21 ms·

The hikikomori in Asia: A life within four walls

256 points by reqo 2y ago

HPsquared 2y ago
It's definitely happening in the West too. The juice isn't worth the squeeze for a lot of people.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  Frankly I think it's more sensible than putting up with an unjust system in a rat race that goes nowhere, although eventually one has to get into the work game to survive.
RoboTeddy 2y ago
In all the cases in the article it looks like shame plays a big role. I wonder if hikikomori is caused by a loop of [adverse circumstances that cause the person to feel shame] -> withdrawal to avoid shame -> being ashamed of having withdrawn [loop]
- enceladus06 2y ago
  Shame of educational pressure might be causing this, as mentioned in the article. But why do we as society place kids under so much stress? Let kids be kids and learn by exploring.
  - elmomle 2y ago
    I'd bet it's because the parents are feeling a lot of stress. Especially without a robust community support network/string external role models, children tend to inherit their parents' emotional states.
  - esel2k 2y ago
    As a parent I also thought “I won’t repeat these patterns” but reality is, that is so hard. Often parents want the best for their children and use any possible technique to make sure they are successful. I am not giving an excuse but rather want to point to our society and our behaviour. When an expat at work asked me yesterday where to move to make sure that his 5 year old will have the best schools of the country… with such an elitist behaviour, I can only facepalm and see this is going to be much worse in the next 5-10years.
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      Problem is, the world is an economic slugfest today unlike it was at least when I grew up. When my High School class graduated a long time ago, most of us were competing for jobs with people in our own small town. At most, we were competing with the surrounding counties. There was university for A students, community college and/or middle class office work for B students, normal working class jobs for C students, and tougher lower-paying jobs for D students. As for university, we were competing for entrance with mostly other people in our state. Today's kids are competing with the entire world, and the middle class is disappearing. So it's much higher stakes. And it's bimodal: You're either one of the few winners and get to live a comfortable life with a professional job, or you're off to WalMart or an Amazon warehouse, or Prison. The "kind of comfortable middle class life" is shrinking quickly. So it's not enough to just get straight A's. You need extra credit, get a 5.0 GPA, take all the "right" AP classes, have the "right" extracurriculars, and the "right" community service and so on. Otherwise you risk landing on the bad side of the career bimodal distribution.
      - matthewdgreen 2y ago
        And AI, should it work out, is threatening to wipe out even the “good” side of that equation.
      - lotsofpulp 2y ago
        > Problem is, the world is an economic slugfest today unlike it was at least when I grew up It only did not feel like a slugfest for a select few in developed countries like the US/Canada/UK/Aus and maybe some other European countries. For the vast majority, hustling has always been a thing, including immigrating across oceans and leaving all of your friends and family behind. It just so happens that people in the US who used to or whose parents used to have security of shelter/healthcare/food no longer have that security.
      - mycologos 2y ago
        > You're either one of the few winners and get to live a comfortable life with a professional job, or you're off to WalMart or an Amazon warehouse, or Prison. The "kind of comfortable middle class life" is shrinking quickly. So it's not enough to just get straight A's. You need extra credit, get a 5.0 GPA, take all the "right" AP classes, have the "right" extracurriculars, and the "right" community service and so on. Otherwise you risk landing on the bad side of the career bimodal distribution. This seems a little hyperbolic. The requirements you describe are probably true enough for top 20 universities, but they aren't true for top 100, and there still seem to be plenty of random white collar office jobs that hire people from merely medium-ranked universities.
throw383y8 2y ago
[flagged]
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  It really isn't about smoking weed at all.
  - throw383y8 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - dymk 2y ago
      Alcohol is legal pretty much everywhere, and is measurably more damaging in just about every aspect compared to weed. But we don’t say it’s a booze problem.
- CatWChainsaw 2y ago
  Worry about whether or not you'll live in a slurry dystopia or die before old age as the planet cooks.
Joel_Mckay 2y ago
Dr. John B. Calhoun's work with "The Beautiful Ones" may unfortunately generalize to human civilizations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOFveSUmh9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOFveSUmh9U
- causality0 2y ago
  It's strange. We know that instincts, hormones, and other aspects of our biology have a tremendous influence on our thoughts and behaviors, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of effort to use that to problem-solve. There's evolutionary psychology, but given the fraction of human problems traceable to maladaption to the modern world, one would think "evolutionary anthropo-sociology" would a foundational pillar of science. Like, why doesn't "humans didn't evolve to sleep in a room by themselves at the age of four" carry as much weight as "don't let your kids eat lead paint chips"?
  - BlarfMcFlarf 2y ago
    Probably because evolutionary psychology is an incestuous pseudoscience of just-so-stories, small sample sizes, bad extrapolations, non reproducibility etc.
jmyeet 2y ago
People aren't stupid. What we have in the world in general (not just Asia) is a crisis in hopelessness. People are facing crippling student debt (depending on your country), one bad medical incident away from being homeless, crippling housing costs and wages that barely cover costs such that you need 1-2 "side hustles" just to make ends meet. It's really no wonder people are checking out. It's also no wonder that people aren't having children either. They simply can't afford to. One common counterargument to this is that consumer spending is up but that really makes my point: people are spending now instead of saving because they have no future.
- anovikov 2y ago
  But this all is so evidently untrue! Stock of accumulated capital is growing healthily which means savings rate is healthy too, even if most of savings is just reinvestment of profits from previous ones. Consumption of almost everything is growing in real terms too in almost all countries. GDP keeps growing just about everywhere save for a few most unlucky places like UK. Even inequality is falling for the first time in decades so the poor people actually see most improvement (especially in the US). That 'hopelessness' is what people call 'vibecession'. People just taught themselves - probably by going through too much doomscrolling - that things are bad. But they aren't. We are probably living through best times in our lifetime - especially the common folk, poor and working class (some highly educated, high income occupations might be on shaky ground). MAYBE, just maybe, upper middle class is a bit fucked indeed, but this is a small group numerically and hikikomori do not come from there. I'm glad i'm not on social media but whenever i'm trying to read so-called 'news', i also get depressed for a bit. People are trying to present absolutely everything in the most negative sense possible probably because otherwise it's not clickbait-y enough...
  - bluefirebrand 2y ago
    GDP or savings rates don't matter to individuals who are spending all of their money on food and rent Countries and corporations reporting strong financial health does not help the people who are living paycheck to paycheck It's very out of touch to suggest otherwise
  - 2y ago
SoftTalker 2y ago
It's an interesting article I don't know why it had to be presented in such a cumbersome graphical style. I tried the trick of changing "www" to "lite" in the URL but it didn't work for this one. I stopped reading about halfway through.
- sctb 2y ago
  This presentation is surely intended to convey a sense of spatiality related to the idea of "A shrinking life". I enjoyed the graphics and photos, and I definitely got a feeling of constriction and isolation that added depth to my reading experience—YMMV. (The HN guidelines discourage complaints about these sorts of "tangential annoyances", by the way: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
ilaksh 2y ago
I think this is really a spectrum and they are focusing on some more extreme aspects of it. But it is definitely not just an Asian thing and I believe to some degree this type of social withdrawal has affected perhaps a very significant portion of our society. I have definitely been socially isolated my entire life to some degree or another. But much more so in adulthood. Again, I suggest that this is relatively common, not something that happens to only a few million people. One aspect that is being glossed over is the amount of socialization or let's call it "pseudo-social" activity that is happening over the internet for these people. I'm someone who generally does not have friends, leaves the apartment literally only a handful of times per month to take the garbage out and maybe buy groceries once or twice a month if I am trying to save money versus Instacart. For me it comes down to money. I have a health issue that makes me fatigued etc. and don't have money for health insurance. I don't have money to go to restaurants or otherwise waste going out. So I stay home. Because I'm always in a poor health and financial state, I feel uncomfortable trying to do any "real" socialization. But I have always been trying one way or another to get to a point where I have a "real" online business that allows me to actually thrive. Such as buying a car and a house, getting health insurance and addressing my health issues, or paying taxes. But what I have managed so far is usually just enough to scrape by. There have been some minor successes here and there but rarely have I ever felt like I had enough to truly meet my basic needs such as the health concerns or financial stability. Anyway, I think it's easy to get in a position with health and financial challenges, maybe just a series of low-paying contracts, where some degree of social isolation is just practical and realistic.
- antegamisou 2y ago
  I'm sorry for what you've been through and I hope your health gets better. However I believe you've phrased the following a bit poorly, although I'm sure unintentionally: some degree of social isolation is just practical and realistic. Unfortunately this leads to connotations that encourage people completely out of touch with the ordinary person's lifestyle (billionaires, CEOs etc.) make outrageous claims and dictating how they should navigate life with minimum wage and no insurance e.g. that CEO who said skip breakfast to save money, or HN's favorites that we should just shut up and be content with modern tech automating our creative abilities instead of assisting us with menial tasks. Instead if you had written social isolation is inevitable without controlled financial and health stability, you'd be 100% spot on. Human, social isolation and practical/realistic just don't fit together.
anovikov 2y ago
If their parents are not doing anything about it when it's their direct responsibility, how can anyone expect anyone else to fix it? If the culture allows for this, the problem is with the culture.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  It's hard to change another person's mind.
  - anovikov 2y ago
    In America, they'd be kicked out of home as soon as they turned 16. In Russia, they'd be just beaten up by their dads. Probably badly and regularly. They do it because they can. Key is to make it impossible and force them to take up productive activities. No one in adult age should be kept at home funded by their parents unless it's short term with definite plan to fix it, or they are seriously disabled. Of course, when it's about schoolchildren, it's different. Serious psychiatric help is needed. It's again parents' fault for not providing it.
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      I don't know about Russian dads, but in America it's very likely they'd be indulged. I don't know anyone who would kick their teenage child out of the house because he or she was depressed. Especially when you see the sort of life the homeless have in most places. I'm sure it happens, but at least from my perspective it would not be common.
