7 ms·

The society we live in shoves loneliness down your throat and goes on to celebrate that. So, the only way out is to live through that slump and figure out who

The society we live in shoves loneliness down your throat and goes on to celebrate that. So, the only way out is to live through that slump and figure out who you are in this world, because it doesn't matter if you have 100 or 0 people around you - when life comes knocking, it will only ever knock on your door. Having said that, I'd imagine that most people who are lonely do eventually come to the realization that they're confusing their emotions with reality. No medication will ever fine-tune your minds frequency to be able to hear your own voice that lives in your head. And I think most crafty people in this world do eventually figure out that this life's short, and that spending your time worrying about bullshit (or worse yet, kicking yourself down deliberately) isn't worth it. But I digress... If you haven't gotten to the Existential Loneliness stage yet, I suppose you're afforded some luxuries to carry on for a while still...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rootusrootus 4y ago
> The society we live in shoves loneliness down your throat and goes on to celebrate that. I primarily blame the Internet (or more generally, online interaction). Aside from little bits of oasis like HN (which, of course, still has no shortage of its own problems), the Internet is a big toxic brew of hate. Sometimes old school hate (racism, etc), but hate over everything else. Hate for people who like Teslas, or iPhones, or pickup trucks, or cars in general, or single family houses, etc. It feels like everyone believes the rest of the world wants to hear them bitch. (yes, here I am, bitching) No wonder everyone feels lonely, it is hard to get any connection in such an environment. Sometimes I think it endangers my own sanity, the more I am exposed to it, and I kinda want to /dev/null everything but wikipedia. LOL.
- Damogran6 4y ago
  Is it, though? Yes, hate for something other people love (Teslas in your example) is everywhere, but the most successful places are those that let you regulate that, regulate it for you, or the culture refuses to accept it. I'll disengage from Twitter when it's too negative and when I return its better, either because the russian trollfarm is sleeping, or Twitter notice I disengaged and works to 'do better'.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    > the most successful places are those that let you regulate that, regulate it for you, or the culture Like I said, HN ;-). DanG is a treasure. One need look no farther than Reddit to truly appreciate how valuable a skilled, patient moderator is. But as you say, culture plays a role as well. Probably nothing DanG could do would be enough if the general culture amongst HN users was unwilling to go along. Your second point is also a good one, I think. Perhaps the toxic nature of the Internet can be mitigated effectively by remembering to take a break and disconnect the feedback loop.
- sph 4y ago
  I blame the Internet for another reason: we're spending so much time online no one has time for face-to-face communication, either with friends or strangers. I have some teenage year family members, and the amount of loneliness symptoms and behaviours I see in 16-18 years olds is staggering. I myself am suffering from it in my 30s, but I grew up in the middle of nowhere and I had more real-life interactions than most teenagers. Online communication carries a lot of downsides, but the primary one is that is just does not activate the part of the brain that makes you feel like you're hanging out with a human. You know you're talking to a human even behind a screen, but it's just a high-level abstraction that often breaks down and is the reason even the best of people sometimes are total jerkwads online. I grew up on the net, it gave me my first friends, and now it's making me so bloody lonely I am literally convinced I would feel more socially nourished if I lived in a shed in the woods and went to the city for shopping once a month. And there's just so many people everywhere. It's either your small Discord with the same friends, or social media at large where everyone is a stranger, just an avatar that has little to no impact whatsoever on your life.
  - the_snooze 4y ago
    >I blame the Internet for another reason: we're spending so much time online no one has time for face-to-face communication, either with friends or strangers. One of the reasons why I absolutely hate QR code menus at restaurants. They make the default state of the table as "phones out." Even in an in-person interaction, the Internet is still necessarily right there.
    - SoftTalker 4y ago
