18 ms·

Alienated, Alone and Angry: What the Digital Revolution Did?

279 points by SirLJ 7y ago

NPMaxwell 7y ago
"Harris Poll’s Alienation Index... asks whether respondents agree with these five statements: What you think doesn’t count very much anymore. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Most people with power try to take advantage of people like yourself. The people running the country don’t really care what happens to you. You’re left out of things going on around you. Harris then averages the rates of agreement to reach an index... In 1998 ... the score was 56%. In 2008 ... 58%. [2018], it was 69%" The rest of the article is trying to unpack why answers to those questions changed
- NPMaxwell 7y ago
  The Alienation Index comes from a telephone survey. The results changed very dramatically from 29 & 36 in 1966 and 1968 to 55 and 59 in '73, '74. Since then, it has varied with a small positive trend between 50 and 70. The initial jump in the first 7 years looks like impacts of methodological changes. Since then, the portion of the population that is willing to pick up the phone and answer questions has plummeted, so that a phone survey sample is an unusual slice of the American Population and getting more and more unusual all the time Most helpful source: https://theharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Harris-Interactive-Poll-Research-HARRIS-ALIENATION-INDEX-UNCHANGED-FROM-LAST-YEARS-VERY-HIGH-NUMBER-1994-01.pdf https://theharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Harris-...
  - im3w1l 7y ago
    Majority no longer pick up because "Strangers on the phone are just trying to take advantage of us". The people that do pick up are probably the least alienated.
    - papeda 7y ago
      Or the people lonely enough to jump at any possibility of human contact. It’s unclear.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  I’d honestly interested to hear the perspective of who disagree with these statements. Barring the last one, this seems like a pretty rational perspective on all of US history and politics, post the 1970s.
  - vorpalhex 7y ago
    I wouldn't say just post 1970s, but this is why we have a political system based on two sides locked in contention instead of a monarchy or a single ruling party. The only point I would attack is "the rich get richer, the poor get poorer". The lowest poverty rate in the US was 1989, but it's still tremendously low. Likewise, the lifestyle between your favorite rich celebrity and a middle class family is not as dramatic as it was in like 1850.
    - portaljester 7y ago
      1850 is an interesting benchmark. Especially considering you said that the poverty rate is increasing
      - vorpalhex 7y ago
        It's actually declined the last four years, but it's increased slightly in general since 1989 (we might eventually get lower than that, signs look good as far as I can tell). But we're talking +/- maybe a max of 2%. Very small changes.
- zadkey 7y ago
  My question is this. In one scenario the world doesn't change, only my perception of it which then means I am/ I feel alienated. But in the other scenario, my perception of the world is clear, its just the world has changed which has then shaped my perception of it. This means that the world became worse place. Both scenarios result in an increased alienation index. And there are an infinite number of in-between scenarios. How do we know for sure which scenario we are in?
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  The one fact-checkable statement there is false. The rich do get richer, but the poor also get richer.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    There's also value there in calculating the rate of change for each.
  - nothrabannosir 7y ago
    I would love some help clearing up something I never quite understand: does that depend on whether it's corrected for purchasing power? How does this relate to e.g. the idea that you have to work more hours on a minimum wage job to buy a house? So is it fair to e.g. express the price of a house in "burger flipping hours" instead of dollars, and see the price go up, implying that the poor do get poorer? Or is that already incorporated in the concept of "purchasing power", and are you now double correcting for something?
    - throwaway1777 7y ago
      Purchasing power and inflation adjustment are usually accounted for properly. When people say “the poor get richer” they’re talking about the global poor, like folks who live on $2 per day. That number had drastically decreased. But in the western world the “poor” working for minimum wage and middle classes have seen almost no gains while the rich have seen massive increases in both income and wealth.
    - rayiner 7y ago
      The most important thing to understand is that these time-series comparisons are much harder to analyze than they seem, because multiple variables are changing simultaneously. Consider, for example, the idea that you have to work more hours at minimum wage to afford to buy a house. Whether that's true or not, you also need to account for the fact that "minimum wage workers" make up a much smaller percentage of the population today than they did 30 years ago: https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2014/images/ted_20140403a.png https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2014/images/ted_20140403a.png In 1980, 15% of workers (and 20% of women) had earnings at-or-below the federal minimum wage. Today, it's about 5% for both men and women. So "minimum wage worker" identifies a much narrower, and likely less skilled, group of workers than it did in 1980. Also, who are those workers? Today, many are first generation immigrants. I think most people would agree that even in a fair economy, you would expect there to be some time lag during which new immigrants' incomes catch up to those of people with established roots in the U.S. (Even among immigrants who are college educated, for example, U.S. employers often don't give as much weight to degrees from unknown foreign schools.) In 1980, 6.2% of the population was immigrants: https://cis.org/sites/default/files/2018-09/camarota-imm-pop-sept-18-f1_0.jpg https://cis.org/sites/default/files/2018-09/camarota-imm-pop.... Today, about 14%. If you add economically-challenged people mostly to the bottom of the income distribution, obviously your median is going to go down. But when we think about these time series comparisons, we are usually thinking about the incomes of similarly situated people. If the percentage of the population that is immigrants is going up, you can have a situation where income seems to be going down, even though the incomes of people in each group (native born, immigrants) are both going up. Changes in financing and interest rates also change the equation. To a great extent, rising home prices have been offset by declining interest rates (in part thanks to things like mortgage-backed securities). From the perspective of the home buyer, what matters is the mortgage payment, not the precise division between purchase price and interest. Mortgage payments as a percentage of income are actually down significantly since the 1980s: https://cdnassets.hw.net/dims4/GG/a9ec223/2147483647/resize/876x%3E/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdnassets.hw.net%2F55%2F9d%2Fc17b5b2b43d1ab7b8ffcc4d3eafb%2Fscreen-shot-2018-09-06-at-10.31.20%20AM.png https://cdnassets.hw.net/dims4/GG/a9ec223/2147483647/resize/.... Rents, meanwhile, are up, but not as much as you'd expect.
zcw100 7y ago
Social media is a straight jacket. You can say anything you want but no one cares what someone in a straight jacket has to say because you can't actually do anything.
- hadiz 7y ago
  A software engineering position at Uber in SF seems to be something of value to most people on HN. I know someone who quit that position to focus on her Instagram career. She was not a mode or anything, one day she just announced she's turned vegan and voila, she was an influencer. Now she owns a house in West Hollywood. All within 8-10 months.
  - claudeganon 7y ago
    The film “Ingrid Goes West” captures the inverse, dark reality of this phenomenon very well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingrid_Goes_West https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingrid_Goes_West
    - hadiz 7y ago
      yeah I watched that when it came out in 2017, I thought in the end the influencer was depicted as a good person who's earned her status, no?
      - ivraatiems 7y ago
        I would not call her a good person. Almost nobody in that film is a good person. In the end, the influencer is depicted (accurately) as a victim of the protagonist's mental instability and manipulation, but it's her vapidity and inability to genuinely relate to anyone that made that victimization possible. She's as damaged as Ingrid is, just in a more subtle, socially acceptable way.
      - claudeganon 7y ago
        There’s a subtle through line that the influencer couple were just boring, born rich people using the whole Instagram influencer thing as a means to launder themselves into something more hip and bohemian (and thus marketable in contemporary culture). Ingrid, being a lower class person, is drawn into this deception and they ultimately come out in more or less the same places they started. If I remember correctly, one of the influencer couple at the end is moving on to take a corporate art job (without any real merit or qualifications) at Levi’s or something.
harryf 7y ago