      - HPsquared 2y ago
        That factor is probably a big one in deciding who is homeless and who isn't. It's the main barrier, really.
        SoftTalker 2y ago
        Though you could probably argue the degree to which its right or wrong, they way I look at it is: I brought this person into the world, if he isn't self-supporting at age 18 (or 22, or whatever) then why is it fair to society that I make that society's problem? He's my kid, and I should own the responsibility for that.
marcyb5st 2y ago
From my personal experience (I also went through a very dark period in my life and just recently climbed out of the hole I dug myself) I guess people are realizing that working hard won't get you anything close to what previous generations had. Once that settles in it's hard to push yourself to do basically anything. Additionally, I also believe that feeling is compounded by social media where selection bias only shows you cherry picked moments where it seems other people are living the life you won't get. Finally, among the younger generations there is a lot of climate change dread going around. For me it was a combination of all these factors and to this day I can't pinpoint exactly what was the trigger, but after COVID lockdowns I simply kept social distancing.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  People just have no historical reference. Think times are tough now? Try the great depression. Worried about climate change? In the 1980s it was nuclear war. People living paycheck to paycheck, barely scraping by? Media glorifying the rich and famous? Nothing new.
  - ajkjk 2y ago
    Yet the new struggles are real too? explaining them away as more of the same does nothing. There are old problems and there are new problems and they're both problems.
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      Yes there are struggles today. But there always have been. This imaginary past where most people didn't live in fear of unexpected expenses, debt, struggling to pay all their bills, and not earning enough money didn't exist.
      - ThalesX 2y ago
        > This imaginary past where most people didn't live in fear of unexpected expenses, debt, struggling to pay all their bills, and not earning enough money didn't exist. I call bullshit... Debt. Bills. And for that matter, money. These are things that our species lived for hundreds of thousands of years without. Furthermore, there are tribes that even to this day live without these struggles.
deleted 2y ago
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Ozzie_osman 2y ago
I know everyone is different, and saying things like "just get a job" or "just go outside" are easy to say and very hard to do when you're stuck in that type of loop. But, I will say, things that I've found will help are having some purpose (work, taking care of someone or a pet, anything), exercise (even walking outdoors), and even just getting your biological clock where you wake up and get exposed to sunlight (vs sleeping all day and staying up all night). Getting enough activation energy to do any of those things is difficult, but I've found that if you can muster it, it can help break the cycle.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  It's a bit like refloating a sunken ship.
- itronitron 2y ago
  Yeah, it's much easier for me to leave the house when it's a situation in which I don't need to care about the potential of other people's opinions. Running quick errands, walking the dog, etc. For some reason taking out the recycling is a heavier lift for me mentally due to the risk of chaos with the bins, potential for bags breaking, bins being full, etc. even though there is less social interaction than grocery shopping.
- nanomonkey 2y ago
  Honestly, my dog is my savior. I take her to the park every evening. This gets me out into the evening sun, walking, and around like-minded people. The fact that I can interact with a group of people without scheduling an "event" is great. We just show up. For me it's mostly the other dogs (puppy therapy), but it's nice to exchange a few words and talk to someone about their day while the dogs run around. The two mile walk to the lake is also key. I find a morning stretch and kettle bell routine, and an evening walk keeps me mentally and physically in tune. And it's practically free, unlike modern healthcare.
- BeFlatXIII 2y ago
  Not to mention that "getting the job" is often far more difficult and/or stressful than doing the job or showing up to work or being seen by others on your commute. No one wants to admit how much talent is wasted due to the job application & interview processes.
deleted 2y ago
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itronitron 2y ago
The social home is a great idea and I am glad to hear that it works. It would be interesting to compare social communication styles between people in the social home with social communication among extroverts (in another situation). I expect they are quite different but it would be good to know how they differ.
BaculumMeumEst 2y ago
It’s fun to watch mass media inflict so much harm on people with irresponsible reporting designed to terrify, outrage, and misinform you for profit, and then turn around and report on the fallout. Maybe fun isn’t the right word.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- rustcleaner 2y ago
  Schadenfreude?
ThalesX 2y ago
I've recently finished reading "Civilized to Death"[0] and I can't help feel there's some truth to some of the ideas. One idea that stuck with me is that shit zoos have concrete cages for the monkeys, and they're miserable in them, showing similar signs to modern humans (depression, addition, anger), whereas nice zoos try to keep the monkeys in similar environments to those that they evolved for, where the monkeys are pretty much chill. The author argues that we're constructing concrete zoos for ourselves and in the process making ourselves miserable. We're so far detached from what our bodies and minds evolved for, that it's an alien environment for our species. If this holds truth, it's really no wonder that the more we pile on and the further we stray from our true species' preferences, the more horrible we will feel, and this hikikomori is a fine illustration of that. As some comments pointed out 'what about the great depression', 'what about 'nuclear war', "don't you like your electricity"? These are all human patches for human made problems. I don't think the correlation between progress and wellbeing is as clear cut as some would like to see it. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Civilized-Death-What-Lost-Modernity/dp/1451659105 https://www.amazon.com/Civilized-Death-What-Lost-Modernity/d...
- tetris11 2y ago
  I think even if we lived in a green paradise, there would be those who would measure themselves to others and still find themselves "short" to their more vocally successful peers I think inequality and toxic competition from an early age demanded by our soceity is a much bigger factor
  - ThalesX 2y ago
    Depends on the checks and balances you have in the 'society'. Are vocally succesful peers lauded? Then perhaps you could run into this situation. Are they mocked for having a big mouth? Maybe the chances are slimmer. > I think inequality and toxic competition from an early age demanded by our soceity is a much bigger factor Yeah, I tend to agree with you in that these are important factors into how things are playing out. And the scale. My God. We used to have inequality and competition between a small subset of people, now we're competing with 7+ billion.
  - 2y ago
admissionsguy 2y ago
I think the main thing is the lack of on-ramps. Once you have fallen out of the social circulation, there is basically no way of going back. Unless you are able to stay within an extremely narrow range of behaviours (in terms of not being weird, basically speaking expected thinks in expected tone of voice and body language), nobody wants to associate with you. And since about the only way to learn these things is to be around people who already behave in the "right" way, a vicious circle arises. It has nothing to do with debt, wealth or earnings. Completely independent things. People had it worse at every time in history in almost every place. It has nothing to do with social media / internet. It just something people tend to fall into when they withdraw, and have no trouble abandoning as soon as the life outside becomes tenable again.
- tetris11 2y ago
  I was briefly jobless in a country with a fantastic social security net. Easily the most stressful and financially unstable moment in my life. It was only two months, but I genuinely thought I'd never recover my social standing, or confidence ever again
  - wholinator2 2y ago
    How so, what was your experience? This is pretty diametric to most people's assumptions so I'd be interested in hearing more about how that went down
    - doktrin 2y ago
      Possibly due to social stigma. I don’t know that what I’m describing can be attributed to the safety net itself, but many countries with excellent social safety programs also have a low social tolerance for failure. This is not limited to using social benefits - e.g fail in business and you’re a business failure who will struggle to get any financing ever again.
      - danlugo92 2y ago
        Sounds like people I wouldn't want to associate with then.
neonate 2y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20240525142056/https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/05/world/hikikomori-asia-personal-stories-wellness/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240525142056/https://www.cnn.c... https://archive.ph/lt04t https://archive.ph/lt04t
grugagag 2y ago
Im curios if population desnsity may have any corelation to this or not. Im also thinking that the culture is shunning a certain personality type or people with some mental struggles that their only way to adapt is to withdraw.
- jackcosgrove 2y ago
  Population density is absolutely the driver of all of this. It increases competition, decreases personal space, and limits access to nature. Humans are social animals, but we aren't ants. We're not supposed to live in concrete jungles. As others have said, hikikomoris are one extreme of a continuum of negative outcomes caused by modern life. A low birthrate is another, which is correlated with urban living (there are other factors but this trend is unmistakable). I believe this is a natural outcome of very high population density, a negative feedback mechanism. When life becomes unbearable because of too many people, we withdraw and don't reproduce.
- nakedneuron 2y ago
  "Universe 25 Mouse Experiment" by J. Calhoun shows this too. https://youtu.be/7ReBJfxHjFU https://youtu.be/7ReBJfxHjFU Key sentences (1:30): "Young ones found themselves born in a world with far more mice than meaningful social roles. Males faced a lot of competitors to defend their territory against. Many found that so stressful they gave up. Normal discourse within the community broke down and with it the ability of mice to form social bonds." Very nicely illustrated.
  - piloto_ciego 2y ago
    An article I found if anyone is interested: https://www.the-scientist.com/universe-25-1968-1973-69941 https://www.the-scientist.com/universe-25-1968-1973-69941
MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
> He dare not come in company, for fear he should be misused, disgraced, overshoot himself in gesture or speeches, or be sick; he thinks every man observes him, aims at him derides him, owes hint malice. - Hippocrates?[1] [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskLiteraryStudies/comments/68zg38/help_finding_the_origing_of_a_hippocrates_quote/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskLiteraryStudies/comments/68zg38/...
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
blopker 2y ago