      Yeah I hate those. I ask for a menu. If they don't have one, I make the server tell me what they have.
      - DesiLurker 4y ago
        yes, Thats the hill I am willing to die on. I have walked out of restaurants who refused to provide me a physical menu (post covid).
- skilled 4y ago
  I was having a laugh with my mother the other week, talking about childhood memories and things. I was a pretty mischievous kid when all is said and done. When I was 7 years old, I learned that you can take apart old radios, transformers, and find a lot of copper in them! And back then, you could sell a few hundred grams of copper at the scrapyard for a small fortune! So the joke was, while we as kids used to do that stuff for real, kids nowadays do it all from their phone...
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    > So the joke was, while we as kids used to do that stuff for real, kids nowadays do it all from their phone... They're of course mimicking adults. We're spending tremendous amounts in front of (multiple)screens, and kids tend to get the message. People take it as a wake-up call to reverse the trend, but I'd argue what the vast majority of otherwise intelligent people happen to be doing should be first taken at face value as a natural evolution, and not the butt of a joke. I'm saying that as a kid who saw adults on their computers all day long and kinda fault them for blocking me to use one for so long. I definitely see it as a dumb "kids these days" knee jerk reaction on their part that only built more frustration on both sides over the years.
- 2devnull 4y ago
  Wikipedia is an hate filled cesspool where literal war is being waged, day in day out, year after year. If you don’t understand that, I’m guessing you don’t view the history or talk sections, which makes you a uniformed user, and arguably quite naive about how the internet works, and because of that also naive about current events. There is some good stuff on Wikipedia still, but it’s heading in the same direction as everything else. The center does not hold.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    My gut says you did not intend for this to be a textbook example of what I was referring to. I would ask that in the future you get to know me a little better before you call me a dipshit. I have only been doing the online thing since the 80s, so there are plenty of things I have yet to learn. Thankfully I have finally forgotten how to configure UUCP, though.
    - 2devnull 4y ago
      You’re correct it was a stupid post on my part. I would delete it if I could. My emotions got the better of me. I’m frustrated by the decline of Wikipedia and used your post as a chance to air that frustration. I do apologize and I’m sure you understand that my post will taken by most people as a stupid, emotional rant rather than any reasonable statement about your intelligence.
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        No big deal, though I'm happy that you walked it back. I'm not immune to making ill-advised comments online myself. More often than I'd care to admit, even on HN. I did think wikipedia might be a controversial choice in my original post, but decided to run with it -- I was trying to convey a thought, not necessarily a literal plan. I understand wikipedia is edited by humans, and not all of them are acting in good faith. But at the same time, I like to think of deep diving into wikipedia reading articles on science, or animals, or other generally non-controversial topics is perhaps one of the most rewarding uses of the Internet. It's that little remnant of the original dream of putting knowledge in the hands of everyone.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  While the outsize role the Internet has come to play in our lives is the source of a lot of problems I'd argue that pre-internet society had problems just as serious, but not as visible. It was much more of an extravert's world back then, and those who were introverted or otherwise out of beat with society at large had a more difficult time trying to find somewhere to belong. The more socially-charged nature of life could sometimes be overwhelming even for introvert-leaning ambiverts. You didn't hear much about it though, because this group of people by their own nature didn't have a voice, and this was exacerbated by introvert/nerd stereotypes being used for laughs in pop culture. But things have now clearly swung too far in the other direction. Everybody has a voice (or at least thinks they do) and takes their own opinions as universal fact. I wonder what it'll take to arrive at a happy medium.
RobRivera 4y ago
to tack on, I personally feel conquering this existential loneliness is an empowerment and growth exercise. Not necessary but creates a rather clear perception of the world, with deeper meanings and vision therein
agumonkey 4y ago
