5 ms·

The Harvard Study, which has been following individuals for their entire lives for decades, and has even started following some of their descendants, has found

The Harvard Study, which has been following individuals for their entire lives for decades, and has even started following some of their descendants, has found that connections are strongly correlated with happiness, health, and general life satisfaction: > What makes a life fulfilling and meaningful? The simple but surprising answer is: relationships. The stronger our relationships, the more likely we are to live happy, satisfying, and healthier lives. In fact, the Harvard Study of Adult Development reveals that the strength of our connections with others can predict the health of both our bodies and our brains as we go through life. * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61272271-the-good-life https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61272271-the-good-life

FormerBandmate 3y ago
Yeah, people feel less lonely when they’re around people who they like and who like them. “People feel more lonely when they’re around other people” is the type of stuff you could only find on the internet or in academia, you can logic yourself into it but it’s so far beyond common sense it’s insane
- jprete 3y ago
  Anecdotally, I disagree. I definitely feel more lonely when I’m in large groups and feel disconnected. If I’m alone, I’m not lonely unless I’m thinking about those large groups and my absence of connection - and I can even feel lonely if my connections just aren’t available at a given moment.
- gryn 3y ago
  well I guess it's the kind of thing you have to experience to believe. from my personal experience, being with the wrong crowd can definitely make you more lonely than being alone doing your own thing.
- Swizec 3y ago
  > “People feel more lonely when they’re around other people” Oh it’s entirely easy to be super lonely when surrounded by other people. The easiest way to achieve this that I’ve found is being a +1 at a wedding. You’re surrounded with people you’ve never met who all know each other pretty well and have tight bonds. Makes you feel super isolated and alone in a way that just isn’t noticeable in an empty room.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    I used to feel like this and yes at weddings in particular. At some point I realized that I am not the only +1 at this wedding and somehow those other +1s aren't fucked up in their head about it. Eventually you realize your agency. Like you can for example spot the other +1 and strike up a conversation.
    - Swizec 3y ago
      > Eventually you realize your agency Oh that's not the problem at all for me. I am perfectly capable of feeling lonely right through that entire super fun engaging conversation with strangers. Because a conversation doesn't scratch that same itch. Like eating potato chips when what you really need is steak.
      - xyzelement 3y ago
        It's not a good metaphor because a potato chips conversation can end up a steak conversation
        Swizec 3y ago
        Sometimes yes sometimes no. Sometimes steak just isn't available, but you can have a great roast instead.
- scotty79 3y ago
  > Yeah, people feel less lonely when they’re around people who they like and who like them. Not necessarily. I often visit my mum and her partner. I love them both and they love me. Yet, I feel more lonely when I live with them than when I live alone. I can even see it in the intensity of my online chatting and dating app use. Presence of nice people just makes me more hungry for connection. "Appetite comes with eating."
- seryoiupfurds 3y ago
  I'd say it's not "people who are often around other people are lonelier than people who are not", but rather "people who are lonely, feel lonelier when they're around other people." I definitely relate to the latter. I can go for a long bike ride by myself and feel blissfully content, but standing in the corner at a social event where everyone else is having a good time is intensely lonely and isolating.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    I can relate to this and I think it's about this: // standing in the corner at a social event where everyone else is having a good time I used to be like that, and I would judge the people I was disconnected from like they are dumb for having a good time. Eventually I figured out, I was the standoffish jerk - and forced myself to learn how to go say hi and be more part of the group (although I am still not amazing at it, I realize that if I am disconnected in the corner, it's because of what I have chosen to do/not do)
- guy98238710 3y ago
  It's the contrast. Like with impossible/imaginary colors. People are apparently comparing themselves to others.
- coldtea 3y ago
  It's very basic common sense. You might even be saying the same thing and not realize it. They don't say people feel more lonely "when around people who they like and who like them". They say LONELY people feel more lonely "when around people", that is, when they are around people who don't care for them. Like a lonely person at a club full of people where everybody else seems to have friends or a partner. That's what they say, which is absolutely common sense. Not that people feel lonelier when with their friends - as you might have understood it.
- nativecoinc 3y ago
  > Yeah, people feel less lonely when they’re around people who they like and who like them. People who they like and who like them. And you don’t think that that is a massive caveat? The original claim was just “people”, not “fantastic and awesome people”. > “People feel more lonely when they’re around other people” is the type of stuff you could only find on the internet or in academia, you can logic yourself into it but it’s so far beyond common sense it’s insane And who are you to make this statement? Only on the Internet and in academia? I don’t know what “only on the Internet” is supposed to mean. That everyone lies on the Internet or that none of them (us) are real people? I’ve seen people who have made this claim. On the Internet at least. (How candid are random people about this “in real life”?) They seemed sincere enough about it. I don’t even know what the hell you are getting at with “logic yourself into”, as if how people feel is just a philosophical-analytical experiment gone wrong. Get a grip.