I don't believe the digital revolution "did this to us". I think it's simply a mirror and and amplifier what was already there. On social media, for example, we get to see the projections of what people want to be and the underlying darker sides of their personality (narcissism, selfishness, etc). This was always there but latent or hidden... stuff that happened behind closed doors that only families knew about. Now it's public... Meanwhile the alienation or isolation... as a European, what freaks me out every time I'm in the US is the dependence on cars for everything. That in many places it's not possible to walk to the grocery and get fresh air... That you're in a permanent state of semi-isolation, breathing air-conditioned oxygen with the only human contact being with people that are paid to smile. Contrast that with visiting a city like Kiev where, in the evening after work, the city parks are filled with families enjoying the sunset (when the weather is warm). I've have the theory that Internet adoption has always been fastest in the US, compared the the rest of the world, because it's the only way to get any kind of "real" connection to other people. The driver - loneliness - was always there, the product of car dependence, television and an entrepreneurial culture that tends to want to monetize any kind of human interaction, even friends (Amway, pyramid marketing). Ultimately I think it's a good thing, that this stuff is becoming visible and we're realising there is a problem. That's the first step to find the solution.
- Juliate 7y ago
  > I don't believe the digital revolution "did this to us". I think it's simply a mirror and and amplifier what was already there. You saying the same thing and its exact contrary. Of course it's always been there. That's not the point. The point is that the so-called revolution/empowerment is promoting the worst out of us collectively and individually, instead of taming the beast, and helping the best. Taming the beast, the destructive human passions, for the common good, which is the very point of "civilisation". Edit: > and we're realising there is a problem It's been thousands of years we've realised, we know there is a problem. People have discoursed/written about it so much in the past.
  - asdfman123 7y ago
    It's almost like saying, "Cars aren't responsible for polluting the environment. Our capacity for pollution has always been there." Well, of course it has, but small nudges are responsible for a big part of the course of history. But I completely agree with them on the isolation of car-based American culture.
durnygbur 7y ago
> The Americans who marked this decade most visibly with their anger and impotence are, of course, young white men. Not that young anymore, another "lost generation"? Lost in clicks, taps, swipes, likes, and upvotes. The only truly innovative invention of social networks is the psychological one, yet not done by the pschylogical professionals - how to mercilessly monetize and exploit the dopamine injection cycle of a human. Shall we invent a way to block on demand the dopamine inflow, the same way we block ads and shut down the lights in a room? > It seizes some of the best, noblest human instincts — to share, to know, to connect, to belong — and harnesses them to a degrading system of profit. This just screams "Tinder" (for a male) with their premium plans, "boosters", and whatnot. Yet here I am - contributing my time and intellectual ability on a website from a country where I will never live or work, which on my entry attempt will assume I'm an intruder, ie. I'm trowing both into a black hole. Please upvote. Internet with social networks enabled something new. Massive global crowd for whom English is the lingua franca. The creativity of this crowd is consumed by American corporations sucking them into their outsourcing centers (or even better more recently - free labour with a promise of becoming an influencer), and the spreading of language is choked by the copyright lobbies. Don't take as granted having your language as a lingua franca, Anglosphere, be timid - 30 years ago we would speak French and you'd be out of this conversation.
- Sumaso 7y ago
  In 1999 we'd be having this conversation in French? Really? Honestly if you think social networks are just for people who speak english you gotta take a look at the world a bit more.
  - durnygbur 7y ago
    In 1989, yes. Guess in what languages were translated the fields in passports of many countries from the Communist block? French, German, and Russian. > Honestly if you think social networks are just for people who speak english you gotta take a look at the world a bit more. Depends on how you see yourself. Passive viewer, poster? You're right. Contributor, creator of platforms and systems, advanced content creator? Try doing these without knowing English. Yeah, I mean more generally "the internet" and "the web" rather than social networks only.
dcolkitt 7y ago
One thing to note is that Robert Putnam wrote the original Bowling Alone essay in 1995. Well before most people in America even had Internet access. The trend of declining participation in religious organizations, civic organizations (like the League of Women Voters), fraternal societies (like the Elks or Masons), volunteer associations, labor unions, and sports leagues has been happening since at least the 1970s. Surveys of Americans have found a consistent decline in the number of self-reported close friends since as far back as the 1980s. Same for those who reported being friends with their neighbors. Indicators of social capital like the percent of people who donate blood have been falling since the 1970s. The point is increasing levels of isolation and misanthropy is a manifestation of a broader trend towards declining social capital. And that trend has been ongoing for probably 50 years. Social media may have accelerated it, but I don't think it would have anywhere near the same impact if Facebook was introduced to the American society of 1960.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  Marx wrote about it in 1844: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation
  - qntty 7y ago
    Why the downvotes? Some of Marx's least "problematic" writings is his early stuff on alienation.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  I wonder if it's a side effect of prosperity. If you're poor, you depend on your broader family and community -- when you run out of money, when your car breaks down and your uncle can fix it, etc. etc. and if you have to sleep in the same room as your extended family, you're going to have "community." However, dealing with people is difficult and inconvenient, so when you have money you decide to leave your family and isolate yourself from other people's problems as much as possible. You perhaps gain more peace, privacy and free time, but it's harder to notice what you're losing. I'm not going to dredge up the numbers now, but in the 60s in America, I think it's probably safe to say a lot more siblings lived in the same room, a lot more people lived in small independent farms working alongside many family members, etc. etc. People were closer together because they had to be. People in cities didn't have to be quite so adjacent, but perhaps they were closer because it was normal in society to be closer. Speculation on my part, but it probably wouldn't be hard to find those numbers and back up the argument...
CptFribble 7y ago
Refrigeration, department stores, radio. That's food, sundries, and information, the 3 main things that humans go out of their home to get, and before those 3 inventions you had to get into your community to get them. Refrigeration allowed the growth of larger, depersonalized grocery stores. Department stores were the first iteration of buying sundries at a place run by people you don't know. Radio was the first non-local information source available on demand. For most of human history, people lived in communities and had to interact with each other to live their lives. In the last 100 years out of 10,000 we suddenly don't anymore, and we're still figuring it out. And that's before you consider the impact of the Internet. This has been a long, slow burn, and I worry that humanity won't be able to grow up fast enough to figure it out before we do something really stupid.
- adamsea 7y ago
  I would argue its gross inequality more so than those technologies. In other countries with less economic inequality I believe studies show more happiness and social cohesion.
  - shortandsweet 7y ago
    Lower class has more connectivity due to need. Upper class not so much. I always thought it was more fun being poor due to this but rich was more comfortable.
  - dbspin 7y ago
    Not surprising that suggesting social inequality might play a part gets you instantly downvoted. Despite being as plausible an explanation as other (more right wing) possibilities - 'diversity', 'women working' that proliferate in this thread. Its uncomfortable for highly paid tech workers to accept the reality that inequality damages social cohesion. Nevertheless, If inequality is a major cause of this kind of alienation, it's a particular kind of inequality. Specifically people living in competition, and confronted by the impact of competition in close proximity. Some desperately unequal societies in South East Asia don't seem to have the same level of social dysfunction, while Japan which is relatively flat has enormous amounts of alienation, mental health issues, relationship decline, and of course suicide.
deleted 7y ago
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chasd00 7y ago
ah yes, your computer did this to you. Surely, you didn't do it to yourself.
Damogran6 7y ago
"Instead we got Baby Yoda" I don't see this as a bad thing. If this is an age of weaponized communication, perhaps it's not bad to learn how to moderate it's intake?
cmdshiftf4 7y ago
