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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori A neat thing about today's society is that you can be a participant and contr

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori A neat thing about today's society is that you can be a participant and contributor entirely without ever stepping outside your room. Work a remote job or side gig (doesn't have to be "real work"), order everything from Amazon and Instacart, do check-ups online. In an emergency (medical, natural disaster, house issue) you'll need to go outside, but otherwise everything is in your room and all interactions are virtual. You can even get fitness equipment and artificial sunlight so you can stay healthy, and VR googles if you want to experience "outside". That is, assuming you're introverted enough that zero human interaction doesn't affect your mental health. Besides that, you have the entire internet, so it's easy to entertain yourself.

soygem 3y ago
industrial society and its consequences
- VelesDude 3y ago
  Urge to move to Montana log cabin rising! But without the crazy stuff that follows.
kiba 3y ago
If you are a participant in society, then you aren't a shut in. Nothing of significance happen. No promotion, no falling in love, no completion of a project, no failure but also no success either. That is a shut-in. To be a shut-in is the inability to access the full spectrum of what life has to offer. Beside, as anyone familiar with using the internet, there may be so much entertainment, and yet there's nothing on the internet either.
- ffsm8 3y ago
  That's your definition of the term. Most people have a broader spectrum they'd classify as shut-in, which you can discover by clicking on the provided wiki article. Personally I think your definition doesn't actually work, tbh. Where do you draw the line for "no participation in society"? Wouldn't that mean any interaction? Now they can't even order through a web portal, can't comment on social media like reddit etc. You'd need to create an incredibly controlled environment to make that viable, which would remove the self-imposed aspect of it. Even the article you're commenting on has a hikikomori releasing a game project after several years. He wouldn't be one according to your definition either, even though everyone that knows about him IRL would absolutely call him one.
  - kiba 3y ago
    Nah. I define the hikikomori by necessarily the state of despair. That obviously came through the participation in society. For the record, a hikikomori makes a video game? Wow. I wish I can do that. It's a matter of effort, of putting a foot in one another. The thing is, developing a video game and releasing it to the public is inherently a social activity, unless you write the code only for yourself. Things are happening. Playing video games which is what creates despair for me. Nothing happens outside of that video game. Don't get me wrong, playing video is a lot of fun, but it isn't beneficial when there's too much of it.
    - ffsm8 3y ago
      From reading your other comments in this thread I think you're just equating your experience as a hikikomori to be what it means to be a shut-in. The currently accepted definition is however merely: * spending most of the day and nearly every day confined to home, * marked and persistent avoidance of social situations, and social relationships, * social withdrawal symptoms causing significant functional impairment, * duration of exceeding six months, * no apparent physical or mental etiology to account for the social withdrawal symptoms. Under these criteria (quoted straight from the linked Wiki article), a person working from home office with no contact can also become a social recluse, even if it's certainly a different experience then what you've experienced
- noneparticular 3y ago
  Can't say I overly agree with that, I work full time from home but pretty common for me to not leave my residence for 10 to 15 days at a time, and usually only to purchase groceries or small things to repair or maintain where I live. This is my life for the last 6 or 7 years now. I have no family to speak of, and I don't have any acquaintances outside of work. And I've never met any of my colleagues face to face. Many of whom have never seen a photograph of me. Most of our interactions are in Mattermost chats, emails, or work items. Most people only know me as ASCII codes rendered on a screen to form words. If that doesn't qualify me as a shut in, what does? >To be a shut-in is the inability to access the full spectrum of what life has to offer. My response to that would be to ask why such things would be appealing in the first place. Why should one that finds no reward in dealing with other people at all, aspire to being promoted or falling in love? Both of which inherently require dealing with other people.