> He said he didn’t respond to friends’ messages or confide in anyone, feeling like nobody would understand anyway. I feel this. I think people would call me an introvert, but I'm probably just an over-thinker. It's casual conversation that seems to be exhausting (or uninteresting?) to me. Once I'm in a space where I can talk openly about more abstract topics I start to enjoy it. Getting there just often seems like too much work though. I tried therapy, meditation, 'wellness' apps. It all either felt too 'me' focused, or too detached. I like this site because people here seem to share what they are actually thinking, and are eloquent enough to capture interesting nuance. I don't always agree with it, but there's a level of authenticity to where I always learn something about the human condition. I wanted more of that. [This is kind of a plug, but whatever] I've spent the last few years in a deep-dive around why we seem to be collectively getting lonelier over time. I started a non-profit[0] to house this research. It's evolved into a platform where we host these support groups. Anyone can join, it's free, and as long as you stick to the community guidelines [1] anyone is welcome to join. For me, it's a place to get out of my head. To hear from real people who don't generally feel like their voice matters. I know from years in tech management that these are in fact the most interesting people to talk to. I've never really talked about Totem here because I think it might be too 'woo-woo' for this crowd, but if any of that landed for you, come check us out. If you don't like it, I'd love to know why. My personal email is in my profile. We are a non-profit, grant-funded, and open-source[2] organization. Feedback of any kind is welcome. My hope is to become something like a public utility for these spaces. We're also looking for engineers to help make an app out of this. [0]: https://www.totem.org https://www.totem.org [1]: https://www.totem.org/guidelines/ https://www.totem.org/guidelines/ [2]: https://github.com/totem-technologies/totem-server https://github.com/totem-technologies/totem-server
- uxcolumbo 2y ago
  Can’t stand small talk either. I get it, it’s required at the beginning of meeting people, but don’t stay too long in that mode otherwise it gets boring. Your site looks beautiful, kudos to the design team.
ItCouldBeWorse 2y ago
In my experience, life-experience increases the self-isolation. To the point that the old-folkshome are often halls of quiet, as everyone knows what horrible behavior perfectly normal people are capable and do not wish to interact. The guy who conspires against everyone at work, that manager that harvests others laurels, the longer you life, the more you understand how many will flip on you in this prisoner dilemma of a society. So they all barricade themselves in suburbia, sniper one another through HOA letters and claim to do it for the family, till its time to inherit and even the core family falls apart. Maybe some hiki is just more aware of what a lonely hellish life it is to be part of western society. And chooses to opt out. Lay flat. Assumes the party escort position. If he would at least consume drugs in there, but its just ramen and colored light.
- seec 2y ago
  I couldn't agree more. I think many of the people who choose to isolate just have more self-awareness and more defining bad experiences that makes them avoid too many social interactions that are not strictly necessary or truly beneficial in an obvious way. In fact, I believe that the nicer and more honest you are in our modern world the worse it is for you. At heart I'm a rather social person, I like talking to people and doing stuff with them. Yet, all my life I have been abused both verbally and physically, I got stuff stolen many times (often I was actually trying to help) and I get manipulated/used all the time without getting much in return. All of this comes from being too different (not weird in a bad way, just different in the way I speak/handle myself) and abusive narcissists parents (one in particular) that destroyed my emotional self, teaching me to avoid all conflit at all cost and not stand-up for myself even though I would be capable. All this is made worse in our bullshit job world, where every business pretend that they are a family and require you to give a lot of your life (like for example forcing you to eat with coworkers even though it should be a break for yourself) while still not giving any kind of security (you can be fired/discarded regardless of the quality of your work) or a real sense of being part of a larger cohesive group that stick together. Because at the end of the day, even inside a small business, it's all competition, lies, exploitation, anything is OK to get ahead regardless of consequences on individuals, they are expandable. That being said, drugs make everything worse in the long term, they are a relief/distraction but if you don't manage to kill yourself with them, they will cause more problems on top of the already existing ones. In a way, you could say that the users of hardcore drugs are somewhat ahead of the curve, because if they manage to OD it is sort of a salvation without having to deal with all the implications of suicide...
Hikikomori 2y ago
I hope they have a roof as well.
im3w1l 2y ago
I think it may be due to some sort of "outcome compression". The life of working a bottom tier-job isn't materially better than a life of not working at all. One solution I've been thinking of is that maybe there needs to be some kind of state-provided minimum life. Almost like opt in communism. If you opt in then you get an 8h/day job automatically. Doesn't matter if you don't have any skills at all. The job will be guaranteed safe and non-humiliating (no sex work and if you are a vegetarian you don't have to work as a butcher etc). In exchange you get enough food, clothes and shelter to provide for yourself and children (assuming two incomes), entertainment (exchangable for cash equivalent), pension, health insurance, upskill opportunities, and some money on top. If you have negative net worth when enterring the program, your loans will gradually decrease (this could be done as some combination of the state paying them off for you and the loan giver being stiffed). You can opt out at any time you want.
- enchanted-gian 2y ago
  something like universal basic work?
  - Apocryphon 2y ago
    Or a federal jobs guarantee.
  - im3w1l 2y ago
    That might be a more palatable name for it. But a key feature of my proposal is that you actually get the goods you need rather than a lump some of money that may or may not be enough to buy them.
- sirianth 2y ago
  into it.
- badpun 2y ago
  > I think it may be due to some sort of "outcome compression". The life of working a bottom tier-job isn't materially better than a life of not working at all. The Hikkikomoris in Japan are all sustained by their parents. There's actually a growing concern there about the first generation of Hikkikomoris who are getting into their 50s already and their parents are starting to die, leaving them with no life skills and no source of income.
motohagiography 2y ago
our baseline entertainments are better than the long tail of negative interactions one persists through to get to the great ones. in doomscrolling vs. disappointment, more people are picking doomscrolling. older than the examples, but I have done this. live alone on a large rural property, walden style, tech comp no family, have online interactions for remote work, old irc channels, take some sport, fitness, and music training as kind of weekly rhythm, family lives in other time zones. it was an ideal I thought I could achieve and then have it to share with others. relationships and friendships with any personal connection or intimacy still manage to fail, lots of reasons but I'm the constant. only way to sustain anything is to keep it at a polite distance with no expectations. issue i suspect is that meaning comes from the cohering and persistence of relationships, and without that persistent mutual understanding, meaning just seeps away and leaves a flat state of inertia. no advice other than to avoid this example. I sympathize with these young people, it's as though they don't see a present or future in which there is meaning for them, or in which they are a participant, and so they are just withdrawing and waiting for the next life instead of engaging this one. it's a unique and recently invented trap, avoid it as best you can.
- waythrowa 2y ago
  I think a lot of black sheep personalities feel like this, pretty safe and smug in calling all the patterns we see in others that make them not right for us. And we know too much of ourselves will try their patience too, which makes us resent their love as a thin weak thing. >lots of reasons but I'm the constant Sad face. I don’t know if admitting this helps or hurts, but a long while ago when I kept seeing your username on so many of my favorite comments i thought about emailing you to flirt, but the more I kept reading thru to look for hints (to confirm that ur straight, not married, etc ) the more I psyched myself out… In sober assessment, I likely wouldn’t meet your standards of, like… spiritual vigor, agency, having ones adult shit together, strength of character in a flailing sham society, etc. You already seemed too complete an image on your own. It creates admiration for sure, but in a way that challenges me to get to your level rather than come closer… Resonating with someone’s deep judgements of the world also means I can’t fall short or claim ignorance later, there’s less room to play. “I agree with everything this guy finds virtuous yet i lack these qualities even after all this time… sigh, better just go work on becoming my best self…“ Catch22, if I already was my ideal self would I still be attracted to philosophical types on hn? (I kinda hate this place ngl) Not sure if any of us with these dispositions really want another human up close or if that ‘trying’ is just part of the aesthetic if I’m honest with myself. Anyway, if u want to talk to a misanthropic fangirl, my username is LimeOregano on Telegram, and when you’re in the woods and very lonely, you can feel free to send me ponderous voice notes without overthinking this polite distance that you’re obliged to maintain with real friends. We can ghost each other if the long tail of negative interaction proves too much! (Afterall, if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of getting your hopes up 100 times lol) Regardless, i hope youre flattered to know that some strangers like you based on the quality of your thoughts alone
random9749832 2y ago
When you are a teenager it is so easy to treat your time as if it is unlimited and start sinking 1000s of hours into some MMO or other games that before you know it you are in your 20s with no girlfriend, job, skill or self-confidence. Then you got Japanese entertainment like Hatsune Miku, idols and visual novels/anime that take advantage of lonely people with make-believe girlfriends.
- okdood64 2y ago
  Wait, what's wrong with Hatsune Miku? It has relatively broad appeal; performed at Coachella.
  - Apocryphon 2y ago
    I think they’re describing a stereotype that’s a decade behind the times.
    - Der_Einzige 2y ago
      Nope, Hatsune Miku fans have been and will always be weeaboos, with all of the negative pejorative that word entails.
      - robocat 2y ago
        Why would you define Japanese culture by non-Japanese? I presume the majority of Miku fans are Japanese? > weeaboo https://www.vice.com/en/article/ywgxey/we-asked-j-culture-fans-to-defend-being-weeaboos https://www.vice.com/en/article/ywgxey/we-asked-j-culture-fa...
        Der_Einzige 2y ago
        That article really drove home to me why we fought the US revolutionary war.
      - sunaookami 2y ago
Borrible 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops "Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk - that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh - a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs." ... "Vashanti's next move was to turn off the isolation switch, and all the accumulations of the last three minutes burst upon her. The room was filled with the noise of bells, and speaking-tubes. What was the new food like? Could she recommend it? Has she had any ideas lately? Might one tell her one's own ideas? Would she make an engagement to visit the public nurseries at an early date? - say this day month."
forinti 2y ago
In South America it's become common to hear about adolescents and young people (mostly men) who spend all their time on video games and neither work nor study. I imagine this to be a very different phenomenon from Japan, because the culture is so different. In South America I think it is just general disengagement and disillusion with society and work environments in general. For most people life is having a bad job that pays very little and you have to spend hours on a crowded bus to get to a pretty horrible part of town. Living in the virtual world is much more comfortable and pleasant.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Gigachad 2y ago
  In Australia there is a pretty good welfare system, but they will basically give you a job to work while you keep applying for a real one. Usually it’s something like sorting clothes in a charity store. I imagine it helps to keep people engaged in society somewhat.
conwy 2y ago
Why to complain? Seems like heaven to me.
39896880 2y ago
If this topic interests you, you might enjoy the book “Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation” by Michael Zielenziger: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL24765707M/Shutting_out_the_sun https://openlibrary.org/books/OL24765707M/Shutting_out_the_s...
hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