When i see old cultures living in semi isolated places, doing simple stuff, and rituals in family group and carrying tradition, i think they've hit peak existence.
Spivak 4y ago
There are aspects of modern life that make it harder to make and keep friends as an adult but the biggest genuinely life changing lesson I learned is that every adult wants friends but struggles to make them. And you know what that dynamic means? You can walk up to a random adult and literally say and I quote "you seem cool, wanna be friends?" like you're on a schoolyard playground and it works. I accidentally texted a coworker (who I have never hung out with socially) who has the same name as one of my friends if she wanted to go to a music festival with me (like 5 days close quarters camping) and she said yes without hesitation. I met another girl at a party -- I knew of her because she was a friend's friend's ex but never actually talked to her. I just declared that we were best friends, we got drunk, and skipped out at the party to hang out/meet her other friends. She's my maid of honor. Met a guy during a charity scavenger hunt where the theme was to do mildly embarrassing things in public we hit it off after I had him take a picture of me licking a bronze statue's butt. I'm now in his softball league. I met a woman on a cruise after rescuing her son from the on-deck ropes course when a huge storm hit, we live super far away but play animal crossing together. I went from "oh no without school it's gonna be impossible to make friends" to "no actually this is a million times easier." All the stuff that makes you uncool as a teenager makes you interesting as an adult.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- legerdemain 4y ago
  "Maid of honor" suggests you identify as a woman. Experience suggests that women (at least in the US) have richer and more fluid social lives. I can easily find a good handful of "girls hanging out" social groups on Meetup in my relatively socially impoverished suburb. I suspect that my luck approaching random dudes with giant headphones on, staring intently at their laptop screens in a Starbucks will be pretty different.
  - kbelder 4y ago
    Yeah, while both genders can certainly experience and have loneliness, it's massively more an endemic issue in males.
curiousfiddler 4y ago
My guess is you live in the West. There are other cultures in the world, where there is still a strong sense of informal community. Where you can just walk to a friend or a relative's house unannounced for a cup of tea, without thinking all the time if it would inconvenience them. It feels really amazing to have the option to do that. I moved to the US (Bay Area) about 10 years ago after having spent much of my youth elsewhere, and to this day, I haven't been able adjust to the lack of informal social interactions compared to where I'm from. I really tried as well to see if it's me who is not able to fit in. However, after a while I realized it's just a cultural difference. It's a way of life that has existed for several decades, which has its own benefits. To me, US seems like an amazing place when you're in the apprentice/work phase of your life (20 - 45?). However, as I grow older, there are other things I have begun to value more, and one of the top ones is authentic human connection. I hope as US becomes more and more diverse, people from other cultures can add the good things they bring, instead of just trying to fit in to the default cultural model.
- throw_pm23 4y ago
  When they said "the future is here, just not evenly distributed" -- it unfortunately applied to social dystopia, just as well as technical advances. So whatever culture you are from, give it a decade or two and it will likely catch up with the US over this. To see even further into the future, look at Japan.
  - curiousfiddler 4y ago
    Sure, just to be very clear, I'm not boasting about this. And I do certainly hope that the exact opposite happens as we move forward to the next generation. I'm certainly hopeful.
  - danenania 4y ago
    It's not clear that the US is actually further in the future in this sense than Western/Northern Europe. Demographically speaking, we are behind them and headed in their direction, so it could well be the case that we will follow suit in de-prioritizing economic growth relative to quality of life and social cohesion. If you look at the political leanings of the younger vs. older generations, it seems reasonably likely. Japan is also a complex case. While there are the well-known issues with loneliness, suicide, overwork, etc., it also beats the US in most quality of life metrics. It has very high social trust, low inequality, very low crime, affordable housing, universal healthcare, and so on.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