Not a hint of attribution to new-media clickbait farms, the head of which is Buzzfeed, who've eviscerated attention spans, long-form journalism and its funding, and pumped the internet full of low-effort, divisive content merely created to generate outrage for ad-clicks. >What you think doesn’t count very much anymore. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Most people with power try to take advantage of people like yourself. The people running the country don’t really care what happens to you. You’re left out of things going on around you. All of the above will increase with more exposure to what is going on in the world, which is provided by the internet, and all of which will further inclined to be agreed with by journalists reporting on it in a biased manner done for the purpose of generating ad-revenue from outrage driven clicks. You can argue that the new digital era has alienated people simply by existing, but the new media is the ultimate culprit after having spent the last decade stoking tension in atomizing society based on uncontrollable, biologically determined factors and creating a sense of victimhood and entitlement amongst each of their subdivisions.
- baud147258 7y ago
  > who've eviscerated attention spans, long-form journalism and its funding, and pumped the internet full of low-effort, divisive content merely created to generate outrage for ad-clicks. I don't think some newspapers were much better, seeing how they filled with barely true news snippet between ads for local business.
- lxwang 7y ago
  If the new media is an inevitable byproduct of the digital era simply existing, which is how things look to me, it still makes sense to follow things back to the root cause. How many examples are there of successful media organizations that don't at some level run the same way as the one you're lambasting? Being owned and funded by a government or a multibillionaire to serve as their propaganda outlet are viable but have their own problems that might or might not be worse.
- buboard 7y ago
  people simply spend a lot more time online, reading stuff. the papers feed this newfound addiction. i don't think it's fair to always accuse only the media for giving people what they asked for. after all it is people that turned their backs on their physical surroundings, first with books, then with TV , now with the internet, and in the future possibly with VR
thrownaway954 7y ago
The more information you have, the more you have to worry about and anger about. Quoting the great Cypher, "After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss".
scoutt 7y ago
I don't agree even if the article tries to be optimistic. Could it be that the "Harris Poll’s Alienation Index" is now being answered by people who is more aware about what is going on in the world? The source of information is not the mass-media anymore. After 20 years of mass-internet, is still a matter of SNR. I didn't care about the life of Britney Spears in 1998, I don't care now about pewdipie. It will pass when the next generation will develop a natural filter for bullshit. That will be the plateau.
rishiraj8824 7y ago
Why it's BuzzFeed news on hackernews?!?!
- whishfuls0ber 7y ago
  :cheers: Quoting someone: 'And NOT use Disney as a bully pulpit for his -politics-(crossed out) money-making-sheme' -but wasn't that what Walt Disney did ? confused And 'using the money (income) for a next' ? > NOW IS THE UNDERSTANDING FOR 'A NEXT' ALSO > A BIBLICAL ONE, FOR 'YOUR NEXT' AND... (Sry for the shift-lock) ^^
scottlocklin 7y ago
The alienation in the US very obviously has nothing to do with the internet, and in fact, I'd say the internet helped people be less alienated. I say this because pretty much every country is as online as the US is, and doesn't have the problems the US does. The US is alienated from widespread fear of crime, immigration (aka the actual sociological results of Robert Putnam, rather than the yammerings of some Buzzfeed wanker), poisonous oligarch funded divisive politics, and the general disintegration of anything resembling a family life or social fabric in US society. There are various obvious ways of decreasing social alienation in US society; the problem with that is, most people aren't going to like it. The opposite of alienation and social atomization is basically conformity and homogeneity, and that's bad for business; and especially bad for the oligarch types who engender this kind of alienation. Fiddling with the internet in a futile attempt to decrease social alienation is like buying a tank top to increase your physical fitness.
- pixelbash 7y ago
  > The opposite of alienation and social atomization is basically conformity and homogeneity Not sure I agree with that, you don't have to be like other people to get along with them. A strong social fabric at it's root is things like being willing to talk to all walks of life and not nurturing a fear of the unknown.
  - cmdshiftf4 7y ago
    >Not sure I agree with that, you don't have to be like other people to get along with them. I can't think of a single example of a heterogeneous society that has lasted a comparably long time. Would you care to point to one, or cite some studies to show their effectiveness vs those that are homogeneous in nature? I'd argue that a strong sense of shared identity, such as that provided previously by religion in the West, and which still currently holds strength elsewhere, is crucial to the success of a given society. The War state, and then post-War state, of the West also had a strong sense of shared identity and bound together as a result. Evidence points towards it. The current state of the West is a testament to the disarray caused in a heterogeneous society with no sense of shared identity and the mutual obligations that result from it. The divisions and gaps are only widening, the issues around it are only becoming worse, and those who stand to benefit from it are using it to its full advantage.
mihaaly 7y ago
It may have done it to some of us, to those who were doing great perhaps even dominating and shaping local groups but to the rest it was a huge relief finding likely minded unavailable in the immediate geographical vicinity, allowed those alienated locally finding community elsewhere. I believe the article is seriously biased and criminally incomplete, shortly incorrect.
- nailer 7y ago
  Well yes, it's buzzfeed. Just flag it when you see the domain, you don't need to take the bait.
majos 7y ago
This reminds me of a book I read about the history of extemporaneous poetry (pretty much freestyling) in Latin America and Europe, and its decline: > The verse improvisations of Cantabria are at best dormant. Women and men skilled at creating them are still alive, but the context that produced them is virtually extinct. That context was a world in which the lives of one’s neighbors were the chief, virtually the only, entertainment; a world in which personalities and eccentricities were savored. To some of their neighbors in adjacent valleys the attacks on differences in appearance, births out of wedlock, poverty, and impotence seemed uncouth and brutal. But running through the recollections of the older men and women I talked to were phrases like, ‘nobody was offended’, ‘they took it in good humor’, ‘it was part of the fun’, or ‘we all looked forward to it’. In 1942 Cossio wrote that the people of Polaciones knew no moral laws. One could also say that they had been able to maintain their own laws, different measures for what could be said and done and what was considered an offense. Attribute it to the internet, car culture, personalized media, whatever, but I don’t think it’s ever been easier to decide you dislike the people around you and find another community, perhaps virtually. In turn this easy access to frictionless interaction makes people less and less tolerant of what would have been everyday interaction in the past. I don’t remember where, but I once read something that said the great appeal of fame is not just being adored, but being adored and not having to reciprocate. We seem to be moving in that direction.
erikerikson 7y ago
It's really important that we blame the internet companies. Otherwise we might have to take responsibility for ourselves. Better to be victims.</snark>
mensetmanusman 7y ago
Jonathan Haidt has an excellent article that changed my mind on this topic: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/social-media-democracy/600763/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/social-... I think the problem with social media is that the loud crazy voices that are usually confined to the corner streets in cities can now shout all the way around the world. A simple fix would be to limit the distance a ‘voice’ could travel to geographic boundaries that are a function of population density.
- deleted 7y ago
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- wostusername 7y ago
  Sounds like what Yik Yak tried to do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yik_Yak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yik_Yak
yosefzeev 7y ago
Poppycock and fiddle-faddle. We allowed these things and did it to ourselves.
caiocaiocaio 7y ago
A pretty good consolation for the alienation and rage Buzzfeed is telling me about is being able to go to Buzzfeed and find out which Friends character I'm most like.
atomashpolskiy 7y ago
Digital my ass. So it's all Zuckerberg's fault now? How about the fall of Soviet Union and communist block? Which events (although being good for people) were abused by certain groups to: - end the public debate on whether capitalism is the right way to run the society, - enable unprecedented power concentration in a single country, - and make money and greed govern practically all aspects of human life? Lots of clever thoughts in the comments, but I'm really surprised no one brings this one up.
- atomashpolskiy 7y ago
  I'll add that it's really fucking sad, that one of the greatest achievements of human society (Internet is basically a huge collective effort), is demonized for somehow unleashing lowly human nature and similar nonsense. It's just a medium and, in some cases, a mirror.
plughs 7y ago