I think I came pretty close to ending up like this kind of person a few times. Each time I got out it was by basically taking a hammer to my superego and doing some shit I used to consider "unforgivable", like being long term unemployed, or engaging in long term substance abuse, or moving countries basically on a whim. And, if that's what it takes, then I stand by it. If your life choices are "hikikomori" or "scumbag", you'd be an idiot to not choose scumbag. Ideally you can get out of it through less destructive means, but let's not pretend like closing yourself off entirely from the world is better than having a problematic but loving relationship with it in all its colors.
GlibMonkeyDeath 2y ago
Hmm, no one is talking about the enabler for this - modern wealth. In the not so distant past, refusing to get up and face the world would result in starvation. Survival required people to be more social. As a parent of two adult children who are both working, I can't imagine enabling this (even though I could.) Sure, if my kids were truly disabled that would be another story, but it seems the hikikomori are just unhappy with the world. Enabling them to spend their lives doomscrolling or playing games is actively harmful.
- AIorNot 2y ago
  I think the bigger enabler is the internet with its endless source of media
  - GlibMonkeyDeath 2y ago
    True, the internet is a cheap, endless, addictive supply of distraction that didn't exist until recently. But someone still has to provide it - a hikikomori staying in their room all day will not be able to pay the utility bill without an enabler...
- Nextgrid 2y ago
  Modern wealth is potentially a double-edged sword. There's enough of it that "hikikomori" is a viable strategy to stay alive. Yet, "modern wealth" is also the reason many things previous generations took for granted such as housing are effectively unreachable for many people nowadays, plus inflation/cost of living. This makes "hikikomori" the rational strategy for some people. Enough money to scrape by and live online, but not enough to actually climb out of the hole.
getpost 2y ago
Several adults in my friendship circle (retired or semi-retired) have evolved to spending nearly their entire waking lives online. They're able socialize normally, but they don't make the time to do that as often as in the past. This is tantamount to hikkormoridom. One friend went to visit two other friends who live together in New Mexico. He imagined they'd be out and about doing stuff during his visit, but the hosts remained preoccupied by their online activities. The visitor could have stayed home and texted.
- billy99k 2y ago
  I know people like this. They go on vacation to basically watch tv and/or go online with different scenery.
hypeatei 2y ago
I think what's missed in a lot of these discussions is your upbringing. Our society changed very quickly in the last 30 years and parents may not be providing the proper "foundation" for their children since they didn't grow up with all this stuff. Even if you had shitty parents before, you'd probably do alright since all of society in past times was based on in-person interactions and there wasn't endless media consumption at your fingertips. Personally, my parents were very immature, divorced, and generally didn't set me up for a healthy/balanced social life. I haven't completely given up; I work, maintain loose contact with a few friends, and basically just "doing my time" until I die.
- twojobsoneboss 2y ago
  Damn that last sentence is depressing. What keeps you going?
  - hypeatei 2y ago
    > What keeps you going? At this point, my biological urge to stay alive. Other things interest me like new game releases or OSS projects but I wouldn't say that there is anything that makes me look forward to waking up.
    - rrgok 2y ago
      Yep, can absolutely relate.
    - NayamAmarshe 2y ago
      I'd ask you to look for a deeper purpose. Purpose that goes beyond your individual self (the ego), your family, your society, your nation. The Bhagavad Gita explains that this material existence is basically like a prison. We're all doing our time so you're right about it. The Bhagavad Gita gives a beautiful analogy. It says, as you go from childhood to adulthood, your body is changing constantly but the identity or the self remains the same. Have you ever thought about it how strange it is? You don't go from identifying as John to James, but the body, each cell in the body is replaced multiple times throughout your lifetime. The consciousness remains the same, the "I" remains there. It says that we're born out of karma (action and fruits of actions). The consciousness is eternal (always is, never is not), the material nature is not (as evident, has a beginning and an end). So it asks you to look deeper into the Self. Inquire what is it that you're here for and what you're made of. The idea that the whole universe was made just so you could work and die, is born out of a feeble mindset, forced by an extremely materialistic society. You can go deeper and find something invaluable. Read into philosophy (not the depressing kind), read books like the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Bhagavad Gita, Upanishadas. Learn about sāṁkhya, nyāya, vedānta. It can give your life a whole new meaning and direction. It doesn't have to be this way, your current mental imprints want you to believe there's nothing beyond this life, nothing beyond who you are. If there's nothing that makes you look forward to waking up, then that just means you have to look for it, instead of it being handed to you. If there really is nothing to look forward to, there's no harm in giving this wildly different life-changing thing a try. Some links to get you started if you're interested: - https://youtu.be/mj7FIfBLWYA https://youtu.be/mj7FIfBLWYA - https://sites.rutgers.edu/edwin-bryant/nyaya-sutras-svadhaya/ https://sites.rutgers.edu/edwin-bryant/nyaya-sutras-svadhaya... - https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8vj9lw https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8vj9lw - https://sites.rutgers.edu/edwin-bryant/yoga-sutras/ https://sites.rutgers.edu/edwin-bryant/yoga-sutras/
uwagar 2y ago
bartleby the scrivener felt like a hikikomori too. anybody felt so?
tombert 2y ago
I have a job and I don't live alone, so I don't think I fall into the hikikomri definition in any real sense of the word, but I will say that remote work kind of made me adjacent to it. I sort of have a strong distaste to leave my house a lot of the time since 2020. I still do leave my house, I have a job that requires me to be in the office for two days a week, but it's something I dread every single week for a variety of reasons. There's something bizarrely comforting about just staying in your bedroom all day and pretending the rest of the world doesn't exist, and it's kind of addictive. Going outside and having a social life is usually worth it, but it's also kind of intimidating; I have to take a shower, get on the train with a bunch of strangers and not do anything too weird because of course I care a tiny bit what these strangers think about me for whatever reason, go into an office with people who are not-quite-strangers and work extra hard to not be too weird or say anything that might upset someone and keep my desk clean and have meetings with managers who could fire you immediately for any reason they want...it's all exhausting. I still try and make an effort to leave my house sometimes, but I kind of get why hikikomori do it.
- amonith 2y ago
  Kind of same, except add a wife and a kid under way. There's plenty of us. Most people absolutely do not regularly "go out" if they work and have a family. We maintain the bare minimum social interaction because we have to but we'd happily skip it in a heartbeat.
- globular-toast 2y ago
  Yeah. I'm similar too. I guess I was almost a hikikomori at one point. I was basically nocturnal and really afraid of social situations. But I was kinda forced into society by having to get a job and stuff; my parents weren't going to look after me. I haven't been single for very long at all over the past 15 years, but I have very little social interaction. In the past I would force myself to go out to avoid being single and lonely. But every single time I've been in a relationship I shy away from this. I used to think I should force myself to do it, like how some people force themselves to exercise, but now I think why should I force myself to do something I don't want to do for my whole life? It's clear at this point it's part of my nature and won't change. Who am I trying to impress? I just want to be alone most of the time. It's as simple as that. I work from home 5 days a week and I've never been happier. It's not that I hate every second of socialising but it's just not how I want to spend my life. I often tell people it's like going into a sauna. Yeah, you'll go in and enjoy it, but the most important thing is getting out. Nobody wants to spend their whole life in a sauna.
fuzztester 2y ago
Article has such a weird UI.
- fuzztester 2y ago
  [flagged]
amonith 2y ago
As a man with a full time job (remote), a wife and a kid under way I cannot really fathom having energy for more social activities (except meeting some friends or family at most once a month, reluctantly). Am I a hikikomori? I kind of relate to them. My wife also doesn't meet anyone else ever. Now that I think of it - neither do our parents or most people living in their village. It's all work + church at most. Maybe as humans we don't really need social interaction THAT much? I mean how do you explain people who seem to thrive living off-grid? We do need jobs and some basic communication skills for sure at least to maintain the current standard of living but maybe not for socializing. Some comments here kind of sound like "extrovert propaganda" - same people who cry for the return to office because they cannot imagine that people can live differently.
- speckledsea 2y ago
  As a man who spent a decade living as what is described as a hikikomori, no, you're not. I think you are massively underestimate just how much socialization you have, and underestimating just how many other issues come along with living that lifestyle. I would likely need many hours to properly illustrate them all.
AtlasBarfed 2y ago
The solution is probably early exercise. Japanese and south Koreans are canaries in the coal mine for end stage urbanization. There really isn't free roaming and a lot of greatly reduced activity compared to rural areas. Exercise counteracts depression, imposes a routine of physical mental social interaction with the real world under controlled circumstances. But end stage capitalism doesn't value replacement level population growth, so associated programs for child development in urban settings are even less valued. Being an environmentalist I always dislike capitalism economics and it's inability to value preservation even if the future of the human race, but it seems that the end state of consumerism and urbanization is demographic collapse.
karaterobot 2y ago
A lot of discussion in this thread assumes that hikikomori are a very new phenomenon. I see that they appear in the psychiatric literature as early as 1978. I also see that the number of hikikomori in Japan varies by survey, and is hard to measure, but still seems to be roughly the same as it was in 2010, if not a little lower. What to make of that? Because the most obvious and most common explanations for them seems to be the internet, smartphones, and anxiety about the future (global warming, the economy, etc.). But if those were the reasons for hikikomori, I'd assume that the number of hikokomori would have increased significantly in the last 15 years, not stayed roughly the same, as it has. The gravity of the internet in our culture feels like it has increased exponentially. Climate fear doesn't feel exponentially higher, but subjectively it still feels a lot more widespread to me. Why not commensurately more people living as hikikomori, if the phenomenon supposedly tracks these factors?
reverendjames 2y ago
He should give the bottom bunk to his grandma.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
matrix87 2y ago
Not a hikikomori, I work and kind of look forward to the office and do fun stuff rarely... but I wish there was an easier way to find a "way in" in the bay area Also another weird thing I realized after moving: cultural distance and ethnicity matter. The schools spend a bunch of time forcing people to sing songs about it not mattering, but psychologically it matters a lot to people. I'm a secular jew but am considering becoming a religious one just for that
asdf6969 2y ago
This is how I want to live after I FIRE
Xeyz0r 2y ago
Sometimes it is just too much to handle for me too. And I just shut down. For a week or two. And then trying to come back. And that period is a painful one