  - barbs 3y ago
    I feel it's what we've evolved to be tbh, regardless of what we've logically concluded.
    - dleary 3y ago
      This is not a valid argument. The same argument has been used to oppress people since time immemorial, whether they were brown skinned, homosexuals, neurodivergent, Jews, or various other arguments for being “not as we were evolved to be”. (You have targeted one form of neurodivergent people here). If you ignore the eyeblink of the last 100 years, then we have hundreds of thousands of years of brutal rape, war, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, enslavement, and I’m sure we could think of a few others… It would be very hard to argue that this is not “what we’re evolved to be”, since we so lustfully pursued these endeavors for literally 100 times as long as we have recorded history. This argument is basically the same exact sentiment as “because that is Gods will” or “because that is the way it’s always been done” dressed up in a patina of science by including the word “evolved” in it.
  - kiba 3y ago
    My response to that would be to ask why such things would be appealing in the first place. Why should one that finds no reward in dealing with other people at all, aspire to being promoted or falling in love? Both of which inherently require dealing with other people. A good question. I define that with: nothing happens. Life becomes static. Events don't happen. That's what I meant by being a shut-in. To be fair, a shut-in to having a life is a range rather than a binary thing. My response to that would be to ask why such things would be appealing in the first place. Why should one that finds no reward in dealing with other people at all, aspire to being promoted or falling in love? Both of which inherently require dealing with other people. I don't know. I was OK with not meeting people in real life. Then I started meeting people, and started to find a new dimension in life. I found that I have certain social talent that I didn't know I have. One thing to take into consideration is that people changes and their preferences changes. They are not static. Anyway, it's not so much about having photos or being able to see someone's face. It's about something happening. It's kinda hard to define. Again, no failure, but no success either. No exhilaration, and no happiness. Life is static. Nothing happens. Sadness may happens, but hopefully good things should outweigh that.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >there may be so much entertainment, and yet there's nothing on the internet either. There's plenty on the internet. There may have been more outside, but cultural shifts are decreasing that. So the Internet is becoming surprisingly (and depressively) more competitive.
  - kiba 3y ago
    By any objective measure, there's more books and more video games than you can ever play within your limited lifespan. That is what I meant by there's always something to do but yet nothing. I partially solved that by actually just learning the science as opposed to watching more educational science video. There's only so much edutainment that you can tolerate.
Valodim 3y ago
Except shut-ins rarely procreate, and just that will be a huge hit on their average contribution to society. It's cool if an individual finds their niche, but as a generational trend it seems highly problematic to me.
- defrost 3y ago
  > Except shut-ins rarely procreate, Do they mentor others and pass skills on though? I've travelled in Japan and met childless swordmakers and glass blowers who have apprentices and former students who have their own aprentices. You're aware not all things are due to nepotism I assume?
- ZaoLahma 3y ago
  Ah yes, the ongoing conundrum of trying to maintain a clearly very unsustainable quality of life while also increasing the population numbers to ensure the productivity needed to sustain the large and quickly aging parts of the population. Fun times ahead.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  You're welcome to procreate and compensate the head count yourself if the idea of someone not siring children disturbs you so.
- abrookewood 3y ago
  I do not agree that breeding should be equated with contributing to society.
  - ZaoLahma 3y ago
