wager that car use is also up significantly too. Better roads, better cars, more two-car families (28% of US households have more cars than people), kids not walking to school... [] https://newsroom.aaa.com/2016/09/americans-spend-average-17600-minutes-driving-year/ https://newsroom.aaa.com/2016/09/americans-spend-average-176...
- closeparen 8y agoIt takes a lot less work to meet up with friends when everything is a 20 minute drive vs. when everything is a 2 hour walk to bus to once-per-2.5-hours train to bus to walk. In the Bay Area, seeing friends who don’t live in my neighborhood is a special occasion. In car-oriented Midwestern sprawl, it was almost every week. Being in cars together, trading rides, etc. also created a pleasant, low-pressure space for conversation. The audience of one’s fellow train/bus passengers changes that dynamic a lot. I don’t think it’s as drastic a difference as you say. There are tradeoffs all around.
- whitepoplar 8y agoMoving to NYC saved my life. I was depressed, lonely, insecure, and starving socially. When I got here, I discovered a city of people who were earnest, open to meeting others, and happy to welcome me into their lives. What makes this city so great for people like me is that it forces you to both strive for better and not take yourself so seriously (because no one fucking cares). It's a city full of selfish, caring, hardworking, arrogant, kind people. It's this balance that makes life great.
- elyrly 8y agowonderful summary of NYC
- sridca 8y agoCould you provide some specific examples?
- bscphil 8y agoAgree with others - some more details or examples would be great. As someone who's been in exactly that kind of rut for years, I would seriously consider dropping everything and moving somewhere like this.
- chadmeister 8y agoIf you can afford it, do it. There are so many people in such a small space that as long as you're willing to put yourself out there you're bound to inevitably meet others you click with. It's ultimately a numbers game and I'd say NYC in particular is inherently a very social place so I'd put it at the top of your list. Good luck!
- afarrell 8y agoIf I was to start a company at this point, it would probably be focused on this problem. I'm not sure what though, because I worry that anything which would be profitable wouldn't be really incrementally solving the problem. Maybe a MOOC which taught courses like: - How to arrange an outing with friends: logistics and communication - How to follow up after you've just met someone - How to loop a new person into a conversation among folks who know each other - How to continue a conversation after someone said something awkward about the ever-present march of time and our bodies' unstoppable march toward death - How to help a friend talk through a problem which is emotionally distressing for them - How to introduce a friend to someone you think they might be romantically compatible with - How to tell exceedingly dorky jokes with excellent timing so as to put someone at ease Or other things.
- sobani 8y agoIn that case you might want to take a look at your competition first. Two that I know of: https://theartofcharm.com/ https://theartofcharm.com/ - more personal connections https://advancedhumandynamics.com/ https://advancedhumandynamics.com/ - more business networking
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jarjoura 8y agoWouldn't surprise me that a British publication would note that loneliness is on the rise as American culture norms are being spread around the world through our media and technology. There are thousands and thousands of books and papers written on American individualism at the root of our very superficial friendships since the early 20th century. A quick Google search returns books that date to the 1970s on the very topic. How many of your friends have only been along for a part of your life journey and then you lose touch and grow apart? We are driven to pursue our dreams and passions and become as successful as we can in whatever we think that means for us. I mean, we're the country that invented the nursing home, complete with the expression, "you're born alone and you die alone."
- hi41 8y agoAnyone knows a book to learn social interaction? I am very awkward and despise office parties. I want to know reasonable modern etiquettes that can improve my interactions.