dustypotato 3y ago
Could it be that in the surveys which measure happiness , more social people are more likely to say they're happy? Because they talk to their peers about their lives and are more likely to present more presentable aspects of their lives. With people with less social contact, maybe they don't reorganize their memories with respect to social visibility and just by intensity or time spent in that experience. There is a theory that I'd like to believe that everyone is equally happy over a period of time after basic necessities of life are satisfied.
- throw0101c 3y ago
  > Could it be that in the surveys which measure happiness , more social people are more likely to say they're happy? In addition to surveys, there are interviews at regular intervals, so observations of the participants are also used as data points. > There is a theory that I'd like to believe that everyone is equally happy over a period of time after basic necessities of life are satisfied. Empirical evidence does not support this. There are such things as 'set points' of happiness: * https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/meditation-for-modern-life/201709/your-set-point-for-happiness https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/meditation-for-moder... Some folks have lower, and some higher, 'base levels' of happiness. It seems that some people are / can be 'inherently' happier than others.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    Personally I've found that joy cometh before a fall. Literally. My worst rollerblading accidents were when I was feeling joy (those hand guards do not protect against broken fingers). As such joy is not an emotion I actively cultivate, and when it happens I take it as reason to be wary.
- siftrics 3y ago
  > There is a theory that I'd like to believe that everyone is equally happy over a period of time after basic necessities of life are satisfied. This is not true at all, in my opinion. I used to believe everyone has approximately the same life satisfaction after their needs are met. I've always been quite happy, but I became much, much happier after I moved across the country and made really close friends with whom I spend a lot of time. Meanwhile, my old roommate still spends 8-5 in the office and then comes home and plays League of Legends. There is no way our life satisfaction is the same. Don't get me wrong, I was pretty happy going into the office and seeing my friends for an hour or two each day. But now that I have a life with much more time spent with deep friendships, I see that life satisfaction is not zero sum. You can be a certain amount of happy. And you can be even happier than that at no cost.
samstave 3y ago
I was a part of a study with San Diego state which followed my through my life until I told them to stop... The study was to see how different people from differing socio-economic backgrounds turned out as they got older... When I was about ~16/17 I told them to kick rocks. They used to show up every year and interview me for an hour about how my life was progressing... I lived on a famous hippy commune in Lafayette California until I was 4 years old... My mom knew Jim Jones (of the koolaid fame) and a bunch of other famous people from San Francisco in the 1970s... Later, I found an article in Playboy Magazine (yes, no funny joke there) which was taken with the founder of the commune, Vik Baranco (I dont know how to spell his name) where he recvealed that the commune was being followed by the CIA... I think the study from UCSD was a CIA front as I spoke with other kids from the commune and the weird shit that happened to them.... - EDIT: my mom was doing acid with the grateful dead, fleetwod mac, and a bunch of other people... who probably dont want to be named... anyway - the 1970s and 1980s were briliant for computers.... BECAUSE OF ACID... Look at Cisco, they developed the core of BGP while on acid in a hot-tub in Sunnyvale... So much of tech is tied with psychs.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  The weird stuff was definitely the CIA, and not say, I dunno... the questionable life choices of someone who hung out with Jim Jones and hippy commune cult leaders.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    Obviously there would be weird stuff around Jim Jones and hippy communes. Parent didn't say anything about any "weird stuff" being by the CIA. They said the "study by UCSD" might have been a front for CIA.
  - samstave 3y ago
    Hey, I'm not going to argue with you... but it WAS fn weird... and a part of my life's dialogue. Can I write you a book on growing up in a family that built California? You know why there are so many places and streets named 'Folsom' <-- my great-great-uncle I know a lot of shit. My great grandfather was ticketed MANY times when they were first installing street lights in SF to "NO MACHINE IS GOING TO TELL ME WHAT TO DO" (I kinda inherited that)
stef25 3y ago
Something I noticed at my current workplace (20 employees, 80% women and mostly between 20-30 yrs old) is that all the girls constantly take breaks or walks together to just to be with each other and get things off their chests. They frequently give each other hugs at random times during the day. New employees arrive and they immediately fall in to the fold. One arrived from abroad and after a few weeks said "you guys (she meant gals) are my new family here" Meanwhile there's us 3 developer dudes who all get along fine but our relationship goes about as far as "all good?", "yep you?". And then of course talking about IT geek stuff. Kind of general problem with men I think. Very difficult to open up to other men.