    As cynical as this will sound, breeding is contributing to society in the sense that you provide productivity to it. Ensuring your retirement, in essence. In many (western inspired) parts of the world, the retirement scheme depends on productivity being increased for every generation. This because every generation that retires is larger than the previous generation that retired. The population growth drives the need for an increase in productivity. You can increase the productivity by either increase the size of the working population, or make the working population more productive per individual. Up until recently we actually did both. That's why our elderly now can enjoy VERY comfortable retirements compared to two generations ago. For us, those who are now working, it doesn't look great. We're not having children and it's getting hard to squeeze more productivity out of us. Here according to the latest projections, I'm not supposed to retire until I'm 69. And this is with today's data. I fully expect it to increase further. Those that were born in 2015 or later are expected to work until they are 71, according to today's data. The problem is that I don't think that on average we can work until we hit 70. My father's generation was quite broken right about around 65 when they retired.
Gigachad 3y ago
This is not a neat thing at all.
- inopinatus 3y ago
  Perhaps a pun on NEET which whilst not the same thing as a hikikomori is undoubtedly an adjacent concept.
- noneparticular 3y ago
  May I ask what makes you think this way? In this society someone like me that is solitary for the most part can contribute to others, and be compensated for my contributions without having the issue of having to deal with other people directly. It's not appealing to everyone, but having the option is helpful to those averse to direct interaction. I don't see much downside in having it open.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    >I don't see much downside in having it open. on the contrary, that feels like the step right before the good ol' dystopian VR reality that many sci-fi literature dive into . I don't see much upside to that happening.
    - Timwi 3y ago
      Slippery slope fallacy. Shall we ban TV and radio as well because they replace real-life interactions?
      - johnnyanmac 3y ago
        No, there is such thing as social TV and radio. Just check out bars. The VR future tailoring to your imagination is where things really start to go dystopian. It's not exactly a slippery slope since that's what the GP mentioned.
    - noneparticular 3y ago
      I can't foresee something like Ready Player One happening on a large scale though. My preference for not interaction with anyone is the exception, not the norm. For what you fear to come to pass, the the opposite would have to become true. Why would people in general shift their preference towards isolationism?
rob74 3y ago
Never mind human interaction, but I couldn't imagine living without getting a breath of fresh air once in a while - a (real, not simulated) walk or bicycle ride through a park, a forest, by a lake or the sea, a hike in the mountains etc.
- chii 3y ago
  you could just open the window to get fresh air, and simulate, via treadmill, the hiking!
  - godratio 3y ago
    Great idea if you want to get someone very depressed. Humans do need to go outside and touch grass from time to time.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      humans are already becoming more and more depressed. Makes little difference at this point.
    - snowram 3y ago
      We had very strict Covid restrictions in my country (France) back when it started. Going outside for anything other than walking the dog was complicated, you had to sign a form that said that it was an absolute emergency. Yet, some of my friends told me that those few months were among the best of their life. Some of us really don't need to go outside to feel fulfillment, just the confort of their home.
      - krageon 3y ago
        I spent two years not going outside during this time and I honestly wish it never ended. It was absolutely the best time.
  - npteljes 3y ago
    I don't think you can simulate an experience, in a way that it ends up being profound. Reality is always more complex than our understanding, because understanding works by selecting, limiting information. So what these simulations often end up with is an incomplete, hollow imitation of the real thing, often missing a key ingredient yet to be identified. The efforts in human nutrition is a good example of this, always discovering something that was crucially missing from diets. Simulations work for some, though. But they don't work for others, and this is what I wanted to hopefully make a bit more understandable.
thefz 3y ago
> A neat thing about today's society is that you can be a participant and contributor entirely without ever stepping outside your room You can be solely because others don't even have the option.
torginus 3y ago
