9 ms·

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

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.
  - lyu07282 2y ago
    From a European perspective who made similar experiences: European countries all tend to be hyper neoliberal nowadays (despite Americans warped perspective) they don't want to offer social safety nets for ideological reasons but have to because of past, long since crushed leftist political movements having forced them into existence, making it very difficult to abandon them now by the ruling neoliberals. The net effect is the more slowly, erosion of social safety nets and making it as painful and unpleasant as possible to use them (as a matter of policy), as well as mass corporate media propaganda against it's recipients. It's a miserable experience by-design.
    - robocat 2y ago
      > It's a miserable experience by-design. I believe we aim for a dehumanising experience in New Zealand, although I am mostly unfamiliar with it. Certainly our current government wants to crack down: https://assets.nationbuilder.com/nationalparty/pages/18418/attachments/original/1695674151/Reducing_benefit_dependency.pdf https://assets.nationbuilder.com/nationalparty/pages/18418/a...
- wholinator2 2y ago
  Sorry, i cannot edit on mobile but i just realized maybe i read that wrong. Are you saying that as opposed to countries without safety nets, or instead emphasizing that even with security nets it can still be a very difficult experience?
  - tetris11 2y ago
    Very much the latter. I was shuttled from incompatible job (skills and geography) to incompatible job, treated with utter contempt, and had to essentially beg for financial support to pay the rent. I'm a top 10% earner in the country, paid more than my fair share of social security for many years before that. It was a jarring experience seeing just how fine the line was between being on the right and wrong side of the system.
    - piloto_ciego 2y ago
      I went through something similar here in America very suddenly due to illness. Were it not for family, we would have been homeless. It’s hard to go from Hero to Zero. Now that you’ve made it, all I can say is “never forget how that experience made you feel” - that way when you vote and you pay your taxes you’ll know why you do it. Ideally so that it’s not even worse for the next guy.
jimbokun 2y ago
The evidence that it has a lot to do with social media is very strong. See Jonathan Haidt’s work on the effects of personal phones and social media on young people’s mental health.
- Apocryphon 2y ago
  Maybe social media catalyzes the problem but the point is that it’s not the root cause, in the same way that opioids did not in of themselves cause the opioid epidemic.
  - jimbokun 2y ago
    You need to provide some empirical evidence demonstrating what is the true root cause of the increase in mental health problems then.
    - Apocryphon 2y ago
      Probably the first step is to simply prove that mental health issues are also increasing among populations that don’t use social media.
      - jimbokun 2y ago
        Haidt reviewed those kind of studies in depth before making his conclusions.
    - Anotheroneagain 2y ago
      Iron poisoning and lead deficiency. They got it the wrong way round. They incorrectly packed every major cognitive process into the neocortex, instead of assigning them each to the correct part. They got the idea of intelligence the wrong way round: The function of the neocortex is dimensionality reduction - the more powerful it is, the simpler everything is. You can't improve anything that easily. You actually broke it.
- wholinator2 2y ago
dj_mc_merlin 2y ago
> 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. I'll agree on the lack of on-ramps but this is a pretty limiting view. There's all kinds of people, many who will share some of whatever you think your weirdness is. If you only want to associate with a certain slice of society, it is not so weird that only certain slices of society want to associate with you.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- twojobsoneboss 2y ago
  How many of them are both geographically close enough and discoverable enough tho?
  - dj_mc_merlin 2y ago
    You need to live near a population centre to find them, that's true. It's the same reason other minority groups such as homosexuals urbanized so quickly.
nicbou 2y ago
Social capital follows the same progression as regular capital. If you already have a lot of friends and acquaintances, it's easy to make more. You either get invited to things, or you can organise something and know people will come. Loneliness is a big problem among recent immigrants. They all struggle to make friends at first, because they have no social capital to build upon. It's hard to break into established circles without being introduced by a member, and few people will show up to a stranger's party unless it's vetted by friends. There is such a thing as being socially destitute, and the recovery can be quite difficult, especially when you have other things going on in your life.
- hackable_sand 2y ago
  Great reminder about immigration's social barriers. Church and work are the lowest friction social spaces that I can think of outside of wealth dimension. The problem still defaults to getting your foot in the door though. It requires a certain elevation of compassion and information in enough social circles for a single person to overcome cultural devides.