I agree broadly but I think the real cause is overlooked. When I was young, everyone in our town read the <Town Name> Times. They may have passionately disagreed with it, they may have thought it was too right or left, but they all read it and could at least have discussions from a common starting point. Now that is gone. Right-wing boomers read only news sources aimed at right-wing boomers. Left-wing millennials read only news sources aimed at left-wing millennials. Of course they are hopelessly alienated from each other. One side reads that unemployment is at an all time low, one side reads that income inequality is at an all time high, and both are convinced that the other side is fundamentally incapable of reason. So they all sit in their echo chamber and get angrier and angrier at anyone outside of it, fed day after day by a media whose only real interest is more clicks, more ads, more money. I don't know how we come back from it. I'm not sure we do. It scares me frankly.
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  >When I was young, everyone in our town read the <Town Name> Times. Speedway Town Press, delivered free to every house in town. Me and several friends started delivering it around 12 for 3 cents a paper and every kid would always read it because they wanted to see the honor roll announcements, school event photos etc. Our principal retired when we were in 2nd or 3rd grade then in 6th grade we read about it in the town press, some of us wrote a letter to the editor that was then in the next addition and got us all letters from his widow. We knew our neighbors by name (adults knew each other by first name, kids knew adults by Mr surname/Mrs surname). If you were going out of town for vacation you told the neighbor and they'd take your mail in, with they key they already had, and even feed/water your dog for you. Neighbors would drop by to visit each other, often being invited in if it wasn't nice out. I don't even know what my neighbors look like now. If you lined 5 people up I couldn't tell you if any of them were my neighbors or just random people. My neighbor across the hall leaves their keys in their deadbolt at least once a week (Seriously, at least once a week. Twice just this week I've come home to see their keys in the deadbolt. Flat out will not answer the door because "oh my god a stranger"). Car key, apartment key etc. They've been doing this since they moved in in July. I have no idea what they look like despite the fact that I've stood there knocking on their door more than a dozen different days for multiple minutes each time trying to tell them they've left their key in the deadbolt. The first time I actually walked around to their windows and knocked on the window in a room that was lit "hey you left your keys in the door", nothing. Knocked on the door some more, nothing. I truly miss a time when we were more interested in the people around us than strangers online.
christiansakai 7y ago
If anyone wants to be more aware of this issue, I recommend the book Amusing Ourselves to Death, and also Technopoly, both by Neil Postman.
tarkin2 7y ago
The internet offers superficial social interactions. It gives reasons to ignore the people in our surroundings. And them, us. We physically socialise with fewer people. Our social skills decline. We can choose to completely ignore those of different opinions. We were once forced to socialise with them. No longer in our digital bubble. This fractures social cohesion. Loneliness and then anger results. This anger can and will be directed by those willing and able.
jdkee 7y ago
“ And yet, the journalist Jon Katz argued, the country was on the verge of something even greater than prosperity and progress — something that would change the course of world history.“ From the infamous Jon Katz of Slashdot fame. Oh the memories.
tempsy 7y ago
This was a strange decade for tech. Seems like a lot has changed, but at the same time the companies we were talking about in 2010 are the same companies we're talking about today e.g. FB, Twitter, Apple, Google, Netflix, even Uber all existed in 2010 and are just a more polished version of their 2010 selves.
- buboard 7y ago
  i dont know about strange, stagnant, yes. when things stagnate they rot
iamleppert 7y ago
I look back on a time when the world Was so young A beautiful ecology A flowing river and a bright beautiful Sun was enough Now I don't really know anymore Satisfied with only the land and the trees Instead we mass-produce machines I really wonder if there can ever be a Place for a little A little bit of Romance '83 I thought that love and kindness were The things we all need A bit of sensitivity Just living life simple was the thing to Believe in I don't really know really know anymore Sharing all the human feelings deep inside Instead we hide behind machines I really wonder if there can ever be a Place for a little A little bit of Romance '83
mnm1 7y ago
The criteria for alienation are listed as: > What you think doesn’t count very much anymore. > The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. > Most people with power try to take advantage of people like yourself. > The people running the country don’t really care what happens to you. > You’re left out of things going on around you. 2, 3, and 4 have been true since the beginning of America and probably since the beginning of every country that has ever existed. Two has been objectively verifiable in the last 50 years in America and can even be graphed out. Three is also objectively verifiable to some extent on a case by case basis. This isn't a matter of opinion. These are terrible criteria to judge alienation with. Any person who is aware of his society and culture would be aware of these things and would agree with at least 3-4 of them in America.
cannabis_sam 7y ago
Fuck all these lukewarm rationalitazions. Wanna meet a girl? Spend a year and a half improving your tinder stats, and if you’re not a hot muscly guy, go fuck yourself.
ForrestN 7y ago
This gets close but misses the obvious reason for any recent spike: “ It’s easy to speculate about the reasons for this increase: a financial crisis that awakened Americans to the widening gaps between rich and poor; an opioid epidemic caused by corporate greed; entrenched racism and sexism; bitterly divided partisan politics; and, of course, technological change” It’s not “partisan politics,” we feel alienated because we are witnessing the attempted dismantling of modern democracy by a transnational network of would-be fascists. We feel alienated because a man who admitted on tape to being a serial rapist was subsequently elect4d president. We feel alienated because the police are murdering innocent civilizations with shocking regularity, as are Private individuals with guns. Non of this is “partisan”... the government and its allies around the world are openly hostile to the interests of the public. That is, well, alienating,
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. This is going the wrong way down a one way street. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - ForrestN 7y ago
    So funny to return to this after reading through the fact-free chaos of the ‘socialist website” Assange disinformation and the attending praise of Wikileaks. Hopefully one day we can go through a collective process of settling on what’s true and what isn’t, and prioritizing true stuff! I heard this happened at a grand scale, the enlightenment, I think it was called?
  - ForrestN 7y ago
    That anyone here would disagree with the above facts, let alone see the possibility for them to be widely controversial, is a searing indictment of our situation as a community. Why talk about collective stress if it’s a faux pas to mention the actual real source of it for non-rich non-Californians? Ah well I guess it’s delusional to imagine a more realistic and engaged grappling with political reality to venture here. There’s too much money to be made I guess. Don’t want distractions like using our massive power to help save our democracy to free in.
scarejunba 7y ago
I'm sure that all the people who have this feeling have an external locus of control. Listen, social skills are just skills. If you're feeling alienated, go fix it. I'm not. Pretty happy. And I use lots of social media.
muzzletov 7y ago
This article is bs. We were all that in disguise. Do some bout it. Bye.
acd 7y ago
I think that we consume a lot more content through computer recommendations algorithms. These filter bubbles makes us more alienated towards different opinion and views than our own preferred way of viewing things. Thus the more we consume media through filter bubbles the more alienated we become. Plus technology is replacing human interactions. For example: Bookstore vs online bookstore Renting movies at a video store vs online Movie streaming Spontaneous interactions at cashiers being replaced by software. Not one of these one interaction may make us more alienated but summed together they make something bigger. A question to ask is what technology replaces? Also people are a little bit less religious nowadays and religion serves as a gathering point for local community where people come together and meet.
- basch 7y ago
  Predictive algorithms exist to re-feed us the past. Nostalgia is comfortable, safe, familiar, and easy. Not only do "people who like also like" type suggestions trap us in what we already know and like, but content producers themselves use data of what is liked to make more of the same. Artists have been replaced by marketing data science. https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-30a0-9a0a-3ff76e8bfe58 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7...
- buboard 7y ago
  try setting your twitter to chronological, see if it makes a difference (hint: it doesnt) you re totally right about people not finding excuses to interact. this is a real need , and cities have not been adapted for that. many people make deliberate effort to meet people, but these are mostly extroverts. the "old way" used to force such interactions on everyone indiscriminately
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