Tbh, I never understood why the phenomenon of Hikkikomori, which is the Japanese version of NEET (people who don't work or study) has captured such a large amount of the public's imagination, with multiple fictional works made about them. Just take a look at the World Bank's stats on what percentage of people are NEET: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.NEET.ZS https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.NEET.ZS Here we can see, Japan stands at 3.1%, one of the absolute lowest, while the US is at 11%, Italy at 15%ish. It would stand to reason this would be a much more prominent I'm not sure the difference between these stats and public perception is due to different measurement criteria, or due to cultural differences about societal expectations.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  definitely culture expectations. Japan is a very conformist society that expects every member to contribute. So someone more or less dropping out is a big deal, for them and their family
  - npteljes 3y ago
    China is similarly an Asian country, with demanding social roles and other struggles as well. They have significantly more people and landmass, and so, opportunity for the diversity of phenomenons like this, and yet, they are much less visible than Japan's. The difference, I think, is in PR. Whatever Japan has, they turn it into pop culture, and they use that pop culture to strengthen the idea that Japan is somehow interesting. The feeling I have about China is that they rather want to project one specific image. So I feel it's less about how the society is structured, and more about how each country positions itself.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      > and yet, they are much less visible than Japan's. I feel that's by design. China's been more hostile to the West than Japan over the past decades than Japan/South korea. In some ways, the red scare never truly ended. It is indeed PR, as you said. I'm sure it's even worse in China, but China wants to look like having a pristine image (due to the above situation). Japan is definitely closer to the western mentality where they would turn such a story into an episode of Hoarders or something of that vein if they could. There are indeed a dozen decently known anime based around the Hikkimori lifestyle.
Grustaf 3y ago
That seems anything but “neat”
msp26 3y ago
> That is, assuming you're introverted enough that zero human interaction doesn't affect your mental health. This is never true. It might even feel this way for years but one day it will become unbearable.
lee-rhapsody 3y ago
>"A neat thing" That's not the word I would use lol
weweweoo 3y ago
To be honest if I were to become a hermit, I would go live in middle of a forest. Then one can be alone AND enjoy fresh air & nature with no people around. At this point lots of rural places have adequate internet connection for remote work & any entertainment needs. Cities are kind of pointless if you don't enjoy participating in live activities with other people. Just worse housing at higher price.
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  Cities provide all the services that a hermit needs in order to live a comfortable life. The forest does not.
  - porkbeer 3y ago
    Not with that attitude. We have survived for millenia with most humans never seeing a city.
    - csomar 3y ago
      I actually think we survived in communities/cities for longer. We lost our rough traits (ie: lots of hair, thick skin, etc...) compared to the rest of apes. So we must have been inside homes for a very long time.
      - defrost 3y ago
        That only really applies to cold climates at best. Here's the theatrical trailer of Ten Canoes (2006) by Rolf de Heer with modern actors, many of whom are a generation or less from living traditionally without permanent homes, long houses or anything westerners would consider as "inside", retelling a story from their oral history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH_MY8FJuYo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH_MY8FJuYo
    - squigz 3y ago
      Most humans have historically lived in some kind of community - be it a city, a town, or a village, the point is the same: a community can provide more services that a single person living in the forest can't.
quickthrowman 3y ago
I think it’s horrifying, instead of neat. We are social animals that need contact with each other. No amount of textual, voice, or video communication can replace real human interaction in person. > That is, assuming you're introverted enough that zero human interaction doesn't affect your mental health. There are zero people who fit this description, sorry. Anyone who claims not to be affected by loneliness is lying.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  I hate dealing with people and find solitude to be absolute bliss. The less I have to interact with another human the better, buying drinks from a vending machine is far better than dealing with a cashier at the convenience store.
jimmywetnips 3y ago
"neat"