  - _lvbh 2y ago
    Indeed some of the most social times of my life was when I went to church despite not being Christian. They tend to be very welcoming and friendly in my experience. Sports clubs are great (e.g. badminton) as something less controversial
    - hackable_sand 2y ago
      Sports are pretty good. Frisbee golf is basically free wherever you go.
- tombert 2y ago
  So about two years ago, we got my sister in law to move into our house, because she was graduating high school and we felt that there was more opportunity in NYC than in small-town-USA, at least for a younger person. We like having her around, she's very nice, but she's also had trouble finding new friends/social-circles here, and I kind of feel bad for dragging her up here as a result. I've always been someone who is happy enough alone, and I generally find a few coworkers at every job that I become friends with anyway, it's never been too hard for me, but I realize that I'm pretty weird. I feel like I yanked her away from a relatively comfortable and established social circle, brought her to a place where she knows nobody, and then just expected everything to be ok, which makes me feel like a dick. Doesn't help that I ended up yelling at her boyfriend a week ago, for valid-but-not-worth-yelling-about reasons, and now I think she's afraid to leave her bedroom, so I might have inadvertently given her hikikomori tendencies. I'm an asshole :/ [1] usually the especially geeky people who will listen to me ramble about math.
Anotheroneagain 2y ago
It isn't that you're failing, they are the hikikomoris, who want to be alone, and the very fact that somebody tries to socialoze with them annoys them. It's just the norm in the west, so that it's you who stands out, and suffers alone.
softsound 2y ago
I would say it's not just behaviors but isolation causes stress on the body that increases more irrational behaviors and fears. So that can be crippling when trying to get back to a health state that can handle relationships again. On-ramps to help destress the environment would be helpful too. It's a challenge because we haven't really built many areas where people are welcome to just be, even with 3rd spaces that doesn't those people that are now rewired in their stress state. Some types of maybe community service (clean up, plantings, painting etc) or festivals events might be more helpful here as they can sometimes be lower stress, no required interactions etc. It's a tough thing especially as people have different reasons to isolate though poverty is likely one of the most major ones.
- chx 2y ago
  It's 2024. Some of us are isolating because y'all refuse to mask up and we can't risk going anywhere. I have powered through by wearing a Cleanspace Halo but that precludes a real lot of places I used to go: cafes, cinemas, theatres...
  - dj_mc_merlin 2y ago
    > Some of us are isolating because y'all refuse to mask up and we can't risk going anywhere. disclaimer: you may have an autoimmune disease in which case your decision is reasonable. "y'all" is about 95%-99% of humanity right now. That percentage is not going to go down. Are you planning on staying inside for the rest of your life?
  - reducesuffering 2y ago
    The US only has ~50 people / year dying of COVID, largely skewing elderly. There are more than twice that dying due to car accidents, so I assume you're not driving anywhere either?
    - tacon 2y ago
      143 in the week of May 18. 2571 in the week of Jan 13, 2024.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
biql 2y ago
Sounds like social coaching has all the attributes of an untapped business niche. The question is, if there is just a obvious pain, why there is such a shortage of solutions. I think it could be because of the stigma associated with this issue or because people affect by it lack genuine interest in solutions as people are usually happy to pay for all kinds of self-improvements.
- faeriechangling 2y ago
  Doesn't scale is a huge issue. Lack of evidence that it works is another - and anything remotely evidence based is given by somebody like a psychologist and is very expensive.
- dotnet00 2y ago
  Social coaching is just another venue through which scammers do their thing. Eg the Andrew Tate-esque "schools" making men even more dysfunctional in the name of teaching them to be "attractive". It's very easy to talk about some sort of coaching for these issues, but imo it isn't really that straightforward. The people being suggested to take coaching are often very easily manipulated, and there's also the issue of everyone having a different standard for a healthy level of socialization, and everyone also loves to force their standard onto everyone. Result is that "social coaching" is going to be more like brainwashing/indoctrination in practice.
- BeFlatXIII 2y ago
  > Sounds like social coaching has all the attributes of an untapped business niche The problem is that most of the potential customers are well aware that the field is full of hucksters and certifications are largely meaningless. I'm not about to pay for services I don't believe will pan out.

