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I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

• jmyeet 1y ago
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  • kujillo 1y ago
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    • totetsu 1y ago
      It doesn't have to be this way.. just set your dating profile to hetero-flexible and open up to live like future utopians.
• h1fra 1y ago
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  • kalaksi 1y ago
    That seems narrow-minded.
  • alpaca128 1y ago
    What makes you believe that?
• Multicomp 1y ago
  The lack of deep friendships feel like a 3-fold problem. 1. You can't ever be real, if you are real, you are likely to be recorded doing something someone somewhere on the largest stage in the world (the public web) that someone will disapprove of, and someone else will raise their own profile by mining your impiety to prove their own concern and moral superiority. 2. Everyone is so mobile and connected online, they never have to break the ice and talk to those around them in the breakroom or geographical space, so all of our social skills have atrophied at best, or were never learned at worst. We know just enough civility to not get in fights, but we don't know how to easily break the ice or become acquaintances. 3. All the people that live in the cities are not close with each other, they didn't grow up together and don't go to church / rotary club / male-only spaces any longer because we are all supposed to pretend to be cool liberated yuppies in a hookup culture. Can't have real ties or any strongly held beliefs, that would make you religious (or worse, Religious on an actual religion), those people are bad. So I'm okay, you're okay, and we all smile. And inside, no real connections are ever made. Not to mention testosterone levels dropping, schools being geared towards women, always co-ed spaces, and a breakup of younger and older generations because of cultural differences there too...not that the old people are always nice.
  • nswizzle31 1y ago
    Appreciate the thoughts - totally agree on those issues, but I don't think the problem is insurmountable. There is a real - albeit latent, maybe - demand for deep friendship and male-only spaces. Everyone recognizes it's an issue, at the very least, and is being more vocal about it in the face of the dramatic enshittification of the internet over the last few years. It just takes too much self-discipline to break out of the internet consistently enough to build meaningful relationships without someone / something taking the initiative. I am sort of trying to replicate that at a larger scale by removing any friction to making plans. Would love to hear your thoughts on if / what you think the solution is.
    • EGreg 1y ago
      Here are my thoughts… well, an article about my thoughts anyway: https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/ https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/
• allears 1y ago
  As Groucho said, I don't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member. Here's the thing -- by making it a 'club', and making prospective 'members' pass muster, you're just replicating HR at a big corporation. Friendship isn't so much about matching activities and interests as it is about finding someone whose sense of humor matches yours, or going through the same experience together. No matter how lonely I was, I would never audition for a 'club'. I'd much rather meet someone by just doing the activities I like, and noticing who else is around.
  • nswizzle31 1y ago
    Interesting! All of my best friends came from going through the same experience together. Totally agree on that. But that experience was high school or college. What experience can adult men (25+) go through that is enough to build a lasting friendship? That consistent, shared experience what I'm trying to build. But I can appreciate the feedback that it comes across as "auditioning" as that's not the point. The goal is to get people in the same place on a consistent basis. I also believe that consistently hanging out with people who are generally interesting / agreeable is a lot more important than matching humor or hobbies. How would you position this with that goal in mind, especially considering that some filtering needs to take place since many people won't necessarily click like you say. I'm not going to find someone whose humor matches mine by dumb luck.
    • qcic 1y ago
      Gym, BJJ, pick up soccer, tabletop game clubs, RPG events, book clubs. There’s a billion options out there.
      • matwood 1y ago
        BJJ is really amazing for this. Trust is built into the activity, it draws a wide range of people, and is practiced all over the world at this point. I moved countries, found a BJJ gym, and instantly met some great people to hang out with.
    • XenophileJKO 1y ago
• throwaway81523 1y ago
  Bring a postbox? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg5599l2vqo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg5599l2vqo
• frankmatranga 1y ago
  As a recent grad in upstate New York, this exact problem of college friendships atrophying has been on my mind nonstop. My girlfriend and I host monthly cocktail parties in an attempt to stem the tide and even make new friends, but I’ve definitely been looking for male-focused groups. I’m interested!
