> The last 3 or so years have turned America into a giant mental asylum and it’s starting to be not worth it to talk to a rando. It's more than the past 3 year

> The last 3 or so years have turned America into a giant mental asylum and it’s starting to be not worth it to talk to a rando. It's more than the past 3 years. People really started coming unhinged in late 2016, by my observations. But the trend has been increasing for a while, and I'm willing to point a pretty sharp finger at the various social media, news, etc companies who are enabled in their "pour liquid oxygen on the fires of division for stoking outrage in the pursuit of more ad views" by things like the smart phone - because now someone is connected 24/7, by default. Host firepit nights and invite people. I've yet to find a better solution to getting good actual conversations going than to have regular firepit nights (right now, I have one a week, and would like to get another few per month going this summer with different groups of people). Yes, some people will look at you like you're nuts, and others will turn into solid friends. Fundamentally, I don't think we're going to fix the problems of smartphones and consumer tech (in the general "surveillance capitalism" sense) with more of that stuff.