256 points by reqo 2y ago

HPsquared 2y ago

It's definitely happening in the West too. The juice isn't worth the squeeze for a lot of people.

OutOfHere 2y ago
Frankly I think it's more sensible than putting up with an unjust system in a rat race that goes nowhere, although eventually one has to get into the work game to survive.

RoboTeddy 2y ago

In all the cases in the article it looks like shame plays a big role. I wonder if hikikomori is caused by a loop of [adverse circumstances that cause the person to feel shame] -> withdrawal to avoid shame -> being ashamed of having withdrawn [loop]

enceladus06 2y ago
Shame of educational pressure might be causing this, as mentioned in the article. But why do we as society place kids under so much stress? Let kids be kids and learn by exploring.
- elmomle 2y ago
  I'd bet it's because the parents are feeling a lot of stress. Especially without a robust community support network/string external role models, children tend to inherit their parents' emotional states.
- esel2k 2y ago
  As a parent I also thought “I won’t repeat these patterns” but reality is, that is so hard. Often parents want the best for their children and use any possible technique to make sure they are successful. I am not giving an excuse but rather want to point to our society and our behaviour. When an expat at work asked me yesterday where to move to make sure that his 5 year old will have the best schools of the country… with such an elitist behaviour, I can only facepalm and see this is going to be much worse in the next 5-10years.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    Problem is, the world is an economic slugfest today unlike it was at least when I grew up. When my High School class graduated a long time ago, most of us were competing for jobs with people in our own small town. At most, we were competing with the surrounding counties. There was university for A students, community college and/or middle class office work for B students, normal working class jobs for C students, and tougher lower-paying jobs for D students. As for university, we were competing for entrance with mostly other people in our state. Today's kids are competing with the entire world, and the middle class is disappearing. So it's much higher stakes. And it's bimodal: You're either one of the few winners and get to live a comfortable life with a professional job, or you're off to WalMart or an Amazon warehouse, or Prison. The "kind of comfortable middle class life" is shrinking quickly. So it's not enough to just get straight A's. You need extra credit, get a 5.0 GPA, take all the "right" AP classes, have the "right" extracurriculars, and the "right" community service and so on. Otherwise you risk landing on the bad side of the career bimodal distribution.
    - matthewdgreen 2y ago
      And AI, should it work out, is threatening to wipe out even the “good” side of that equation.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      > Problem is, the world is an economic slugfest today unlike it was at least when I grew up It only did not feel like a slugfest for a select few in developed countries like the US/Canada/UK/Aus and maybe some other European countries. For the vast majority, hustling has always been a thing, including immigrating across oceans and leaving all of your friends and family behind. It just so happens that people in the US who used to or whose parents used to have security of shelter/healthcare/food no longer have that security.
    - mycologos 2y ago
      > You're either one of the few winners and get to live a comfortable life with a professional job, or you're off to WalMart or an Amazon warehouse, or Prison. The "kind of comfortable middle class life" is shrinking quickly. So it's not enough to just get straight A's. You need extra credit, get a 5.0 GPA, take all the "right" AP classes, have the "right" extracurriculars, and the "right" community service and so on. Otherwise you risk landing on the bad side of the career bimodal distribution. This seems a little hyperbolic. The requirements you describe are probably true enough for top 20 universities, but they aren't true for top 100, and there still seem to be plenty of random white collar office jobs that hire people from merely medium-ranked universities.

throw383y8 2y ago

[flagged]

OutOfHere 2y ago
It really isn't about smoking weed at all.
- throw383y8 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - dymk 2y ago
    Alcohol is legal pretty much everywhere, and is measurably more damaging in just about every aspect compared to weed. But we don’t say it’s a booze problem.
CatWChainsaw 2y ago
Worry about whether or not you'll live in a slurry dystopia or die before old age as the planet cooks.

Joel_Mckay 2y ago

Dr. John B. Calhoun's work with "The Beautiful Ones" may unfortunately generalize to human civilizations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOFveSUmh9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOFveSUmh9U

causality0 2y ago
It's strange. We know that instincts, hormones, and other aspects of our biology have a tremendous influence on our thoughts and behaviors, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of effort to use that to problem-solve. There's evolutionary psychology, but given the fraction of human problems traceable to maladaption to the modern world, one would think "evolutionary anthropo-sociology" would a foundational pillar of science. Like, why doesn't "humans didn't evolve to sleep in a room by themselves at the age of four" carry as much weight as "don't let your kids eat lead paint chips"?
- BlarfMcFlarf 2y ago
  Probably because evolutionary psychology is an incestuous pseudoscience of just-so-stories, small sample sizes, bad extrapolations, non reproducibility etc.

jmyeet 2y ago

People aren't stupid. What we have in the world in general (not just Asia) is a crisis in hopelessness. People are facing crippling student debt (depending on your country), one bad medical incident away from being homeless, crippling housing costs and wages that barely cover costs such that you need 1-2 "side hustles" just to make ends meet. It's really no wonder people are checking out. It's also no wonder that people aren't having children either. They simply can't afford to. One common counterargument to this is that consumer spending is up but that really makes my point: people are spending now instead of saving because they have no future.

anovikov 2y ago
But this all is so evidently untrue! Stock of accumulated capital is growing healthily which means savings rate is healthy too, even if most of savings is just reinvestment of profits from previous ones. Consumption of almost everything is growing in real terms too in almost all countries. GDP keeps growing just about everywhere save for a few most unlucky places like UK. Even inequality is falling for the first time in decades so the poor people actually see most improvement (especially in the US). That 'hopelessness' is what people call 'vibecession'. People just taught themselves - probably by going through too much doomscrolling - that things are bad. But they aren't. We are probably living through best times in our lifetime - especially the common folk, poor and working class (some highly educated, high income occupations might be on shaky ground). MAYBE, just maybe, upper middle class is a bit fucked indeed, but this is a small group numerically and hikikomori do not come from there. I'm glad i'm not on social media but whenever i'm trying to read so-called 'news', i also get depressed for a bit. People are trying to present absolutely everything in the most negative sense possible probably because otherwise it's not clickbait-y enough...
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  GDP or savings rates don't matter to individuals who are spending all of their money on food and rent Countries and corporations reporting strong financial health does not help the people who are living paycheck to paycheck It's very out of touch to suggest otherwise
- 2y ago

SoftTalker 2y ago

It's an interesting article I don't know why it had to be presented in such a cumbersome graphical style. I tried the trick of changing "www" to "lite" in the URL but it didn't work for this one. I stopped reading about halfway through.

sctb 2y ago
This presentation is surely intended to convey a sense of spatiality related to the idea of "A shrinking life". I enjoyed the graphics and photos, and I definitely got a feeling of constriction and isolation that added depth to my reading experience—YMMV. (The HN guidelines discourage complaints about these sorts of "tangential annoyances", by the way: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

ilaksh 2y ago

I think this is really a spectrum and they are focusing on some more extreme aspects of it. But it is definitely not just an Asian thing and I believe to some degree this type of social withdrawal has affected perhaps a very significant portion of our society. I have definitely been socially isolated my entire life to some degree or another. But much more so in adulthood. Again, I suggest that this is relatively common, not something that happens to only a few million people. One aspect that is being glossed over is the amount of socialization or let's call it "pseudo-social" activity that is happening over the internet for these people. I'm someone who generally does not have friends, leaves the apartment literally only a handful of times per month to take the garbage out and maybe buy groceries once or twice a month if I am trying to save money versus Instacart. For me it comes down to money. I have a health issue that makes me fatigued etc. and don't have money for health insurance. I don't have money to go to restaurants or otherwise waste going out. So I stay home. Because I'm always in a poor health and financial state, I feel uncomfortable trying to do any "real" socialization. But I have always been trying one way or another to get to a point where I have a "real" online business that allows me to actually thrive. Such as buying a car and a house, getting health insurance and addressing my health issues, or paying taxes. But what I have managed so far is usually just enough to scrape by. There have been some minor successes here and there but rarely have I ever felt like I had enough to truly meet my basic needs such as the health concerns or financial stability. Anyway, I think it's easy to get in a position with health and financial challenges, maybe just a series of low-paying contracts, where some degree of social isolation is just practical and realistic.

antegamisou 2y ago
I'm sorry for what you've been through and I hope your health gets better. However I believe you've phrased the following a bit poorly, although I'm sure unintentionally: some degree of social isolation is just practical and realistic. Unfortunately this leads to connotations that encourage people completely out of touch with the ordinary person's lifestyle (billionaires, CEOs etc.) make outrageous claims and dictating how they should navigate life with minimum wage and no insurance e.g. that CEO who said skip breakfast to save money, or HN's favorites that we should just shut up and be content with modern tech automating our creative abilities instead of assisting us with menial tasks. Instead if you had written social isolation is inevitable without controlled financial and health stability, you'd be 100% spot on. Human, social isolation and practical/realistic just don't fit together.

anovikov 2y ago

If their parents are not doing anything about it when it's their direct responsibility, how can anyone expect anyone else to fix it? If the culture allows for this, the problem is with the culture.

HPsquared 2y ago
It's hard to change another person's mind.
- anovikov 2y ago
  In America, they'd be kicked out of home as soon as they turned 16. In Russia, they'd be just beaten up by their dads. Probably badly and regularly. They do it because they can. Key is to make it impossible and force them to take up productive activities. No one in adult age should be kept at home funded by their parents unless it's short term with definite plan to fix it, or they are seriously disabled. Of course, when it's about schoolchildren, it's different. Serious psychiatric help is needed. It's again parents' fault for not providing it.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    I don't know about Russian dads, but in America it's very likely they'd be indulged. I don't know anyone who would kick their teenage child out of the house because he or she was depressed. Especially when you see the sort of life the homeless have in most places. I'm sure it happens, but at least from my perspective it would not be common.
    - HPsquared 2y ago
      That factor is probably a big one in deciding who is homeless and who isn't. It's the main barrier, really.
      - SoftTalker 2y ago
        Though you could probably argue the degree to which its right or wrong, they way I look at it is: I brought this person into the world, if he isn't self-supporting at age 18 (or 22, or whatever) then why is it fair to society that I make that society's problem? He's my kid, and I should own the responsibility for that.

marcyb5st 2y ago

From my personal experience (I also went through a very dark period in my life and just recently climbed out of the hole I dug myself) I guess people are realizing that working hard won't get you anything close to what previous generations had. Once that settles in it's hard to push yourself to do basically anything. Additionally, I also believe that feeling is compounded by social media where selection bias only shows you cherry picked moments where it seems other people are living the life you won't get. Finally, among the younger generations there is a lot of climate change dread going around. For me it was a combination of all these factors and to this day I can't pinpoint exactly what was the trigger, but after COVID lockdowns I simply kept social distancing.