279 points by SirLJ 7y ago

"Harris Poll’s Alienation Index... asks whether respondents agree with these five statements: What you think doesn’t count very much anymore. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Most people with power try to take advantage of people like yourself. The people running the country don’t really care what happens to you. You’re left out of things going on around you. Harris then averages the rates of agreement to reach an index... In 1998 ... the score was 56%. In 2008 ... 58%. [2018], it was 69%" The rest of the article is trying to unpack why answers to those questions changed

NPMaxwell 7y ago
The Alienation Index comes from a telephone survey. The results changed very dramatically from 29 & 36 in 1966 and 1968 to 55 and 59 in '73, '74. Since then, it has varied with a small positive trend between 50 and 70. The initial jump in the first 7 years looks like impacts of methodological changes. Since then, the portion of the population that is willing to pick up the phone and answer questions has plummeted, so that a phone survey sample is an unusual slice of the American Population and getting more and more unusual all the time Most helpful source: https://theharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Harris-Interactive-Poll-Research-HARRIS-ALIENATION-INDEX-UNCHANGED-FROM-LAST-YEARS-VERY-HIGH-NUMBER-1994-01.pdf https://theharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Harris-...
- im3w1l 7y ago
  Majority no longer pick up because "Strangers on the phone are just trying to take advantage of us". The people that do pick up are probably the least alienated.
  - papeda 7y ago
    Or the people lonely enough to jump at any possibility of human contact. It’s unclear.
claudeganon 7y ago
I’d honestly interested to hear the perspective of who disagree with these statements. Barring the last one, this seems like a pretty rational perspective on all of US history and politics, post the 1970s.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  I wouldn't say just post 1970s, but this is why we have a political system based on two sides locked in contention instead of a monarchy or a single ruling party. The only point I would attack is "the rich get richer, the poor get poorer". The lowest poverty rate in the US was 1989, but it's still tremendously low. Likewise, the lifestyle between your favorite rich celebrity and a middle class family is not as dramatic as it was in like 1850.
  - portaljester 7y ago
    1850 is an interesting benchmark. Especially considering you said that the poverty rate is increasing
    - vorpalhex 7y ago
      It's actually declined the last four years, but it's increased slightly in general since 1989 (we might eventually get lower than that, signs look good as far as I can tell). But we're talking +/- maybe a max of 2%. Very small changes.
zadkey 7y ago
My question is this. In one scenario the world doesn't change, only my perception of it which then means I am/ I feel alienated. But in the other scenario, my perception of the world is clear, its just the world has changed which has then shaped my perception of it. This means that the world became worse place. Both scenarios result in an increased alienation index. And there are an infinite number of in-between scenarios. How do we know for sure which scenario we are in?
BurningFrog 7y ago
The one fact-checkable statement there is false. The rich do get richer, but the poor also get richer.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  There's also value there in calculating the rate of change for each.
- nothrabannosir 7y ago
  I would love some help clearing up something I never quite understand: does that depend on whether it's corrected for purchasing power? How does this relate to e.g. the idea that you have to work more hours on a minimum wage job to buy a house? So is it fair to e.g. express the price of a house in "burger flipping hours" instead of dollars, and see the price go up, implying that the poor do get poorer? Or is that already incorporated in the concept of "purchasing power", and are you now double correcting for something?
  - throwaway1777 7y ago
    Purchasing power and inflation adjustment are usually accounted for properly. When people say “the poor get richer” they’re talking about the global poor, like folks who live on $2 per day. That number had drastically decreased. But in the western world the “poor” working for minimum wage and middle classes have seen almost no gains while the rich have seen massive increases in both income and wealth.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    The most important thing to understand is that these time-series comparisons are much harder to analyze than they seem, because multiple variables are changing simultaneously. Consider, for example, the idea that you have to work more hours at minimum wage to afford to buy a house. Whether that's true or not, you also need to account for the fact that "minimum wage workers" make up a much smaller percentage of the population today than they did 30 years ago: https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2014/images/ted_20140403a.png https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2014/images/ted_20140403a.png In 1980, 15% of workers (and 20% of women) had earnings at-or-below the federal minimum wage. Today, it's about 5% for both men and women. So "minimum wage worker" identifies a much narrower, and likely less skilled, group of workers than it did in 1980. Also, who are those workers? Today, many are first generation immigrants. I think most people would agree that even in a fair economy, you would expect there to be some time lag during which new immigrants' incomes catch up to those of people with established roots in the U.S. (Even among immigrants who are college educated, for example, U.S. employers often don't give as much weight to degrees from unknown foreign schools.) In 1980, 6.2% of the population was immigrants: https://cis.org/sites/default/files/2018-09/camarota-imm-pop-sept-18-f1_0.jpg https://cis.org/sites/default/files/2018-09/camarota-imm-pop.... Today, about 14%. If you add economically-challenged people mostly to the bottom of the income distribution, obviously your median is going to go down. But when we think about these time series comparisons, we are usually thinking about the incomes of similarly situated people. If the percentage of the population that is immigrants is going up, you can have a situation where income seems to be going down, even though the incomes of people in each group (native born, immigrants) are both going up. Changes in financing and interest rates also change the equation. To a great extent, rising home prices have been offset by declining interest rates (in part thanks to things like mortgage-backed securities). From the perspective of the home buyer, what matters is the mortgage payment, not the precise division between purchase price and interest. Mortgage payments as a percentage of income are actually down significantly since the 1980s: https://cdnassets.hw.net/dims4/GG/a9ec223/2147483647/resize/876x%3E/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdnassets.hw.net%2F55%2F9d%2Fc17b5b2b43d1ab7b8ffcc4d3eafb%2Fscreen-shot-2018-09-06-at-10.31.20%20AM.png https://cdnassets.hw.net/dims4/GG/a9ec223/2147483647/resize/.... Rents, meanwhile, are up, but not as much as you'd expect.

zcw100 7y ago

Social media is a straight jacket. You can say anything you want but no one cares what someone in a straight jacket has to say because you can't actually do anything.

hadiz 7y ago
A software engineering position at Uber in SF seems to be something of value to most people on HN. I know someone who quit that position to focus on her Instagram career. She was not a mode or anything, one day she just announced she's turned vegan and voila, she was an influencer. Now she owns a house in West Hollywood. All within 8-10 months.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  The film “Ingrid Goes West” captures the inverse, dark reality of this phenomenon very well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingrid_Goes_West https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingrid_Goes_West
  - hadiz 7y ago
    yeah I watched that when it came out in 2017, I thought in the end the influencer was depicted as a good person who's earned her status, no?
    - ivraatiems 7y ago
      I would not call her a good person. Almost nobody in that film is a good person. In the end, the influencer is depicted (accurately) as a victim of the protagonist's mental instability and manipulation, but it's her vapidity and inability to genuinely relate to anyone that made that victimization possible. She's as damaged as Ingrid is, just in a more subtle, socially acceptable way.
    - claudeganon 7y ago
      There’s a subtle through line that the influencer couple were just boring, born rich people using the whole Instagram influencer thing as a means to launder themselves into something more hip and bohemian (and thus marketable in contemporary culture). Ingrid, being a lower class person, is drawn into this deception and they ultimately come out in more or less the same places they started. If I remember correctly, one of the influencer couple at the end is moving on to take a corporate art job (without any real merit or qualifications) at Levi’s or something.

harryf 7y ago

I don't believe the digital revolution "did this to us". I think it's simply a mirror and and amplifier what was already there. On social media, for example, we get to see the projections of what people want to be and the underlying darker sides of their personality (narcissism, selfishness, etc). This was always there but latent or hidden... stuff that happened behind closed doors that only families knew about. Now it's public... Meanwhile the alienation or isolation... as a European, what freaks me out every time I'm in the US is the dependence on cars for everything. That in many places it's not possible to walk to the grocery and get fresh air... That you're in a permanent state of semi-isolation, breathing air-conditioned oxygen with the only human contact being with people that are paid to smile. Contrast that with visiting a city like Kiev where, in the evening after work, the city parks are filled with families enjoying the sunset (when the weather is warm). I've have the theory that Internet adoption has always been fastest in the US, compared the the rest of the world, because it's the only way to get any kind of "real" connection to other people. The driver - loneliness - was always there, the product of car dependence, television and an entrepreneurial culture that tends to want to monetize any kind of human interaction, even friends (Amway, pyramid marketing). Ultimately I think it's a good thing, that this stuff is becoming visible and we're realising there is a problem. That's the first step to find the solution.