- damascus 3y ago
  Men (generally speaking) want to fit into the social dynamic of their tribe. If you started to slowly open up and talk about more vulnerable topics it's very likely they would follow suit. I've seen it many times, almost always where I was the one that started it. I was once a super 'introverted dev' but really I was just not well socialized and unwilling and unable to express my emotions with confidence and clarity. Once I started to feel my feelings (I started with a feelings journal where I'd write down any emotions I felt that day) then I could start to describe them appropriately for the setting. Opening up to a trusted member of whatever tribe you are in (work, friends, hobby club) at the appropriate pace inspires a great deal of trust. If you talk about how you feel openly (and again, appropriately to where the group is) they come to trust that you will say how you feel when you feel it and that inspires trust and security, which makes you a very valuable member of that tribe.
  - stef25 3y ago
    Thanks for the advice :) Paradoxically I'd feel more comfortable telling my life story and recent mishaps to a total stranger than to someone who I spend 8 hrs in an office with. Something to do with if it comes across wrong or people get freaked out, you're still sitting next to them for 40hrs a week until you leave the company.
    - tblt 3y ago
munificent 3y ago
> The simple but surprising answer is: relationships. The trick to understand all of this is to realize that humans are a tribal species. I don't mean in the in-group versus out-group stuff (though that is also a big piece of the human behavioral puzzle). What I mean is that for all of our most recent evolutionary history, our survival did not depend on our individual performance as much as it did the performance of our tribe. A solitary Homo sapiens on the savannah is as dead and useless as a worker bee without a hive. Our entire cognitive and emotional systems have evolved to understand that deep truth. To be abandoned by the tribe is an existential threat, and to be accepted and valued by the tribe is winning. Once you realize that, so much of human behavior makes more sense. I think it really says something about modern American culture that we find the answer "surprising". For almost all of the history of Western civilization, it was so obvious that it didn't even need questioning. We're like fish flopping around on land who are finally realizing what water is.
- fortuna86 3y ago
  [dead]
anonymouskimmer 3y ago
Without reading the study I assume this conclusions is from averaging out the experiences of a bunch of people. The problem with group averages is that they are just that. They apply more, or less, or not at all, to particular individuals within the analysis.
Applejinx 3y ago
I committed heavily to open source development as I wanted my relationship with SOCIETY to be a certain way, and I've found it has this effect for me. Discovering that the 'reach' of my work has extended farther than I expected… for instance, someone who's asked for particular code turns out to be in a homeless shelter as I once was, many years ago, and their connection is giving them hope for their future, or for another instance, someone's shouting me and my work out by name in a BBC radio interview and seems to get what I'm trying to accomplish… these things hugely add to my identification of my life as fulfilling and meaningful. The one is very personal, and the other is easily understood as celebrity and promotion, but they're the same. If the purpose to life is making connections, a large circle of social friends (or a siamese-twin relationship with a romantic partner) isn't the ONLY option. There's all sorts of ways to connect, and finding meaningful work will almost certainly mean functional or even parasocial connections with lots of people. And parasocial relationships are still relationships in this sense: they're one-to-many, in which you can't give what's normally understood to be friendship on the one-on-one level, but it doesn't work if you haven't got love for the collective entity of your fandom. I think parasocial relationships become more intense when the celebrity center of the relationship is really hungry for it. Modern examples aren't the only examples I can give: consider Johnny Carson, king of the parasocial relationship :)
underlipton 3y ago
This trivializes the process of developing relationships, and the mechanisms by which relationships promote well-being. In turn: 1) You must consider the dynamics of rejection. People may recognize and seek relationships, but find themselves unable to build them. However much you might want to have a relationship with someone, they have to reciprocate. And if there's something "wrong" with you, you're going to find that a lot of people will not want your company. Additionally, thanks to network effects, one person taking this stance can close a large swath of relationships that might otherwise come into being; being on the bad side of someone who is popular or well-connected can quickly turn you into a pariah. 2) Relationships don't just magically make you happier or healthier; they provide access to goods and services that fulfill needs, because affinity prompts people either to provide them directly or to direct you to places where you can get them. Not every relationship is equal, either, but having more of them means a greater chance of having some that cancel out or improve upon deleterious relationships or the lack of a relationships. Some relationships take more out of you than they give.