SoftTalker 2y ago
People just have no historical reference. Think times are tough now? Try the great depression. Worried about climate change? In the 1980s it was nuclear war. People living paycheck to paycheck, barely scraping by? Media glorifying the rich and famous? Nothing new.
- ajkjk 2y ago
  Yet the new struggles are real too? explaining them away as more of the same does nothing. There are old problems and there are new problems and they're both problems.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    Yes there are struggles today. But there always have been. This imaginary past where most people didn't live in fear of unexpected expenses, debt, struggling to pay all their bills, and not earning enough money didn't exist.
    - ThalesX 2y ago
      > This imaginary past where most people didn't live in fear of unexpected expenses, debt, struggling to pay all their bills, and not earning enough money didn't exist. I call bullshit... Debt. Bills. And for that matter, money. These are things that our species lived for hundreds of thousands of years without. Furthermore, there are tribes that even to this day live without these struggles.

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Ozzie_osman 2y ago

I know everyone is different, and saying things like "just get a job" or "just go outside" are easy to say and very hard to do when you're stuck in that type of loop. But, I will say, things that I've found will help are having some purpose (work, taking care of someone or a pet, anything), exercise (even walking outdoors), and even just getting your biological clock where you wake up and get exposed to sunlight (vs sleeping all day and staying up all night). Getting enough activation energy to do any of those things is difficult, but I've found that if you can muster it, it can help break the cycle.

HPsquared 2y ago
It's a bit like refloating a sunken ship.
itronitron 2y ago
Yeah, it's much easier for me to leave the house when it's a situation in which I don't need to care about the potential of other people's opinions. Running quick errands, walking the dog, etc. For some reason taking out the recycling is a heavier lift for me mentally due to the risk of chaos with the bins, potential for bags breaking, bins being full, etc. even though there is less social interaction than grocery shopping.
nanomonkey 2y ago
Honestly, my dog is my savior. I take her to the park every evening. This gets me out into the evening sun, walking, and around like-minded people. The fact that I can interact with a group of people without scheduling an "event" is great. We just show up. For me it's mostly the other dogs (puppy therapy), but it's nice to exchange a few words and talk to someone about their day while the dogs run around. The two mile walk to the lake is also key. I find a morning stretch and kettle bell routine, and an evening walk keeps me mentally and physically in tune. And it's practically free, unlike modern healthcare.
BeFlatXIII 2y ago
Not to mention that "getting the job" is often far more difficult and/or stressful than doing the job or showing up to work or being seen by others on your commute. No one wants to admit how much talent is wasted due to the job application & interview processes.

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itronitron 2y ago

The social home is a great idea and I am glad to hear that it works. It would be interesting to compare social communication styles between people in the social home with social communication among extroverts (in another situation). I expect they are quite different but it would be good to know how they differ.

BaculumMeumEst 2y ago

It’s fun to watch mass media inflict so much harm on people with irresponsible reporting designed to terrify, outrage, and misinform you for profit, and then turn around and report on the fallout. Maybe fun isn’t the right word.

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rustcleaner 2y ago
Schadenfreude?

ThalesX 2y ago

I've recently finished reading "Civilized to Death"[0] and I can't help feel there's some truth to some of the ideas. One idea that stuck with me is that shit zoos have concrete cages for the monkeys, and they're miserable in them, showing similar signs to modern humans (depression, addition, anger), whereas nice zoos try to keep the monkeys in similar environments to those that they evolved for, where the monkeys are pretty much chill. The author argues that we're constructing concrete zoos for ourselves and in the process making ourselves miserable. We're so far detached from what our bodies and minds evolved for, that it's an alien environment for our species. If this holds truth, it's really no wonder that the more we pile on and the further we stray from our true species' preferences, the more horrible we will feel, and this hikikomori is a fine illustration of that. As some comments pointed out 'what about the great depression', 'what about 'nuclear war', "don't you like your electricity"? These are all human patches for human made problems. I don't think the correlation between progress and wellbeing is as clear cut as some would like to see it. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Civilized-Death-What-Lost-Modernity/dp/1451659105 https://www.amazon.com/Civilized-Death-What-Lost-Modernity/d...

tetris11 2y ago
I think even if we lived in a green paradise, there would be those who would measure themselves to others and still find themselves "short" to their more vocally successful peers I think inequality and toxic competition from an early age demanded by our soceity is a much bigger factor
- ThalesX 2y ago
  Depends on the checks and balances you have in the 'society'. Are vocally succesful peers lauded? Then perhaps you could run into this situation. Are they mocked for having a big mouth? Maybe the chances are slimmer. > I think inequality and toxic competition from an early age demanded by our soceity is a much bigger factor Yeah, I tend to agree with you in that these are important factors into how things are playing out. And the scale. My God. We used to have inequality and competition between a small subset of people, now we're competing with 7+ billion.
- 2y ago

admissionsguy 2y ago

I think the main thing is the lack of on-ramps. Once you have fallen out of the social circulation, there is basically no way of going back. Unless you are able to stay within an extremely narrow range of behaviours (in terms of not being weird, basically speaking expected thinks in expected tone of voice and body language), nobody wants to associate with you. And since about the only way to learn these things is to be around people who already behave in the "right" way, a vicious circle arises. It has nothing to do with debt, wealth or earnings. Completely independent things. People had it worse at every time in history in almost every place. It has nothing to do with social media / internet. It just something people tend to fall into when they withdraw, and have no trouble abandoning as soon as the life outside becomes tenable again.

tetris11 2y ago
I was briefly jobless in a country with a fantastic social security net. Easily the most stressful and financially unstable moment in my life. It was only two months, but I genuinely thought I'd never recover my social standing, or confidence ever again
- wholinator2 2y ago
  How so, what was your experience? This is pretty diametric to most people's assumptions so I'd be interested in hearing more about how that went down
  - doktrin 2y ago
    Possibly due to social stigma. I don’t know that what I’m describing can be attributed to the safety net itself, but many countries with excellent social safety programs also have a low social tolerance for failure. This is not limited to using social benefits - e.g fail in business and you’re a business failure who will struggle to get any financing ever again.
    - danlugo92 2y ago
      Sounds like people I wouldn't want to associate with then.

neonate 2y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20240525142056/https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/05/world/hikikomori-asia-personal-stories-wellness/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240525142056/https://www.cnn.c... https://archive.ph/lt04t https://archive.ph/lt04t

grugagag 2y ago

Im curios if population desnsity may have any corelation to this or not. Im also thinking that the culture is shunning a certain personality type or people with some mental struggles that their only way to adapt is to withdraw.

jackcosgrove 2y ago
Population density is absolutely the driver of all of this. It increases competition, decreases personal space, and limits access to nature. Humans are social animals, but we aren't ants. We're not supposed to live in concrete jungles. As others have said, hikikomoris are one extreme of a continuum of negative outcomes caused by modern life. A low birthrate is another, which is correlated with urban living (there are other factors but this trend is unmistakable). I believe this is a natural outcome of very high population density, a negative feedback mechanism. When life becomes unbearable because of too many people, we withdraw and don't reproduce.
nakedneuron 2y ago
"Universe 25 Mouse Experiment" by J. Calhoun shows this too. https://youtu.be/7ReBJfxHjFU https://youtu.be/7ReBJfxHjFU Key sentences (1:30): "Young ones found themselves born in a world with far more mice than meaningful social roles. Males faced a lot of competitors to defend their territory against. Many found that so stressful they gave up. Normal discourse within the community broke down and with it the ability of mice to form social bonds." Very nicely illustrated.
- piloto_ciego 2y ago
  An article I found if anyone is interested: https://www.the-scientist.com/universe-25-1968-1973-69941 https://www.the-scientist.com/universe-25-1968-1973-69941

MathMonkeyMan 2y ago

> He dare not come in company, for fear he should be misused, disgraced, overshoot himself in gesture or speeches, or be sick; he thinks every man observes him, aims at him derides him, owes hint malice. - Hippocrates?[1] [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskLiteraryStudies/comments/68zg38/help_finding_the_origing_of_a_hippocrates_quote/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskLiteraryStudies/comments/68zg38/...

aaron695 2y ago

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blopker 2y ago

> He said he didn’t respond to friends’ messages or confide in anyone, feeling like nobody would understand anyway. I feel this. I think people would call me an introvert, but I'm probably just an over-thinker. It's casual conversation that seems to be exhausting (or uninteresting?) to me. Once I'm in a space where I can talk openly about more abstract topics I start to enjoy it. Getting there just often seems like too much work though. I tried therapy, meditation, 'wellness' apps. It all either felt too 'me' focused, or too detached. I like this site because people here seem to share what they are actually thinking, and are eloquent enough to capture interesting nuance. I don't always agree with it, but there's a level of authenticity to where I always learn something about the human condition. I wanted more of that. [This is kind of a plug, but whatever] I've spent the last few years in a deep-dive around why we seem to be collectively getting lonelier over time. I started a non-profit[0] to house this research. It's evolved into a platform where we host these support groups. Anyone can join, it's free, and as long as you stick to the community guidelines [1] anyone is welcome to join. For me, it's a place to get out of my head. To hear from real people who don't generally feel like their voice matters. I know from years in tech management that these are in fact the most interesting people to talk to. I've never really talked about Totem here because I think it might be too 'woo-woo' for this crowd, but if any of that landed for you, come check us out. If you don't like it, I'd love to know why. My personal email is in my profile. We are a non-profit, grant-funded, and open-source[2] organization. Feedback of any kind is welcome. My hope is to become something like a public utility for these spaces. We're also looking for engineers to help make an app out of this. [0]: https://www.totem.org https://www.totem.org [1]: https://www.totem.org/guidelines/ https://www.totem.org/guidelines/ [2]: https://github.com/totem-technologies/totem-server https://github.com/totem-technologies/totem-server

uxcolumbo 2y ago
Can’t stand small talk either. I get it, it’s required at the beginning of meeting people, but don’t stay too long in that mode otherwise it gets boring. Your site looks beautiful, kudos to the design team.