Juliate 7y ago
> I don't believe the digital revolution "did this to us". I think it's simply a mirror and and amplifier what was already there. You saying the same thing and its exact contrary. Of course it's always been there. That's not the point. The point is that the so-called revolution/empowerment is promoting the worst out of us collectively and individually, instead of taming the beast, and helping the best. Taming the beast, the destructive human passions, for the common good, which is the very point of "civilisation". Edit: > and we're realising there is a problem It's been thousands of years we've realised, we know there is a problem. People have discoursed/written about it so much in the past.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  It's almost like saying, "Cars aren't responsible for polluting the environment. Our capacity for pollution has always been there." Well, of course it has, but small nudges are responsible for a big part of the course of history. But I completely agree with them on the isolation of car-based American culture.

durnygbur 7y ago

> The Americans who marked this decade most visibly with their anger and impotence are, of course, young white men. Not that young anymore, another "lost generation"? Lost in clicks, taps, swipes, likes, and upvotes. The only truly innovative invention of social networks is the psychological one, yet not done by the pschylogical professionals - how to mercilessly monetize and exploit the dopamine injection cycle of a human. Shall we invent a way to block on demand the dopamine inflow, the same way we block ads and shut down the lights in a room? > It seizes some of the best, noblest human instincts — to share, to know, to connect, to belong — and harnesses them to a degrading system of profit. This just screams "Tinder" (for a male) with their premium plans, "boosters", and whatnot. Yet here I am - contributing my time and intellectual ability on a website from a country where I will never live or work, which on my entry attempt will assume I'm an intruder, ie. I'm trowing both into a black hole. Please upvote. Internet with social networks enabled something new. Massive global crowd for whom English is the lingua franca. The creativity of this crowd is consumed by American corporations sucking them into their outsourcing centers (or even better more recently - free labour with a promise of becoming an influencer), and the spreading of language is choked by the copyright lobbies. Don't take as granted having your language as a lingua franca, Anglosphere, be timid - 30 years ago we would speak French and you'd be out of this conversation.

Sumaso 7y ago
In 1999 we'd be having this conversation in French? Really? Honestly if you think social networks are just for people who speak english you gotta take a look at the world a bit more.
- durnygbur 7y ago
  In 1989, yes. Guess in what languages were translated the fields in passports of many countries from the Communist block? French, German, and Russian. > Honestly if you think social networks are just for people who speak english you gotta take a look at the world a bit more. Depends on how you see yourself. Passive viewer, poster? You're right. Contributor, creator of platforms and systems, advanced content creator? Try doing these without knowing English. Yeah, I mean more generally "the internet" and "the web" rather than social networks only.

dcolkitt 7y ago

One thing to note is that Robert Putnam wrote the original Bowling Alone essay in 1995. Well before most people in America even had Internet access. The trend of declining participation in religious organizations, civic organizations (like the League of Women Voters), fraternal societies (like the Elks or Masons), volunteer associations, labor unions, and sports leagues has been happening since at least the 1970s. Surveys of Americans have found a consistent decline in the number of self-reported close friends since as far back as the 1980s. Same for those who reported being friends with their neighbors. Indicators of social capital like the percent of people who donate blood have been falling since the 1970s. The point is increasing levels of isolation and misanthropy is a manifestation of a broader trend towards declining social capital. And that trend has been ongoing for probably 50 years. Social media may have accelerated it, but I don't think it would have anywhere near the same impact if Facebook was introduced to the American society of 1960.

claudeganon 7y ago
Marx wrote about it in 1844: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation
- qntty 7y ago
  Why the downvotes? Some of Marx's least "problematic" writings is his early stuff on alienation.
asdfman123 7y ago
I wonder if it's a side effect of prosperity. If you're poor, you depend on your broader family and community -- when you run out of money, when your car breaks down and your uncle can fix it, etc. etc. and if you have to sleep in the same room as your extended family, you're going to have "community." However, dealing with people is difficult and inconvenient, so when you have money you decide to leave your family and isolate yourself from other people's problems as much as possible. You perhaps gain more peace, privacy and free time, but it's harder to notice what you're losing. I'm not going to dredge up the numbers now, but in the 60s in America, I think it's probably safe to say a lot more siblings lived in the same room, a lot more people lived in small independent farms working alongside many family members, etc. etc. People were closer together because they had to be. People in cities didn't have to be quite so adjacent, but perhaps they were closer because it was normal in society to be closer. Speculation on my part, but it probably wouldn't be hard to find those numbers and back up the argument...

CptFribble 7y ago

Refrigeration, department stores, radio. That's food, sundries, and information, the 3 main things that humans go out of their home to get, and before those 3 inventions you had to get into your community to get them. Refrigeration allowed the growth of larger, depersonalized grocery stores. Department stores were the first iteration of buying sundries at a place run by people you don't know. Radio was the first non-local information source available on demand. For most of human history, people lived in communities and had to interact with each other to live their lives. In the last 100 years out of 10,000 we suddenly don't anymore, and we're still figuring it out. And that's before you consider the impact of the Internet. This has been a long, slow burn, and I worry that humanity won't be able to grow up fast enough to figure it out before we do something really stupid.

adamsea 7y ago
I would argue its gross inequality more so than those technologies. In other countries with less economic inequality I believe studies show more happiness and social cohesion.
- shortandsweet 7y ago
  Lower class has more connectivity due to need. Upper class not so much. I always thought it was more fun being poor due to this but rich was more comfortable.
- dbspin 7y ago
  Not surprising that suggesting social inequality might play a part gets you instantly downvoted. Despite being as plausible an explanation as other (more right wing) possibilities - 'diversity', 'women working' that proliferate in this thread. Its uncomfortable for highly paid tech workers to accept the reality that inequality damages social cohesion. Nevertheless, If inequality is a major cause of this kind of alienation, it's a particular kind of inequality. Specifically people living in competition, and confronted by the impact of competition in close proximity. Some desperately unequal societies in South East Asia don't seem to have the same level of social dysfunction, while Japan which is relatively flat has enormous amounts of alienation, mental health issues, relationship decline, and of course suicide.

deleted 7y ago

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chasd00 7y ago

ah yes, your computer did this to you. Surely, you didn't do it to yourself.