soygem 3y ago

industrial society and its consequences

VelesDude 3y ago
Urge to move to Montana log cabin rising! But without the crazy stuff that follows.

kiba 3y ago

If you are a participant in society, then you aren't a shut in. Nothing of significance happen. No promotion, no falling in love, no completion of a project, no failure but also no success either. That is a shut-in. To be a shut-in is the inability to access the full spectrum of what life has to offer. Beside, as anyone familiar with using the internet, there may be so much entertainment, and yet there's nothing on the internet either.

ffsm8 3y ago
That's your definition of the term. Most people have a broader spectrum they'd classify as shut-in, which you can discover by clicking on the provided wiki article. Personally I think your definition doesn't actually work, tbh. Where do you draw the line for "no participation in society"? Wouldn't that mean any interaction? Now they can't even order through a web portal, can't comment on social media like reddit etc. You'd need to create an incredibly controlled environment to make that viable, which would remove the self-imposed aspect of it. Even the article you're commenting on has a hikikomori releasing a game project after several years. He wouldn't be one according to your definition either, even though everyone that knows about him IRL would absolutely call him one.
- kiba 3y ago
  Nah. I define the hikikomori by necessarily the state of despair. That obviously came through the participation in society. For the record, a hikikomori makes a video game? Wow. I wish I can do that. It's a matter of effort, of putting a foot in one another. The thing is, developing a video game and releasing it to the public is inherently a social activity, unless you write the code only for yourself. Things are happening. Playing video games which is what creates despair for me. Nothing happens outside of that video game. Don't get me wrong, playing video is a lot of fun, but it isn't beneficial when there's too much of it.
  - ffsm8 3y ago
    From reading your other comments in this thread I think you're just equating your experience as a hikikomori to be what it means to be a shut-in. The currently accepted definition is however merely: * spending most of the day and nearly every day confined to home, * marked and persistent avoidance of social situations, and social relationships, * social withdrawal symptoms causing significant functional impairment, * duration of exceeding six months, * no apparent physical or mental etiology to account for the social withdrawal symptoms. Under these criteria (quoted straight from the linked Wiki article), a person working from home office with no contact can also become a social recluse, even if it's certainly a different experience then what you've experienced
noneparticular 3y ago
Can't say I overly agree with that, I work full time from home but pretty common for me to not leave my residence for 10 to 15 days at a time, and usually only to purchase groceries or small things to repair or maintain where I live. This is my life for the last 6 or 7 years now. I have no family to speak of, and I don't have any acquaintances outside of work. And I've never met any of my colleagues face to face. Many of whom have never seen a photograph of me. Most of our interactions are in Mattermost chats, emails, or work items. Most people only know me as ASCII codes rendered on a screen to form words. If that doesn't qualify me as a shut in, what does? >To be a shut-in is the inability to access the full spectrum of what life has to offer. My response to that would be to ask why such things would be appealing in the first place. Why should one that finds no reward in dealing with other people at all, aspire to being promoted or falling in love? Both of which inherently require dealing with other people.
- barbs 3y ago
  I feel it's what we've evolved to be tbh, regardless of what we've logically concluded.
  - dleary 3y ago
    This is not a valid argument. The same argument has been used to oppress people since time immemorial, whether they were brown skinned, homosexuals, neurodivergent, Jews, or various other arguments for being “not as we were evolved to be”. (You have targeted one form of neurodivergent people here). If you ignore the eyeblink of the last 100 years, then we have hundreds of thousands of years of brutal rape, war, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, enslavement, and I’m sure we could think of a few others… It would be very hard to argue that this is not “what we’re evolved to be”, since we so lustfully pursued these endeavors for literally 100 times as long as we have recorded history. This argument is basically the same exact sentiment as “because that is Gods will” or “because that is the way it’s always been done” dressed up in a patina of science by including the word “evolved” in it.
- kiba 3y ago
  My response to that would be to ask why such things would be appealing in the first place. Why should one that finds no reward in dealing with other people at all, aspire to being promoted or falling in love? Both of which inherently require dealing with other people. A good question. I define that with: nothing happens. Life becomes static. Events don't happen. That's what I meant by being a shut-in. To be fair, a shut-in to having a life is a range rather than a binary thing. My response to that would be to ask why such things would be appealing in the first place. Why should one that finds no reward in dealing with other people at all, aspire to being promoted or falling in love? Both of which inherently require dealing with other people. I don't know. I was OK with not meeting people in real life. Then I started meeting people, and started to find a new dimension in life. I found that I have certain social talent that I didn't know I have. One thing to take into consideration is that people changes and their preferences changes. They are not static. Anyway, it's not so much about having photos or being able to see someone's face. It's about something happening. It's kinda hard to define. Again, no failure, but no success either. No exhilaration, and no happiness. Life is static. Nothing happens. Sadness may happens, but hopefully good things should outweigh that.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
>there may be so much entertainment, and yet there's nothing on the internet either. There's plenty on the internet. There may have been more outside, but cultural shifts are decreasing that. So the Internet is becoming surprisingly (and depressively) more competitive.
- kiba 3y ago
  By any objective measure, there's more books and more video games than you can ever play within your limited lifespan. That is what I meant by there's always something to do but yet nothing. I partially solved that by actually just learning the science as opposed to watching more educational science video. There's only so much edutainment that you can tolerate.