ItCouldBeWorse 2y ago

In my experience, life-experience increases the self-isolation. To the point that the old-folkshome are often halls of quiet, as everyone knows what horrible behavior perfectly normal people are capable and do not wish to interact. The guy who conspires against everyone at work, that manager that harvests others laurels, the longer you life, the more you understand how many will flip on you in this prisoner dilemma of a society. So they all barricade themselves in suburbia, sniper one another through HOA letters and claim to do it for the family, till its time to inherit and even the core family falls apart. Maybe some hiki is just more aware of what a lonely hellish life it is to be part of western society. And chooses to opt out. Lay flat. Assumes the party escort position. If he would at least consume drugs in there, but its just ramen and colored light.

seec 2y ago
I couldn't agree more. I think many of the people who choose to isolate just have more self-awareness and more defining bad experiences that makes them avoid too many social interactions that are not strictly necessary or truly beneficial in an obvious way. In fact, I believe that the nicer and more honest you are in our modern world the worse it is for you. At heart I'm a rather social person, I like talking to people and doing stuff with them. Yet, all my life I have been abused both verbally and physically, I got stuff stolen many times (often I was actually trying to help) and I get manipulated/used all the time without getting much in return. All of this comes from being too different (not weird in a bad way, just different in the way I speak/handle myself) and abusive narcissists parents (one in particular) that destroyed my emotional self, teaching me to avoid all conflit at all cost and not stand-up for myself even though I would be capable. All this is made worse in our bullshit job world, where every business pretend that they are a family and require you to give a lot of your life (like for example forcing you to eat with coworkers even though it should be a break for yourself) while still not giving any kind of security (you can be fired/discarded regardless of the quality of your work) or a real sense of being part of a larger cohesive group that stick together. Because at the end of the day, even inside a small business, it's all competition, lies, exploitation, anything is OK to get ahead regardless of consequences on individuals, they are expandable. That being said, drugs make everything worse in the long term, they are a relief/distraction but if you don't manage to kill yourself with them, they will cause more problems on top of the already existing ones. In a way, you could say that the users of hardcore drugs are somewhat ahead of the curve, because if they manage to OD it is sort of a salvation without having to deal with all the implications of suicide...

Hikikomori 2y ago

I hope they have a roof as well.

im3w1l 2y ago

I think it may be due to some sort of "outcome compression". The life of working a bottom tier-job isn't materially better than a life of not working at all. One solution I've been thinking of is that maybe there needs to be some kind of state-provided minimum life. Almost like opt in communism. If you opt in then you get an 8h/day job automatically. Doesn't matter if you don't have any skills at all. The job will be guaranteed safe and non-humiliating (no sex work and if you are a vegetarian you don't have to work as a butcher etc). In exchange you get enough food, clothes and shelter to provide for yourself and children (assuming two incomes), entertainment (exchangable for cash equivalent), pension, health insurance, upskill opportunities, and some money on top. If you have negative net worth when enterring the program, your loans will gradually decrease (this could be done as some combination of the state paying them off for you and the loan giver being stiffed). You can opt out at any time you want.

enchanted-gian 2y ago
something like universal basic work?
- Apocryphon 2y ago
  Or a federal jobs guarantee.
- im3w1l 2y ago
  That might be a more palatable name for it. But a key feature of my proposal is that you actually get the goods you need rather than a lump some of money that may or may not be enough to buy them.
sirianth 2y ago
into it.
badpun 2y ago
> I think it may be due to some sort of "outcome compression". The life of working a bottom tier-job isn't materially better than a life of not working at all. The Hikkikomoris in Japan are all sustained by their parents. There's actually a growing concern there about the first generation of Hikkikomoris who are getting into their 50s already and their parents are starting to die, leaving them with no life skills and no source of income.

motohagiography 2y ago

our baseline entertainments are better than the long tail of negative interactions one persists through to get to the great ones. in doomscrolling vs. disappointment, more people are picking doomscrolling. older than the examples, but I have done this. live alone on a large rural property, walden style, tech comp no family, have online interactions for remote work, old irc channels, take some sport, fitness, and music training as kind of weekly rhythm, family lives in other time zones. it was an ideal I thought I could achieve and then have it to share with others. relationships and friendships with any personal connection or intimacy still manage to fail, lots of reasons but I'm the constant. only way to sustain anything is to keep it at a polite distance with no expectations. issue i suspect is that meaning comes from the cohering and persistence of relationships, and without that persistent mutual understanding, meaning just seeps away and leaves a flat state of inertia. no advice other than to avoid this example. I sympathize with these young people, it's as though they don't see a present or future in which there is meaning for them, or in which they are a participant, and so they are just withdrawing and waiting for the next life instead of engaging this one. it's a unique and recently invented trap, avoid it as best you can.

waythrowa 2y ago
I think a lot of black sheep personalities feel like this, pretty safe and smug in calling all the patterns we see in others that make them not right for us. And we know too much of ourselves will try their patience too, which makes us resent their love as a thin weak thing. >lots of reasons but I'm the constant Sad face. I don’t know if admitting this helps or hurts, but a long while ago when I kept seeing your username on so many of my favorite comments i thought about emailing you to flirt, but the more I kept reading thru to look for hints (to confirm that ur straight, not married, etc ) the more I psyched myself out… In sober assessment, I likely wouldn’t meet your standards of, like… spiritual vigor, agency, having ones adult shit together, strength of character in a flailing sham society, etc. You already seemed too complete an image on your own. It creates admiration for sure, but in a way that challenges me to get to your level rather than come closer… Resonating with someone’s deep judgements of the world also means I can’t fall short or claim ignorance later, there’s less room to play. “I agree with everything this guy finds virtuous yet i lack these qualities even after all this time… sigh, better just go work on becoming my best self…“ Catch22, if I already was my ideal self would I still be attracted to philosophical types on hn? (I kinda hate this place ngl) Not sure if any of us with these dispositions really want another human up close or if that ‘trying’ is just part of the aesthetic if I’m honest with myself. Anyway, if u want to talk to a misanthropic fangirl, my username is LimeOregano on Telegram, and when you’re in the woods and very lonely, you can feel free to send me ponderous voice notes without overthinking this polite distance that you’re obliged to maintain with real friends. We can ghost each other if the long tail of negative interaction proves too much! (Afterall, if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of getting your hopes up 100 times lol) Regardless, i hope youre flattered to know that some strangers like you based on the quality of your thoughts alone

random9749832 2y ago

When you are a teenager it is so easy to treat your time as if it is unlimited and start sinking 1000s of hours into some MMO or other games that before you know it you are in your 20s with no girlfriend, job, skill or self-confidence. Then you got Japanese entertainment like Hatsune Miku, idols and visual novels/anime that take advantage of lonely people with make-believe girlfriends.

okdood64 2y ago
Wait, what's wrong with Hatsune Miku? It has relatively broad appeal; performed at Coachella.
- Apocryphon 2y ago
  I think they’re describing a stereotype that’s a decade behind the times.
  - Der_Einzige 2y ago
    Nope, Hatsune Miku fans have been and will always be weeaboos, with all of the negative pejorative that word entails.
    - robocat 2y ago
      Why would you define Japanese culture by non-Japanese? I presume the majority of Miku fans are Japanese? > weeaboo https://www.vice.com/en/article/ywgxey/we-asked-j-culture-fans-to-defend-being-weeaboos https://www.vice.com/en/article/ywgxey/we-asked-j-culture-fa...
      - Der_Einzige 2y ago
        That article really drove home to me why we fought the US revolutionary war.
    - sunaookami 2y ago

Borrible 2y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops "Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk - that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh - a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs." ... "Vashanti's next move was to turn off the isolation switch, and all the accumulations of the last three minutes burst upon her. The room was filled with the noise of bells, and speaking-tubes. What was the new food like? Could she recommend it? Has she had any ideas lately? Might one tell her one's own ideas? Would she make an engagement to visit the public nurseries at an early date? - say this day month."

forinti 2y ago

In South America it's become common to hear about adolescents and young people (mostly men) who spend all their time on video games and neither work nor study. I imagine this to be a very different phenomenon from Japan, because the culture is so different. In South America I think it is just general disengagement and disillusion with society and work environments in general. For most people life is having a bad job that pays very little and you have to spend hours on a crowded bus to get to a pretty horrible part of town. Living in the virtual world is much more comfortable and pleasant.

deleted 2y ago
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Gigachad 2y ago
In Australia there is a pretty good welfare system, but they will basically give you a job to work while you keep applying for a real one. Usually it’s something like sorting clothes in a charity store. I imagine it helps to keep people engaged in society somewhat.

conwy 2y ago

Why to complain? Seems like heaven to me.

39896880 2y ago

If this topic interests you, you might enjoy the book “Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation” by Michael Zielenziger: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL24765707M/Shutting_out_the_sun https://openlibrary.org/books/OL24765707M/Shutting_out_the_s...

hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago

I think I came pretty close to ending up like this kind of person a few times. Each time I got out it was by basically taking a hammer to my superego and doing some shit I used to consider "unforgivable", like being long term unemployed, or engaging in long term substance abuse, or moving countries basically on a whim. And, if that's what it takes, then I stand by it. If your life choices are "hikikomori" or "scumbag", you'd be an idiot to not choose scumbag. Ideally you can get out of it through less destructive means, but let's not pretend like closing yourself off entirely from the world is better than having a problematic but loving relationship with it in all its colors.