Damogran6 7y ago

"Instead we got Baby Yoda" I don't see this as a bad thing. If this is an age of weaponized communication, perhaps it's not bad to learn how to moderate it's intake?

cmdshiftf4 7y ago

Not a hint of attribution to new-media clickbait farms, the head of which is Buzzfeed, who've eviscerated attention spans, long-form journalism and its funding, and pumped the internet full of low-effort, divisive content merely created to generate outrage for ad-clicks. >What you think doesn’t count very much anymore. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Most people with power try to take advantage of people like yourself. The people running the country don’t really care what happens to you. You’re left out of things going on around you. All of the above will increase with more exposure to what is going on in the world, which is provided by the internet, and all of which will further inclined to be agreed with by journalists reporting on it in a biased manner done for the purpose of generating ad-revenue from outrage driven clicks. You can argue that the new digital era has alienated people simply by existing, but the new media is the ultimate culprit after having spent the last decade stoking tension in atomizing society based on uncontrollable, biologically determined factors and creating a sense of victimhood and entitlement amongst each of their subdivisions.

baud147258 7y ago
> who've eviscerated attention spans, long-form journalism and its funding, and pumped the internet full of low-effort, divisive content merely created to generate outrage for ad-clicks. I don't think some newspapers were much better, seeing how they filled with barely true news snippet between ads for local business.
lxwang 7y ago
If the new media is an inevitable byproduct of the digital era simply existing, which is how things look to me, it still makes sense to follow things back to the root cause. How many examples are there of successful media organizations that don't at some level run the same way as the one you're lambasting? Being owned and funded by a government or a multibillionaire to serve as their propaganda outlet are viable but have their own problems that might or might not be worse.
buboard 7y ago
people simply spend a lot more time online, reading stuff. the papers feed this newfound addiction. i don't think it's fair to always accuse only the media for giving people what they asked for. after all it is people that turned their backs on their physical surroundings, first with books, then with TV , now with the internet, and in the future possibly with VR

thrownaway954 7y ago

The more information you have, the more you have to worry about and anger about. Quoting the great Cypher, "After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss".

scoutt 7y ago

I don't agree even if the article tries to be optimistic. Could it be that the "Harris Poll’s Alienation Index" is now being answered by people who is more aware about what is going on in the world? The source of information is not the mass-media anymore. After 20 years of mass-internet, is still a matter of SNR. I didn't care about the life of Britney Spears in 1998, I don't care now about pewdipie. It will pass when the next generation will develop a natural filter for bullshit. That will be the plateau.

rishiraj8824 7y ago

Why it's BuzzFeed news on hackernews?!?!

whishfuls0ber 7y ago
:cheers: Quoting someone: 'And NOT use Disney as a bully pulpit for his -politics-(crossed out) money-making-sheme' -but wasn't that what Walt Disney did ? confused And 'using the money (income) for a next' ? > NOW IS THE UNDERSTANDING FOR 'A NEXT' ALSO > A BIBLICAL ONE, FOR 'YOUR NEXT' AND... (Sry for the shift-lock) ^^

scottlocklin 7y ago

The alienation in the US very obviously has nothing to do with the internet, and in fact, I'd say the internet helped people be less alienated. I say this because pretty much every country is as online as the US is, and doesn't have the problems the US does. The US is alienated from widespread fear of crime, immigration (aka the actual sociological results of Robert Putnam, rather than the yammerings of some Buzzfeed wanker), poisonous oligarch funded divisive politics, and the general disintegration of anything resembling a family life or social fabric in US society. There are various obvious ways of decreasing social alienation in US society; the problem with that is, most people aren't going to like it. The opposite of alienation and social atomization is basically conformity and homogeneity, and that's bad for business; and especially bad for the oligarch types who engender this kind of alienation. Fiddling with the internet in a futile attempt to decrease social alienation is like buying a tank top to increase your physical fitness.

pixelbash 7y ago
> The opposite of alienation and social atomization is basically conformity and homogeneity Not sure I agree with that, you don't have to be like other people to get along with them. A strong social fabric at it's root is things like being willing to talk to all walks of life and not nurturing a fear of the unknown.
- cmdshiftf4 7y ago
  >Not sure I agree with that, you don't have to be like other people to get along with them. I can't think of a single example of a heterogeneous society that has lasted a comparably long time. Would you care to point to one, or cite some studies to show their effectiveness vs those that are homogeneous in nature? I'd argue that a strong sense of shared identity, such as that provided previously by religion in the West, and which still currently holds strength elsewhere, is crucial to the success of a given society. The War state, and then post-War state, of the West also had a strong sense of shared identity and bound together as a result. Evidence points towards it. The current state of the West is a testament to the disarray caused in a heterogeneous society with no sense of shared identity and the mutual obligations that result from it. The divisions and gaps are only widening, the issues around it are only becoming worse, and those who stand to benefit from it are using it to its full advantage.

mihaaly 7y ago

It may have done it to some of us, to those who were doing great perhaps even dominating and shaping local groups but to the rest it was a huge relief finding likely minded unavailable in the immediate geographical vicinity, allowed those alienated locally finding community elsewhere. I believe the article is seriously biased and criminally incomplete, shortly incorrect.

nailer 7y ago
Well yes, it's buzzfeed. Just flag it when you see the domain, you don't need to take the bait.

majos 7y ago

This reminds me of a book I read about the history of extemporaneous poetry (pretty much freestyling) in Latin America and Europe, and its decline: > The verse improvisations of Cantabria are at best dormant. Women and men skilled at creating them are still alive, but the context that produced them is virtually extinct. That context was a world in which the lives of one’s neighbors were the chief, virtually the only, entertainment; a world in which personalities and eccentricities were savored. To some of their neighbors in adjacent valleys the attacks on differences in appearance, births out of wedlock, poverty, and impotence seemed uncouth and brutal. But running through the recollections of the older men and women I talked to were phrases like, ‘nobody was offended’, ‘they took it in good humor’, ‘it was part of the fun’, or ‘we all looked forward to it’. In 1942 Cossio wrote that the people of Polaciones knew no moral laws. One could also say that they had been able to maintain their own laws, different measures for what could be said and done and what was considered an offense. Attribute it to the internet, car culture, personalized media, whatever, but I don’t think it’s ever been easier to decide you dislike the people around you and find another community, perhaps virtually. In turn this easy access to frictionless interaction makes people less and less tolerant of what would have been everyday interaction in the past. I don’t remember where, but I once read something that said the great appeal of fame is not just being adored, but being adored and not having to reciprocate. We seem to be moving in that direction.

erikerikson 7y ago

It's really important that we blame the internet companies. Otherwise we might have to take responsibility for ourselves. Better to be victims.</snark>

mensetmanusman 7y ago

Jonathan Haidt has an excellent article that changed my mind on this topic: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/social-media-democracy/600763/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/social-... I think the problem with social media is that the loud crazy voices that are usually confined to the corner streets in cities can now shout all the way around the world. A simple fix would be to limit the distance a ‘voice’ could travel to geographic boundaries that are a function of population density.

deleted 7y ago
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wostusername 7y ago
Sounds like what Yik Yak tried to do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yik_Yak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yik_Yak

yosefzeev 7y ago

Poppycock and fiddle-faddle. We allowed these things and did it to ourselves.

caiocaiocaio 7y ago

A pretty good consolation for the alienation and rage Buzzfeed is telling me about is being able to go to Buzzfeed and find out which Friends character I'm most like.

atomashpolskiy 7y ago

Digital my ass. So it's all Zuckerberg's fault now? How about the fall of Soviet Union and communist block? Which events (although being good for people) were abused by certain groups to: - end the public debate on whether capitalism is the right way to run the society, - enable unprecedented power concentration in a single country, - and make money and greed govern practically all aspects of human life? Lots of clever thoughts in the comments, but I'm really surprised no one brings this one up.

atomashpolskiy 7y ago
I'll add that it's really fucking sad, that one of the greatest achievements of human society (Internet is basically a huge collective effort), is demonized for somehow unleashing lowly human nature and similar nonsense. It's just a medium and, in some cases, a mirror.