rootusrootus 4y ago

> The society we live in shoves loneliness down your throat and goes on to celebrate that. I primarily blame the Internet (or more generally, online interaction). Aside from little bits of oasis like HN (which, of course, still has no shortage of its own problems), the Internet is a big toxic brew of hate. Sometimes old school hate (racism, etc), but hate over everything else. Hate for people who like Teslas, or iPhones, or pickup trucks, or cars in general, or single family houses, etc. It feels like everyone believes the rest of the world wants to hear them bitch. (yes, here I am, bitching) No wonder everyone feels lonely, it is hard to get any connection in such an environment. Sometimes I think it endangers my own sanity, the more I am exposed to it, and I kinda want to /dev/null everything but wikipedia. LOL.

Damogran6 4y ago
Is it, though? Yes, hate for something other people love (Teslas in your example) is everywhere, but the most successful places are those that let you regulate that, regulate it for you, or the culture refuses to accept it. I'll disengage from Twitter when it's too negative and when I return its better, either because the russian trollfarm is sleeping, or Twitter notice I disengaged and works to 'do better'.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > the most successful places are those that let you regulate that, regulate it for you, or the culture Like I said, HN ;-). DanG is a treasure. One need look no farther than Reddit to truly appreciate how valuable a skilled, patient moderator is. But as you say, culture plays a role as well. Probably nothing DanG could do would be enough if the general culture amongst HN users was unwilling to go along. Your second point is also a good one, I think. Perhaps the toxic nature of the Internet can be mitigated effectively by remembering to take a break and disconnect the feedback loop.
sph 4y ago
I blame the Internet for another reason: we're spending so much time online no one has time for face-to-face communication, either with friends or strangers. I have some teenage year family members, and the amount of loneliness symptoms and behaviours I see in 16-18 years olds is staggering. I myself am suffering from it in my 30s, but I grew up in the middle of nowhere and I had more real-life interactions than most teenagers. Online communication carries a lot of downsides, but the primary one is that is just does not activate the part of the brain that makes you feel like you're hanging out with a human. You know you're talking to a human even behind a screen, but it's just a high-level abstraction that often breaks down and is the reason even the best of people sometimes are total jerkwads online. I grew up on the net, it gave me my first friends, and now it's making me so bloody lonely I am literally convinced I would feel more socially nourished if I lived in a shed in the woods and went to the city for shopping once a month. And there's just so many people everywhere. It's either your small Discord with the same friends, or social media at large where everyone is a stranger, just an avatar that has little to no impact whatsoever on your life.
- the_snooze 4y ago
  >I blame the Internet for another reason: we're spending so much time online no one has time for face-to-face communication, either with friends or strangers. One of the reasons why I absolutely hate QR code menus at restaurants. They make the default state of the table as "phones out." Even in an in-person interaction, the Internet is still necessarily right there.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    Yeah I hate those. I ask for a menu. If they don't have one, I make the server tell me what they have.
    - DesiLurker 4y ago
      yes, Thats the hill I am willing to die on. I have walked out of restaurants who refused to provide me a physical menu (post covid).
skilled 4y ago
I was having a laugh with my mother the other week, talking about childhood memories and things. I was a pretty mischievous kid when all is said and done. When I was 7 years old, I learned that you can take apart old radios, transformers, and find a lot of copper in them! And back then, you could sell a few hundred grams of copper at the scrapyard for a small fortune! So the joke was, while we as kids used to do that stuff for real, kids nowadays do it all from their phone...
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  > So the joke was, while we as kids used to do that stuff for real, kids nowadays do it all from their phone... They're of course mimicking adults. We're spending tremendous amounts in front of (multiple)screens, and kids tend to get the message. People take it as a wake-up call to reverse the trend, but I'd argue what the vast majority of otherwise intelligent people happen to be doing should be first taken at face value as a natural evolution, and not the butt of a joke. I'm saying that as a kid who saw adults on their computers all day long and kinda fault them for blocking me to use one for so long. I definitely see it as a dumb "kids these days" knee jerk reaction on their part that only built more frustration on both sides over the years.
2devnull 4y ago
Wikipedia is an hate filled cesspool where literal war is being waged, day in day out, year after year. If you don’t understand that, I’m guessing you don’t view the history or talk sections, which makes you a uniformed user, and arguably quite naive about how the internet works, and because of that also naive about current events. There is some good stuff on Wikipedia still, but it’s heading in the same direction as everything else. The center does not hold.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  My gut says you did not intend for this to be a textbook example of what I was referring to. I would ask that in the future you get to know me a little better before you call me a dipshit. I have only been doing the online thing since the 80s, so there are plenty of things I have yet to learn. Thankfully I have finally forgotten how to configure UUCP, though.
  - 2devnull 4y ago
    You’re correct it was a stupid post on my part. I would delete it if I could. My emotions got the better of me. I’m frustrated by the decline of Wikipedia and used your post as a chance to air that frustration. I do apologize and I’m sure you understand that my post will taken by most people as a stupid, emotional rant rather than any reasonable statement about your intelligence.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      No big deal, though I'm happy that you walked it back. I'm not immune to making ill-advised comments online myself. More often than I'd care to admit, even on HN. I did think wikipedia might be a controversial choice in my original post, but decided to run with it -- I was trying to convey a thought, not necessarily a literal plan. I understand wikipedia is edited by humans, and not all of them are acting in good faith. But at the same time, I like to think of deep diving into wikipedia reading articles on science, or animals, or other generally non-controversial topics is perhaps one of the most rewarding uses of the Internet. It's that little remnant of the original dream of putting knowledge in the hands of everyone.
kitsunesoba 4y ago
While the outsize role the Internet has come to play in our lives is the source of a lot of problems I'd argue that pre-internet society had problems just as serious, but not as visible. It was much more of an extravert's world back then, and those who were introverted or otherwise out of beat with society at large had a more difficult time trying to find somewhere to belong. The more socially-charged nature of life could sometimes be overwhelming even for introvert-leaning ambiverts. You didn't hear much about it though, because this group of people by their own nature didn't have a voice, and this was exacerbated by introvert/nerd stereotypes being used for laughs in pop culture. But things have now clearly swung too far in the other direction. Everybody has a voice (or at least thinks they do) and takes their own opinions as universal fact. I wonder what it'll take to arrive at a happy medium.