Valodim 3y ago

Except shut-ins rarely procreate, and just that will be a huge hit on their average contribution to society. It's cool if an individual finds their niche, but as a generational trend it seems highly problematic to me.

defrost 3y ago
> Except shut-ins rarely procreate, Do they mentor others and pass skills on though? I've travelled in Japan and met childless swordmakers and glass blowers who have apprentices and former students who have their own aprentices. You're aware not all things are due to nepotism I assume?
ZaoLahma 3y ago
Ah yes, the ongoing conundrum of trying to maintain a clearly very unsustainable quality of life while also increasing the population numbers to ensure the productivity needed to sustain the large and quickly aging parts of the population. Fun times ahead.
Dalewyn 3y ago
You're welcome to procreate and compensate the head count yourself if the idea of someone not siring children disturbs you so.
abrookewood 3y ago
I do not agree that breeding should be equated with contributing to society.
- ZaoLahma 3y ago
  As cynical as this will sound, breeding is contributing to society in the sense that you provide productivity to it. Ensuring your retirement, in essence. In many (western inspired) parts of the world, the retirement scheme depends on productivity being increased for every generation. This because every generation that retires is larger than the previous generation that retired. The population growth drives the need for an increase in productivity. You can increase the productivity by either increase the size of the working population, or make the working population more productive per individual. Up until recently we actually did both. That's why our elderly now can enjoy VERY comfortable retirements compared to two generations ago. For us, those who are now working, it doesn't look great. We're not having children and it's getting hard to squeeze more productivity out of us. Here according to the latest projections, I'm not supposed to retire until I'm 69. And this is with today's data. I fully expect it to increase further. Those that were born in 2015 or later are expected to work until they are 71, according to today's data. The problem is that I don't think that on average we can work until we hit 70. My father's generation was quite broken right about around 65 when they retired.

Gigachad 3y ago

This is not a neat thing at all.

inopinatus 3y ago
Perhaps a pun on NEET which whilst not the same thing as a hikikomori is undoubtedly an adjacent concept.
noneparticular 3y ago
May I ask what makes you think this way? In this society someone like me that is solitary for the most part can contribute to others, and be compensated for my contributions without having the issue of having to deal with other people directly. It's not appealing to everyone, but having the option is helpful to those averse to direct interaction. I don't see much downside in having it open.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >I don't see much downside in having it open. on the contrary, that feels like the step right before the good ol' dystopian VR reality that many sci-fi literature dive into . I don't see much upside to that happening.
  - Timwi 3y ago
    Slippery slope fallacy. Shall we ban TV and radio as well because they replace real-life interactions?
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      No, there is such thing as social TV and radio. Just check out bars. The VR future tailoring to your imagination is where things really start to go dystopian. It's not exactly a slippery slope since that's what the GP mentioned.
  - noneparticular 3y ago
    I can't foresee something like Ready Player One happening on a large scale though. My preference for not interaction with anyone is the exception, not the norm. For what you fear to come to pass, the the opposite would have to become true. Why would people in general shift their preference towards isolationism?

rob74 3y ago

Never mind human interaction, but I couldn't imagine living without getting a breath of fresh air once in a while - a (real, not simulated) walk or bicycle ride through a park, a forest, by a lake or the sea, a hike in the mountains etc.

chii 3y ago
you could just open the window to get fresh air, and simulate, via treadmill, the hiking!
- godratio 3y ago
  Great idea if you want to get someone very depressed. Humans do need to go outside and touch grass from time to time.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    humans are already becoming more and more depressed. Makes little difference at this point.
  - snowram 3y ago
    We had very strict Covid restrictions in my country (France) back when it started. Going outside for anything other than walking the dog was complicated, you had to sign a form that said that it was an absolute emergency. Yet, some of my friends told me that those few months were among the best of their life. Some of us really don't need to go outside to feel fulfillment, just the confort of their home.
    - krageon 3y ago
      I spent two years not going outside during this time and I honestly wish it never ended. It was absolutely the best time.
- npteljes 3y ago
  I don't think you can simulate an experience, in a way that it ends up being profound. Reality is always more complex than our understanding, because understanding works by selecting, limiting information. So what these simulations often end up with is an incomplete, hollow imitation of the real thing, often missing a key ingredient yet to be identified. The efforts in human nutrition is a good example of this, always discovering something that was crucially missing from diets. Simulations work for some, though. But they don't work for others, and this is what I wanted to hopefully make a bit more understandable.