FormerBandmate 3y ago

Yeah, people feel less lonely when they’re around people who they like and who like them. “People feel more lonely when they’re around other people” is the type of stuff you could only find on the internet or in academia, you can logic yourself into it but it’s so far beyond common sense it’s insane

jprete 3y ago
Anecdotally, I disagree. I definitely feel more lonely when I’m in large groups and feel disconnected. If I’m alone, I’m not lonely unless I’m thinking about those large groups and my absence of connection - and I can even feel lonely if my connections just aren’t available at a given moment.
gryn 3y ago
well I guess it's the kind of thing you have to experience to believe. from my personal experience, being with the wrong crowd can definitely make you more lonely than being alone doing your own thing.
Swizec 3y ago
> “People feel more lonely when they’re around other people” Oh it’s entirely easy to be super lonely when surrounded by other people. The easiest way to achieve this that I’ve found is being a +1 at a wedding. You’re surrounded with people you’ve never met who all know each other pretty well and have tight bonds. Makes you feel super isolated and alone in a way that just isn’t noticeable in an empty room.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  I used to feel like this and yes at weddings in particular. At some point I realized that I am not the only +1 at this wedding and somehow those other +1s aren't fucked up in their head about it. Eventually you realize your agency. Like you can for example spot the other +1 and strike up a conversation.
  - Swizec 3y ago
    > Eventually you realize your agency Oh that's not the problem at all for me. I am perfectly capable of feeling lonely right through that entire super fun engaging conversation with strangers. Because a conversation doesn't scratch that same itch. Like eating potato chips when what you really need is steak.
    - xyzelement 3y ago
      It's not a good metaphor because a potato chips conversation can end up a steak conversation
      - Swizec 3y ago
        Sometimes yes sometimes no. Sometimes steak just isn't available, but you can have a great roast instead.
scotty79 3y ago
> Yeah, people feel less lonely when they’re around people who they like and who like them. Not necessarily. I often visit my mum and her partner. I love them both and they love me. Yet, I feel more lonely when I live with them than when I live alone. I can even see it in the intensity of my online chatting and dating app use. Presence of nice people just makes me more hungry for connection. "Appetite comes with eating."
seryoiupfurds 3y ago
I'd say it's not "people who are often around other people are lonelier than people who are not", but rather "people who are lonely, feel lonelier when they're around other people." I definitely relate to the latter. I can go for a long bike ride by myself and feel blissfully content, but standing in the corner at a social event where everyone else is having a good time is intensely lonely and isolating.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  I can relate to this and I think it's about this: // standing in the corner at a social event where everyone else is having a good time I used to be like that, and I would judge the people I was disconnected from like they are dumb for having a good time. Eventually I figured out, I was the standoffish jerk - and forced myself to learn how to go say hi and be more part of the group (although I am still not amazing at it, I realize that if I am disconnected in the corner, it's because of what I have chosen to do/not do)
guy98238710 3y ago
It's the contrast. Like with impossible/imaginary colors. People are apparently comparing themselves to others.
coldtea 3y ago
It's very basic common sense. You might even be saying the same thing and not realize it. They don't say people feel more lonely "when around people who they like and who like them". They say LONELY people feel more lonely "when around people", that is, when they are around people who don't care for them. Like a lonely person at a club full of people where everybody else seems to have friends or a partner. That's what they say, which is absolutely common sense. Not that people feel lonelier when with their friends - as you might have understood it.
nativecoinc 3y ago
> Yeah, people feel less lonely when they’re around people who they like and who like them. People who they like and who like them. And you don’t think that that is a massive caveat? The original claim was just “people”, not “fantastic and awesome people”. > “People feel more lonely when they’re around other people” is the type of stuff you could only find on the internet or in academia, you can logic yourself into it but it’s so far beyond common sense it’s insane And who are you to make this statement? Only on the Internet and in academia? I don’t know what “only on the Internet” is supposed to mean. That everyone lies on the Internet or that none of them (us) are real people? I’ve seen people who have made this claim. On the Internet at least. (How candid are random people about this “in real life”?) They seemed sincere enough about it. I don’t even know what the hell you are getting at with “logic yourself into”, as if how people feel is just a philosophical-analytical experiment gone wrong. Get a grip.