RobRivera 4y ago

to tack on, I personally feel conquering this existential loneliness is an empowerment and growth exercise. Not necessary but creates a rather clear perception of the world, with deeper meanings and vision therein

agumonkey 4y ago

When i see old cultures living in semi isolated places, doing simple stuff, and rituals in family group and carrying tradition, i think they've hit peak existence.

Spivak 4y ago

There are aspects of modern life that make it harder to make and keep friends as an adult but the biggest genuinely life changing lesson I learned is that every adult wants friends but struggles to make them. And you know what that dynamic means? You can walk up to a random adult and literally say and I quote "you seem cool, wanna be friends?" like you're on a schoolyard playground and it works. I accidentally texted a coworker (who I have never hung out with socially) who has the same name as one of my friends if she wanted to go to a music festival with me (like 5 days close quarters camping) and she said yes without hesitation. I met another girl at a party -- I knew of her because she was a friend's friend's ex but never actually talked to her. I just declared that we were best friends, we got drunk, and skipped out at the party to hang out/meet her other friends. She's my maid of honor. Met a guy during a charity scavenger hunt where the theme was to do mildly embarrassing things in public we hit it off after I had him take a picture of me licking a bronze statue's butt. I'm now in his softball league. I met a woman on a cruise after rescuing her son from the on-deck ropes course when a huge storm hit, we live super far away but play animal crossing together. I went from "oh no without school it's gonna be impossible to make friends" to "no actually this is a million times easier." All the stuff that makes you uncool as a teenager makes you interesting as an adult.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
legerdemain 4y ago
"Maid of honor" suggests you identify as a woman. Experience suggests that women (at least in the US) have richer and more fluid social lives. I can easily find a good handful of "girls hanging out" social groups on Meetup in my relatively socially impoverished suburb. I suspect that my luck approaching random dudes with giant headphones on, staring intently at their laptop screens in a Starbucks will be pretty different.
- kbelder 4y ago
  Yeah, while both genders can certainly experience and have loneliness, it's massively more an endemic issue in males.

curiousfiddler 4y ago

My guess is you live in the West. There are other cultures in the world, where there is still a strong sense of informal community. Where you can just walk to a friend or a relative's house unannounced for a cup of tea, without thinking all the time if it would inconvenience them. It feels really amazing to have the option to do that. I moved to the US (Bay Area) about 10 years ago after having spent much of my youth elsewhere, and to this day, I haven't been able adjust to the lack of informal social interactions compared to where I'm from. I really tried as well to see if it's me who is not able to fit in. However, after a while I realized it's just a cultural difference. It's a way of life that has existed for several decades, which has its own benefits. To me, US seems like an amazing place when you're in the apprentice/work phase of your life (20 - 45?). However, as I grow older, there are other things I have begun to value more, and one of the top ones is authentic human connection. I hope as US becomes more and more diverse, people from other cultures can add the good things they bring, instead of just trying to fit in to the default cultural model.

throw_pm23 4y ago
When they said "the future is here, just not evenly distributed" -- it unfortunately applied to social dystopia, just as well as technical advances. So whatever culture you are from, give it a decade or two and it will likely catch up with the US over this. To see even further into the future, look at Japan.
- curiousfiddler 4y ago
  Sure, just to be very clear, I'm not boasting about this. And I do certainly hope that the exact opposite happens as we move forward to the next generation. I'm certainly hopeful.
- danenania 4y ago
  It's not clear that the US is actually further in the future in this sense than Western/Northern Europe. Demographically speaking, we are behind them and headed in their direction, so it could well be the case that we will follow suit in de-prioritizing economic growth relative to quality of life and social cohesion. If you look at the political leanings of the younger vs. older generations, it seems reasonably likely. Japan is also a complex case. While there are the well-known issues with loneliness, suicide, overwork, etc., it also beats the US in most quality of life metrics. It has very high social trust, low inequality, very low crime, affordable housing, universal healthcare, and so on.