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.
- lyu07282 2y ago
  From a European perspective who made similar experiences: European countries all tend to be hyper neoliberal nowadays (despite Americans warped perspective) they don't want to offer social safety nets for ideological reasons but have to because of past, long since crushed leftist political movements having forced them into existence, making it very difficult to abandon them now by the ruling neoliberals. The net effect is the more slowly, erosion of social safety nets and making it as painful and unpleasant as possible to use them (as a matter of policy), as well as mass corporate media propaganda against it's recipients. It's a miserable experience by-design.
  - robocat 2y ago
    > It's a miserable experience by-design. I believe we aim for a dehumanising experience in New Zealand, although I am mostly unfamiliar with it. Certainly our current government wants to crack down: https://assets.nationbuilder.com/nationalparty/pages/18418/attachments/original/1695674151/Reducing_benefit_dependency.pdf https://assets.nationbuilder.com/nationalparty/pages/18418/a...
wholinator2 2y ago
Sorry, i cannot edit on mobile but i just realized maybe i read that wrong. Are you saying that as opposed to countries without safety nets, or instead emphasizing that even with security nets it can still be a very difficult experience?
- tetris11 2y ago
  Very much the latter. I was shuttled from incompatible job (skills and geography) to incompatible job, treated with utter contempt, and had to essentially beg for financial support to pay the rent. I'm a top 10% earner in the country, paid more than my fair share of social security for many years before that. It was a jarring experience seeing just how fine the line was between being on the right and wrong side of the system.
  - piloto_ciego 2y ago
    I went through something similar here in America very suddenly due to illness. Were it not for family, we would have been homeless. It’s hard to go from Hero to Zero. Now that you’ve made it, all I can say is “never forget how that experience made you feel” - that way when you vote and you pay your taxes you’ll know why you do it. Ideally so that it’s not even worse for the next guy.

jimbokun 2y ago

The evidence that it has a lot to do with social media is very strong. See Jonathan Haidt’s work on the effects of personal phones and social media on young people’s mental health.

Apocryphon 2y ago
Maybe social media catalyzes the problem but the point is that it’s not the root cause, in the same way that opioids did not in of themselves cause the opioid epidemic.
- jimbokun 2y ago
  You need to provide some empirical evidence demonstrating what is the true root cause of the increase in mental health problems then.
  - Apocryphon 2y ago
    Probably the first step is to simply prove that mental health issues are also increasing among populations that don’t use social media.
    - jimbokun 2y ago
      Haidt reviewed those kind of studies in depth before making his conclusions.
  - Anotheroneagain 2y ago
    Iron poisoning and lead deficiency. They got it the wrong way round. They incorrectly packed every major cognitive process into the neocortex, instead of assigning them each to the correct part. They got the idea of intelligence the wrong way round: The function of the neocortex is dimensionality reduction - the more powerful it is, the simpler everything is. You can't improve anything that easily. You actually broke it.
wholinator2 2y ago

dj_mc_merlin 2y ago

> 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. I'll agree on the lack of on-ramps but this is a pretty limiting view. There's all kinds of people, many who will share some of whatever you think your weirdness is. If you only want to associate with a certain slice of society, it is not so weird that only certain slices of society want to associate with you.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
twojobsoneboss 2y ago
How many of them are both geographically close enough and discoverable enough tho?
- dj_mc_merlin 2y ago
  You need to live near a population centre to find them, that's true. It's the same reason other minority groups such as homosexuals urbanized so quickly.

nicbou 2y ago

Social capital follows the same progression as regular capital. If you already have a lot of friends and acquaintances, it's easy to make more. You either get invited to things, or you can organise something and know people will come. Loneliness is a big problem among recent immigrants. They all struggle to make friends at first, because they have no social capital to build upon. It's hard to break into established circles without being introduced by a member, and few people will show up to a stranger's party unless it's vetted by friends. There is such a thing as being socially destitute, and the recovery can be quite difficult, especially when you have other things going on in your life.