dustypotato 3y ago

Could it be that in the surveys which measure happiness , more social people are more likely to say they're happy? Because they talk to their peers about their lives and are more likely to present more presentable aspects of their lives. With people with less social contact, maybe they don't reorganize their memories with respect to social visibility and just by intensity or time spent in that experience. There is a theory that I'd like to believe that everyone is equally happy over a period of time after basic necessities of life are satisfied.

throw0101c 3y ago
> Could it be that in the surveys which measure happiness , more social people are more likely to say they're happy? In addition to surveys, there are interviews at regular intervals, so observations of the participants are also used as data points. > There is a theory that I'd like to believe that everyone is equally happy over a period of time after basic necessities of life are satisfied. Empirical evidence does not support this. There are such things as 'set points' of happiness: * https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/meditation-for-modern-life/201709/your-set-point-for-happiness https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/meditation-for-moder... Some folks have lower, and some higher, 'base levels' of happiness. It seems that some people are / can be 'inherently' happier than others.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  Personally I've found that joy cometh before a fall. Literally. My worst rollerblading accidents were when I was feeling joy (those hand guards do not protect against broken fingers). As such joy is not an emotion I actively cultivate, and when it happens I take it as reason to be wary.
siftrics 3y ago
> There is a theory that I'd like to believe that everyone is equally happy over a period of time after basic necessities of life are satisfied. This is not true at all, in my opinion. I used to believe everyone has approximately the same life satisfaction after their needs are met. I've always been quite happy, but I became much, much happier after I moved across the country and made really close friends with whom I spend a lot of time. Meanwhile, my old roommate still spends 8-5 in the office and then comes home and plays League of Legends. There is no way our life satisfaction is the same. Don't get me wrong, I was pretty happy going into the office and seeing my friends for an hour or two each day. But now that I have a life with much more time spent with deep friendships, I see that life satisfaction is not zero sum. You can be a certain amount of happy. And you can be even happier than that at no cost.

samstave 3y ago

I was a part of a study with San Diego state which followed my through my life until I told them to stop... The study was to see how different people from differing socio-economic backgrounds turned out as they got older... When I was about ~16/17 I told them to kick rocks. They used to show up every year and interview me for an hour about how my life was progressing... I lived on a famous hippy commune in Lafayette California until I was 4 years old... My mom knew Jim Jones (of the koolaid fame) and a bunch of other famous people from San Francisco in the 1970s... Later, I found an article in Playboy Magazine (yes, no funny joke there) which was taken with the founder of the commune, Vik Baranco (I dont know how to spell his name) where he recvealed that the commune was being followed by the CIA... I think the study from UCSD was a CIA front as I spoke with other kids from the commune and the weird shit that happened to them.... - EDIT: my mom was doing acid with the grateful dead, fleetwod mac, and a bunch of other people... who probably dont want to be named... anyway - the 1970s and 1980s were briliant for computers.... BECAUSE OF ACID... Look at Cisco, they developed the core of BGP while on acid in a hot-tub in Sunnyvale... So much of tech is tied with psychs.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
The weird stuff was definitely the CIA, and not say, I dunno... the questionable life choices of someone who hung out with Jim Jones and hippy commune cult leaders.
- coldtea 3y ago
  Obviously there would be weird stuff around Jim Jones and hippy communes. Parent didn't say anything about any "weird stuff" being by the CIA. They said the "study by UCSD" might have been a front for CIA.
- samstave 3y ago
  Hey, I'm not going to argue with you... but it WAS fn weird... and a part of my life's dialogue. Can I write you a book on growing up in a family that built California? You know why there are so many places and streets named 'Folsom' <-- my great-great-uncle I know a lot of shit. My great grandfather was ticketed MANY times when they were first installing street lights in SF to "NO MACHINE IS GOING TO TELL ME WHAT TO DO" (I kinda inherited that)

stef25 3y ago

Something I noticed at my current workplace (20 employees, 80% women and mostly between 20-30 yrs old) is that all the girls constantly take breaks or walks together to just to be with each other and get things off their chests. They frequently give each other hugs at random times during the day. New employees arrive and they immediately fall in to the fold. One arrived from abroad and after a few weeks said "you guys (she meant gals) are my new family here" Meanwhile there's us 3 developer dudes who all get along fine but our relationship goes about as far as "all good?", "yep you?". And then of course talking about IT geek stuff. Kind of general problem with men I think. Very difficult to open up to other men.