plughs 7y ago

I agree broadly but I think the real cause is overlooked. When I was young, everyone in our town read the <Town Name> Times. They may have passionately disagreed with it, they may have thought it was too right or left, but they all read it and could at least have discussions from a common starting point. Now that is gone. Right-wing boomers read only news sources aimed at right-wing boomers. Left-wing millennials read only news sources aimed at left-wing millennials. Of course they are hopelessly alienated from each other. One side reads that unemployment is at an all time low, one side reads that income inequality is at an all time high, and both are convinced that the other side is fundamentally incapable of reason. So they all sit in their echo chamber and get angrier and angrier at anyone outside of it, fed day after day by a media whose only real interest is more clicks, more ads, more money. I don't know how we come back from it. I'm not sure we do. It scares me frankly.

ryanmercer 7y ago
>When I was young, everyone in our town read the <Town Name> Times. Speedway Town Press, delivered free to every house in town. Me and several friends started delivering it around 12 for 3 cents a paper and every kid would always read it because they wanted to see the honor roll announcements, school event photos etc. Our principal retired when we were in 2nd or 3rd grade then in 6th grade we read about it in the town press, some of us wrote a letter to the editor that was then in the next addition and got us all letters from his widow. We knew our neighbors by name (adults knew each other by first name, kids knew adults by Mr surname/Mrs surname). If you were going out of town for vacation you told the neighbor and they'd take your mail in, with they key they already had, and even feed/water your dog for you. Neighbors would drop by to visit each other, often being invited in if it wasn't nice out. I don't even know what my neighbors look like now. If you lined 5 people up I couldn't tell you if any of them were my neighbors or just random people. My neighbor across the hall leaves their keys in their deadbolt at least once a week (Seriously, at least once a week. Twice just this week I've come home to see their keys in the deadbolt. Flat out will not answer the door because "oh my god a stranger"). Car key, apartment key etc. They've been doing this since they moved in in July. I have no idea what they look like despite the fact that I've stood there knocking on their door more than a dozen different days for multiple minutes each time trying to tell them they've left their key in the deadbolt. The first time I actually walked around to their windows and knocked on the window in a room that was lit "hey you left your keys in the door", nothing. Knocked on the door some more, nothing. I truly miss a time when we were more interested in the people around us than strangers online.

christiansakai 7y ago

If anyone wants to be more aware of this issue, I recommend the book Amusing Ourselves to Death, and also Technopoly, both by Neil Postman.

tarkin2 7y ago

The internet offers superficial social interactions. It gives reasons to ignore the people in our surroundings. And them, us. We physically socialise with fewer people. Our social skills decline. We can choose to completely ignore those of different opinions. We were once forced to socialise with them. No longer in our digital bubble. This fractures social cohesion. Loneliness and then anger results. This anger can and will be directed by those willing and able.

jdkee 7y ago

“ And yet, the journalist Jon Katz argued, the country was on the verge of something even greater than prosperity and progress — something that would change the course of world history.“ From the infamous Jon Katz of Slashdot fame. Oh the memories.

tempsy 7y ago

This was a strange decade for tech. Seems like a lot has changed, but at the same time the companies we were talking about in 2010 are the same companies we're talking about today e.g. FB, Twitter, Apple, Google, Netflix, even Uber all existed in 2010 and are just a more polished version of their 2010 selves.

buboard 7y ago
i dont know about strange, stagnant, yes. when things stagnate they rot

iamleppert 7y ago

I look back on a time when the world Was so young A beautiful ecology A flowing river and a bright beautiful Sun was enough Now I don't really know anymore Satisfied with only the land and the trees Instead we mass-produce machines I really wonder if there can ever be a Place for a little A little bit of Romance '83 I thought that love and kindness were The things we all need A bit of sensitivity Just living life simple was the thing to Believe in I don't really know really know anymore Sharing all the human feelings deep inside Instead we hide behind machines I really wonder if there can ever be a Place for a little A little bit of Romance '83

mnm1 7y ago

The criteria for alienation are listed as: > What you think doesn’t count very much anymore. > The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. > Most people with power try to take advantage of people like yourself. > The people running the country don’t really care what happens to you. > You’re left out of things going on around you. 2, 3, and 4 have been true since the beginning of America and probably since the beginning of every country that has ever existed. Two has been objectively verifiable in the last 50 years in America and can even be graphed out. Three is also objectively verifiable to some extent on a case by case basis. This isn't a matter of opinion. These are terrible criteria to judge alienation with. Any person who is aware of his society and culture would be aware of these things and would agree with at least 3-4 of them in America.

cannabis_sam 7y ago

Fuck all these lukewarm rationalitazions. Wanna meet a girl? Spend a year and a half improving your tinder stats, and if you’re not a hot muscly guy, go fuck yourself.

ForrestN 7y ago

This gets close but misses the obvious reason for any recent spike: “ It’s easy to speculate about the reasons for this increase: a financial crisis that awakened Americans to the widening gaps between rich and poor; an opioid epidemic caused by corporate greed; entrenched racism and sexism; bitterly divided partisan politics; and, of course, technological change” It’s not “partisan politics,” we feel alienated because we are witnessing the attempted dismantling of modern democracy by a transnational network of would-be fascists. We feel alienated because a man who admitted on tape to being a serial rapist was subsequently elect4d president. We feel alienated because the police are murdering innocent civilizations with shocking regularity, as are Private individuals with guns. Non of this is “partisan”... the government and its allies around the world are openly hostile to the interests of the public. That is, well, alienating,

dang 7y ago
Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. This is going the wrong way down a one way street. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ForrestN 7y ago
  So funny to return to this after reading through the fact-free chaos of the ‘socialist website” Assange disinformation and the attending praise of Wikileaks. Hopefully one day we can go through a collective process of settling on what’s true and what isn’t, and prioritizing true stuff! I heard this happened at a grand scale, the enlightenment, I think it was called?
- ForrestN 7y ago
  That anyone here would disagree with the above facts, let alone see the possibility for them to be widely controversial, is a searing indictment of our situation as a community. Why talk about collective stress if it’s a faux pas to mention the actual real source of it for non-rich non-Californians? Ah well I guess it’s delusional to imagine a more realistic and engaged grappling with political reality to venture here. There’s too much money to be made I guess. Don’t want distractions like using our massive power to help save our democracy to free in.

scarejunba 7y ago

I'm sure that all the people who have this feeling have an external locus of control. Listen, social skills are just skills. If you're feeling alienated, go fix it. I'm not. Pretty happy. And I use lots of social media.

muzzletov 7y ago

This article is bs. We were all that in disguise. Do some bout it. Bye.

acd 7y ago

I think that we consume a lot more content through computer recommendations algorithms. These filter bubbles makes us more alienated towards different opinion and views than our own preferred way of viewing things. Thus the more we consume media through filter bubbles the more alienated we become. Plus technology is replacing human interactions. For example: Bookstore vs online bookstore Renting movies at a video store vs online Movie streaming Spontaneous interactions at cashiers being replaced by software. Not one of these one interaction may make us more alienated but summed together they make something bigger. A question to ask is what technology replaces? Also people are a little bit less religious nowadays and religion serves as a gathering point for local community where people come together and meet.

basch 7y ago
Predictive algorithms exist to re-feed us the past. Nostalgia is comfortable, safe, familiar, and easy. Not only do "people who like also like" type suggestions trap us in what we already know and like, but content producers themselves use data of what is liked to make more of the same. Artists have been replaced by marketing data science. https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-30a0-9a0a-3ff76e8bfe58 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7...
buboard 7y ago
try setting your twitter to chronological, see if it makes a difference (hint: it doesnt) you re totally right about people not finding excuses to interact. this is a real need , and cities have not been adapted for that. many people make deliberate effort to meet people, but these are mostly extroverts. the "old way" used to force such interactions on everyone indiscriminately

deleted 7y ago

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