GlibMonkeyDeath 2y ago

Hmm, no one is talking about the enabler for this - modern wealth. In the not so distant past, refusing to get up and face the world would result in starvation. Survival required people to be more social. As a parent of two adult children who are both working, I can't imagine enabling this (even though I could.) Sure, if my kids were truly disabled that would be another story, but it seems the hikikomori are just unhappy with the world. Enabling them to spend their lives doomscrolling or playing games is actively harmful.

AIorNot 2y ago
I think the bigger enabler is the internet with its endless source of media
- GlibMonkeyDeath 2y ago
  True, the internet is a cheap, endless, addictive supply of distraction that didn't exist until recently. But someone still has to provide it - a hikikomori staying in their room all day will not be able to pay the utility bill without an enabler...
Nextgrid 2y ago
Modern wealth is potentially a double-edged sword. There's enough of it that "hikikomori" is a viable strategy to stay alive. Yet, "modern wealth" is also the reason many things previous generations took for granted such as housing are effectively unreachable for many people nowadays, plus inflation/cost of living. This makes "hikikomori" the rational strategy for some people. Enough money to scrape by and live online, but not enough to actually climb out of the hole.

getpost 2y ago

Several adults in my friendship circle (retired or semi-retired) have evolved to spending nearly their entire waking lives online. They're able socialize normally, but they don't make the time to do that as often as in the past. This is tantamount to hikkormoridom. One friend went to visit two other friends who live together in New Mexico. He imagined they'd be out and about doing stuff during his visit, but the hosts remained preoccupied by their online activities. The visitor could have stayed home and texted.

billy99k 2y ago
I know people like this. They go on vacation to basically watch tv and/or go online with different scenery.

hypeatei 2y ago

I think what's missed in a lot of these discussions is your upbringing. Our society changed very quickly in the last 30 years and parents may not be providing the proper "foundation" for their children since they didn't grow up with all this stuff. Even if you had shitty parents before, you'd probably do alright since all of society in past times was based on in-person interactions and there wasn't endless media consumption at your fingertips. Personally, my parents were very immature, divorced, and generally didn't set me up for a healthy/balanced social life. I haven't completely given up; I work, maintain loose contact with a few friends, and basically just "doing my time" until I die.

twojobsoneboss 2y ago
Damn that last sentence is depressing. What keeps you going?
- hypeatei 2y ago
  > What keeps you going? At this point, my biological urge to stay alive. Other things interest me like new game releases or OSS projects but I wouldn't say that there is anything that makes me look forward to waking up.
  - rrgok 2y ago
    Yep, can absolutely relate.
  - NayamAmarshe 2y ago
    I'd ask you to look for a deeper purpose. Purpose that goes beyond your individual self (the ego), your family, your society, your nation. The Bhagavad Gita explains that this material existence is basically like a prison. We're all doing our time so you're right about it. The Bhagavad Gita gives a beautiful analogy. It says, as you go from childhood to adulthood, your body is changing constantly but the identity or the self remains the same. Have you ever thought about it how strange it is? You don't go from identifying as John to James, but the body, each cell in the body is replaced multiple times throughout your lifetime. The consciousness remains the same, the "I" remains there. It says that we're born out of karma (action and fruits of actions). The consciousness is eternal (always is, never is not), the material nature is not (as evident, has a beginning and an end). So it asks you to look deeper into the Self. Inquire what is it that you're here for and what you're made of. The idea that the whole universe was made just so you could work and die, is born out of a feeble mindset, forced by an extremely materialistic society. You can go deeper and find something invaluable. Read into philosophy (not the depressing kind), read books like the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Bhagavad Gita, Upanishadas. Learn about sāṁkhya, nyāya, vedānta. It can give your life a whole new meaning and direction. It doesn't have to be this way, your current mental imprints want you to believe there's nothing beyond this life, nothing beyond who you are. If there's nothing that makes you look forward to waking up, then that just means you have to look for it, instead of it being handed to you. If there really is nothing to look forward to, there's no harm in giving this wildly different life-changing thing a try. Some links to get you started if you're interested: - https://youtu.be/mj7FIfBLWYA https://youtu.be/mj7FIfBLWYA - https://sites.rutgers.edu/edwin-bryant/nyaya-sutras-svadhaya/ https://sites.rutgers.edu/edwin-bryant/nyaya-sutras-svadhaya... - https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8vj9lw https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8vj9lw - https://sites.rutgers.edu/edwin-bryant/yoga-sutras/ https://sites.rutgers.edu/edwin-bryant/yoga-sutras/

uwagar 2y ago

bartleby the scrivener felt like a hikikomori too. anybody felt so?

tombert 2y ago

I have a job and I don't live alone, so I don't think I fall into the hikikomri definition in any real sense of the word, but I will say that remote work kind of made me adjacent to it. I sort of have a strong distaste to leave my house a lot of the time since 2020. I still do leave my house, I have a job that requires me to be in the office for two days a week, but it's something I dread every single week for a variety of reasons. There's something bizarrely comforting about just staying in your bedroom all day and pretending the rest of the world doesn't exist, and it's kind of addictive. Going outside and having a social life is usually worth it, but it's also kind of intimidating; I have to take a shower, get on the train with a bunch of strangers and not do anything too weird because of course I care a tiny bit what these strangers think about me for whatever reason, go into an office with people who are not-quite-strangers and work extra hard to not be too weird or say anything that might upset someone and keep my desk clean and have meetings with managers who could fire you immediately for any reason they want...it's all exhausting. I still try and make an effort to leave my house sometimes, but I kind of get why hikikomori do it.

amonith 2y ago
Kind of same, except add a wife and a kid under way. There's plenty of us. Most people absolutely do not regularly "go out" if they work and have a family. We maintain the bare minimum social interaction because we have to but we'd happily skip it in a heartbeat.
globular-toast 2y ago
Yeah. I'm similar too. I guess I was almost a hikikomori at one point. I was basically nocturnal and really afraid of social situations. But I was kinda forced into society by having to get a job and stuff; my parents weren't going to look after me. I haven't been single for very long at all over the past 15 years, but I have very little social interaction. In the past I would force myself to go out to avoid being single and lonely. But every single time I've been in a relationship I shy away from this. I used to think I should force myself to do it, like how some people force themselves to exercise, but now I think why should I force myself to do something I don't want to do for my whole life? It's clear at this point it's part of my nature and won't change. Who am I trying to impress? I just want to be alone most of the time. It's as simple as that. I work from home 5 days a week and I've never been happier. It's not that I hate every second of socialising but it's just not how I want to spend my life. I often tell people it's like going into a sauna. Yeah, you'll go in and enjoy it, but the most important thing is getting out. Nobody wants to spend their whole life in a sauna.

fuzztester 2y ago

Article has such a weird UI.

fuzztester 2y ago
[flagged]

amonith 2y ago

As a man with a full time job (remote), a wife and a kid under way I cannot really fathom having energy for more social activities (except meeting some friends or family at most once a month, reluctantly). Am I a hikikomori? I kind of relate to them. My wife also doesn't meet anyone else ever. Now that I think of it - neither do our parents or most people living in their village. It's all work + church at most. Maybe as humans we don't really need social interaction THAT much? I mean how do you explain people who seem to thrive living off-grid? We do need jobs and some basic communication skills for sure at least to maintain the current standard of living but maybe not for socializing. Some comments here kind of sound like "extrovert propaganda" - same people who cry for the return to office because they cannot imagine that people can live differently.

speckledsea 2y ago
As a man who spent a decade living as what is described as a hikikomori, no, you're not. I think you are massively underestimate just how much socialization you have, and underestimating just how many other issues come along with living that lifestyle. I would likely need many hours to properly illustrate them all.

AtlasBarfed 2y ago

The solution is probably early exercise. Japanese and south Koreans are canaries in the coal mine for end stage urbanization. There really isn't free roaming and a lot of greatly reduced activity compared to rural areas. Exercise counteracts depression, imposes a routine of physical mental social interaction with the real world under controlled circumstances. But end stage capitalism doesn't value replacement level population growth, so associated programs for child development in urban settings are even less valued. Being an environmentalist I always dislike capitalism economics and it's inability to value preservation even if the future of the human race, but it seems that the end state of consumerism and urbanization is demographic collapse.

karaterobot 2y ago

A lot of discussion in this thread assumes that hikikomori are a very new phenomenon. I see that they appear in the psychiatric literature as early as 1978. I also see that the number of hikikomori in Japan varies by survey, and is hard to measure, but still seems to be roughly the same as it was in 2010, if not a little lower. What to make of that? Because the most obvious and most common explanations for them seems to be the internet, smartphones, and anxiety about the future (global warming, the economy, etc.). But if those were the reasons for hikikomori, I'd assume that the number of hikokomori would have increased significantly in the last 15 years, not stayed roughly the same, as it has. The gravity of the internet in our culture feels like it has increased exponentially. Climate fear doesn't feel exponentially higher, but subjectively it still feels a lot more widespread to me. Why not commensurately more people living as hikikomori, if the phenomenon supposedly tracks these factors?

reverendjames 2y ago

He should give the bottom bunk to his grandma.

deleted 2y ago

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matrix87 2y ago

Not a hikikomori, I work and kind of look forward to the office and do fun stuff rarely... but I wish there was an easier way to find a "way in" in the bay area Also another weird thing I realized after moving: cultural distance and ethnicity matter. The schools spend a bunch of time forcing people to sing songs about it not mattering, but psychologically it matters a lot to people. I'm a secular jew but am considering becoming a religious one just for that

asdf6969 2y ago

This is how I want to live after I FIRE

Xeyz0r 2y ago

Sometimes it is just too much to handle for me too. And I just shut down. For a week or two. And then trying to come back. And that period is a painful one