thefz 3y ago

> A neat thing about today's society is that you can be a participant and contributor entirely without ever stepping outside your room You can be solely because others don't even have the option.

torginus 3y ago

Tbh, I never understood why the phenomenon of Hikkikomori, which is the Japanese version of NEET (people who don't work or study) has captured such a large amount of the public's imagination, with multiple fictional works made about them. Just take a look at the World Bank's stats on what percentage of people are NEET: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.NEET.ZS https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.NEET.ZS Here we can see, Japan stands at 3.1%, one of the absolute lowest, while the US is at 11%, Italy at 15%ish. It would stand to reason this would be a much more prominent I'm not sure the difference between these stats and public perception is due to different measurement criteria, or due to cultural differences about societal expectations.

johnnyanmac 3y ago
definitely culture expectations. Japan is a very conformist society that expects every member to contribute. So someone more or less dropping out is a big deal, for them and their family
- npteljes 3y ago
  China is similarly an Asian country, with demanding social roles and other struggles as well. They have significantly more people and landmass, and so, opportunity for the diversity of phenomenons like this, and yet, they are much less visible than Japan's. The difference, I think, is in PR. Whatever Japan has, they turn it into pop culture, and they use that pop culture to strengthen the idea that Japan is somehow interesting. The feeling I have about China is that they rather want to project one specific image. So I feel it's less about how the society is structured, and more about how each country positions itself.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    > and yet, they are much less visible than Japan's. I feel that's by design. China's been more hostile to the West than Japan over the past decades than Japan/South korea. In some ways, the red scare never truly ended. It is indeed PR, as you said. I'm sure it's even worse in China, but China wants to look like having a pristine image (due to the above situation). Japan is definitely closer to the western mentality where they would turn such a story into an episode of Hoarders or something of that vein if they could. There are indeed a dozen decently known anime based around the Hikkimori lifestyle.

Grustaf 3y ago

That seems anything but “neat”

msp26 3y ago

> That is, assuming you're introverted enough that zero human interaction doesn't affect your mental health. This is never true. It might even feel this way for years but one day it will become unbearable.

lee-rhapsody 3y ago

>"A neat thing" That's not the word I would use lol

weweweoo 3y ago

To be honest if I were to become a hermit, I would go live in middle of a forest. Then one can be alone AND enjoy fresh air & nature with no people around. At this point lots of rural places have adequate internet connection for remote work & any entertainment needs. Cities are kind of pointless if you don't enjoy participating in live activities with other people. Just worse housing at higher price.

kwhitefoot 3y ago
Cities provide all the services that a hermit needs in order to live a comfortable life. The forest does not.
- porkbeer 3y ago
  Not with that attitude. We have survived for millenia with most humans never seeing a city.
  - csomar 3y ago
    I actually think we survived in communities/cities for longer. We lost our rough traits (ie: lots of hair, thick skin, etc...) compared to the rest of apes. So we must have been inside homes for a very long time.
    - defrost 3y ago
      That only really applies to cold climates at best. Here's the theatrical trailer of Ten Canoes (2006) by Rolf de Heer with modern actors, many of whom are a generation or less from living traditionally without permanent homes, long houses or anything westerners would consider as "inside", retelling a story from their oral history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH_MY8FJuYo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH_MY8FJuYo
  - squigz 3y ago
    Most humans have historically lived in some kind of community - be it a city, a town, or a village, the point is the same: a community can provide more services that a single person living in the forest can't.

quickthrowman 3y ago

I think it’s horrifying, instead of neat. We are social animals that need contact with each other. No amount of textual, voice, or video communication can replace real human interaction in person. > That is, assuming you're introverted enough that zero human interaction doesn't affect your mental health. There are zero people who fit this description, sorry. Anyone who claims not to be affected by loneliness is lying.

Dalewyn 3y ago
I hate dealing with people and find solitude to be absolute bliss. The less I have to interact with another human the better, buying drinks from a vending machine is far better than dealing with a cashier at the convenience store.

jimmywetnips 3y ago

"neat"