hackable_sand 2y ago
Great reminder about immigration's social barriers. Church and work are the lowest friction social spaces that I can think of outside of wealth dimension. The problem still defaults to getting your foot in the door though. It requires a certain elevation of compassion and information in enough social circles for a single person to overcome cultural devides.
- _lvbh 2y ago
  Indeed some of the most social times of my life was when I went to church despite not being Christian. They tend to be very welcoming and friendly in my experience. Sports clubs are great (e.g. badminton) as something less controversial
  - hackable_sand 2y ago
    Sports are pretty good. Frisbee golf is basically free wherever you go.
tombert 2y ago
So about two years ago, we got my sister in law to move into our house, because she was graduating high school and we felt that there was more opportunity in NYC than in small-town-USA, at least for a younger person. We like having her around, she's very nice, but she's also had trouble finding new friends/social-circles here, and I kind of feel bad for dragging her up here as a result. I've always been someone who is happy enough alone, and I generally find a few coworkers at every job that I become friends with anyway, it's never been too hard for me, but I realize that I'm pretty weird. I feel like I yanked her away from a relatively comfortable and established social circle, brought her to a place where she knows nobody, and then just expected everything to be ok, which makes me feel like a dick. Doesn't help that I ended up yelling at her boyfriend a week ago, for valid-but-not-worth-yelling-about reasons, and now I think she's afraid to leave her bedroom, so I might have inadvertently given her hikikomori tendencies. I'm an asshole :/ [1] usually the especially geeky people who will listen to me ramble about math.

Anotheroneagain 2y ago

It isn't that you're failing, they are the hikikomoris, who want to be alone, and the very fact that somebody tries to socialoze with them annoys them. It's just the norm in the west, so that it's you who stands out, and suffers alone.

softsound 2y ago

I would say it's not just behaviors but isolation causes stress on the body that increases more irrational behaviors and fears. So that can be crippling when trying to get back to a health state that can handle relationships again. On-ramps to help destress the environment would be helpful too. It's a challenge because we haven't really built many areas where people are welcome to just be, even with 3rd spaces that doesn't those people that are now rewired in their stress state. Some types of maybe community service (clean up, plantings, painting etc) or festivals events might be more helpful here as they can sometimes be lower stress, no required interactions etc. It's a tough thing especially as people have different reasons to isolate though poverty is likely one of the most major ones.

chx 2y ago
It's 2024. Some of us are isolating because y'all refuse to mask up and we can't risk going anywhere. I have powered through by wearing a Cleanspace Halo but that precludes a real lot of places I used to go: cafes, cinemas, theatres...
- dj_mc_merlin 2y ago
  > Some of us are isolating because y'all refuse to mask up and we can't risk going anywhere. disclaimer: you may have an autoimmune disease in which case your decision is reasonable. "y'all" is about 95%-99% of humanity right now. That percentage is not going to go down. Are you planning on staying inside for the rest of your life?
- reducesuffering 2y ago
  The US only has ~50 people / year dying of COVID, largely skewing elderly. There are more than twice that dying due to car accidents, so I assume you're not driving anywhere either?
  - tacon 2y ago
    143 in the week of May 18. 2571 in the week of Jan 13, 2024.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

biql 2y ago

Sounds like social coaching has all the attributes of an untapped business niche. The question is, if there is just a obvious pain, why there is such a shortage of solutions. I think it could be because of the stigma associated with this issue or because people affect by it lack genuine interest in solutions as people are usually happy to pay for all kinds of self-improvements.

faeriechangling 2y ago
Doesn't scale is a huge issue. Lack of evidence that it works is another - and anything remotely evidence based is given by somebody like a psychologist and is very expensive.
dotnet00 2y ago
Social coaching is just another venue through which scammers do their thing. Eg the Andrew Tate-esque "schools" making men even more dysfunctional in the name of teaching them to be "attractive". It's very easy to talk about some sort of coaching for these issues, but imo it isn't really that straightforward. The people being suggested to take coaching are often very easily manipulated, and there's also the issue of everyone having a different standard for a healthy level of socialization, and everyone also loves to force their standard onto everyone. Result is that "social coaching" is going to be more like brainwashing/indoctrination in practice.
BeFlatXIII 2y ago
> Sounds like social coaching has all the attributes of an untapped business niche The problem is that most of the potential customers are well aware that the field is full of hucksters and certifications are largely meaningless. I'm not about to pay for services I don't believe will pan out.