damascus 3y ago
Men (generally speaking) want to fit into the social dynamic of their tribe. If you started to slowly open up and talk about more vulnerable topics it's very likely they would follow suit. I've seen it many times, almost always where I was the one that started it. I was once a super 'introverted dev' but really I was just not well socialized and unwilling and unable to express my emotions with confidence and clarity. Once I started to feel my feelings (I started with a feelings journal where I'd write down any emotions I felt that day) then I could start to describe them appropriately for the setting. Opening up to a trusted member of whatever tribe you are in (work, friends, hobby club) at the appropriate pace inspires a great deal of trust. If you talk about how you feel openly (and again, appropriately to where the group is) they come to trust that you will say how you feel when you feel it and that inspires trust and security, which makes you a very valuable member of that tribe.
- stef25 3y ago
  Thanks for the advice :) Paradoxically I'd feel more comfortable telling my life story and recent mishaps to a total stranger than to someone who I spend 8 hrs in an office with. Something to do with if it comes across wrong or people get freaked out, you're still sitting next to them for 40hrs a week until you leave the company.
  - tblt 3y ago

munificent 3y ago

> The simple but surprising answer is: relationships. The trick to understand all of this is to realize that humans are a tribal species. I don't mean in the in-group versus out-group stuff (though that is also a big piece of the human behavioral puzzle). What I mean is that for all of our most recent evolutionary history, our survival did not depend on our individual performance as much as it did the performance of our tribe. A solitary Homo sapiens on the savannah is as dead and useless as a worker bee without a hive. Our entire cognitive and emotional systems have evolved to understand that deep truth. To be abandoned by the tribe is an existential threat, and to be accepted and valued by the tribe is winning. Once you realize that, so much of human behavior makes more sense. I think it really says something about modern American culture that we find the answer "surprising". For almost all of the history of Western civilization, it was so obvious that it didn't even need questioning. We're like fish flopping around on land who are finally realizing what water is.

fortuna86 3y ago
[dead]

anonymouskimmer 3y ago

Without reading the study I assume this conclusions is from averaging out the experiences of a bunch of people. The problem with group averages is that they are just that. They apply more, or less, or not at all, to particular individuals within the analysis.

Applejinx 3y ago

I committed heavily to open source development as I wanted my relationship with SOCIETY to be a certain way, and I've found it has this effect for me. Discovering that the 'reach' of my work has extended farther than I expected… for instance, someone who's asked for particular code turns out to be in a homeless shelter as I once was, many years ago, and their connection is giving them hope for their future, or for another instance, someone's shouting me and my work out by name in a BBC radio interview and seems to get what I'm trying to accomplish… these things hugely add to my identification of my life as fulfilling and meaningful. The one is very personal, and the other is easily understood as celebrity and promotion, but they're the same. If the purpose to life is making connections, a large circle of social friends (or a siamese-twin relationship with a romantic partner) isn't the ONLY option. There's all sorts of ways to connect, and finding meaningful work will almost certainly mean functional or even parasocial connections with lots of people. And parasocial relationships are still relationships in this sense: they're one-to-many, in which you can't give what's normally understood to be friendship on the one-on-one level, but it doesn't work if you haven't got love for the collective entity of your fandom. I think parasocial relationships become more intense when the celebrity center of the relationship is really hungry for it. Modern examples aren't the only examples I can give: consider Johnny Carson, king of the parasocial relationship :)

underlipton 3y ago

This trivializes the process of developing relationships, and the mechanisms by which relationships promote well-being. In turn: 1) You must consider the dynamics of rejection. People may recognize and seek relationships, but find themselves unable to build them. However much you might want to have a relationship with someone, they have to reciprocate. And if there's something "wrong" with you, you're going to find that a lot of people will not want your company. Additionally, thanks to network effects, one person taking this stance can close a large swath of relationships that might otherwise come into being; being on the bad side of someone who is popular or well-connected can quickly turn you into a pariah. 2) Relationships don't just magically make you happier or healthier; they provide access to goods and services that fulfill needs, because affinity prompts people either to provide them directly or to direct you to places where you can get them. Not every relationship is equal, either, but having more of them means a greater chance of having some that cancel out or improve upon deleterious relationships or the lack of a relationships. Some relationships take more out of you than they give.