  • hakunin 1y ago
    I'm not far from you, and also trying to find a solution to a similar problem, albeit long time from college. Started a local meetup here, but it hasn't quite taken off. My area has very few people doing what I do, and I work remotely. School friends are all over the country at this point, and connections have been fading. Maybe it's something about upstate NY. Either way, added you on LinkedIn.
  • doom2 1y ago
    I didn't stick around the Capital Region too long after college but I actually found the Troy community to be incredibly engaging. Maybe it was a function of time and place, but I got into cycling groups, community arts orgs, and volunteerism. It helped that I made friends in college who were already plugged into the local community.
    • frankmatranga 1y ago
      I do love Troy and it is indeed surprisingly lively. I think shifting from a “I’m here temporarily for school” to “I’m now an average local” has been difficult to navigate and kept me from thinking about those sorts of local communities. Your comment is a good reminder.
• ALittleLight 1y ago
  One big challenge I see with this is that it will attract people who struggle to make friends. A club of lonely men seems like a place I would be embarrassed to go to and hesitant to make friends at. Usually friends have more to recommend them than loneliness.
  • rchaud 1y ago
    In economics, this is known as the problem of adverse selection.
  • kilroy123 1y ago
    That's exactly how meetups always felt to me.
• ecshafer 1y ago
  I think this is a good idea but I think to get it really going good you need to have a social club. The old ethnic, religious an society social clubs all had a common factor of a club house. You could go to the American Legion, or Elks, or Masons, or Knights of columbus or Polish club or whatever at any time when you were a member you had old timers hanging out and doing things regularly. Youe event schedule will also need to be at least weekly to keep up close contact to build up connections.
  • nswizzle31 1y ago
    That is the goal, for sure. Soho House almost gets it right.
  • nprateem 1y ago
    No, you need regular events, same place twice a month. That's the killer for social clubs like this. Just have a regular date in the diary and if people are free they can drop in. Then do the more unique events on a different day (and let members suggest/ organise events too). Friendship is repetition with the same group. Make it easy on people by meeting at the same time, maybe changing venue within a small area. A group chat can be the clubhouse these days provided everyone meets regularly. I'd revoke membership from frequent no-shows. You want to limit groups to around 70 people too. Some research says above that cliques form.
    • Disposal8433 1y ago
      Its funny because you described liberal Freemasonry: mandatory attendance twice a month. Forcing yourself to go and feeling the honor of being part of a group has been great for me. I'm sure other groups have that kind of rule too, but the mandatory part is what makes it special.
      • nprateem 1y ago
        Well I wasn't suggesting mandatory attendance to every event, but I think if someone doesn't show up for say 2 months their space should be freed up for someone else.
• noddingham 1y ago
  Honestly I think you might be grappling with getting older and the change that naturally comes with it. >I've let many of my most meaningful friendships fade. At least you acknowledge that part and aren't bitter at your friends that it is somehow their fault. >but it doesn't feel like when I was in college and hung out with a crew of 10+ people on a weekly basis And it won't, ever again. They'll get married, move away, have kids, whatever. Just like if you played a sport in high school, or were in the band, that same group of people will never be together doing that same activity again after the last time. >curated events and meaningful connections for men who don’t want their friendships to atrophy post-college Except you acknowledge above your role in the "atrophying" and while you can say you didn't/don't want that to happen, you still allowed it to didn't you? >The goal is to get people in the same place on a consistent basis. Isn't that called the gym, the range, the golf course, softball/kickball/pickle ball team, bar, etc? I've struggled (still?) with exactly this thing as well and don't have any good advice. I will say it feels related to the notion of wanting to have a significant other but never leaving the house, you gotta put the effort in. On the bright side I read an article about a couple that missed neighborhood connections so started having coffee on their porch on Saturday mornings (or some consistent day of the week) and eventually neighbors walking by started saying hello, then stopping to chat, then bringing their own coffee, and then it became this whole neighborhood thing. So I guess I'm saying don't lose hope that you can't change things in your situation.
  • nswizzle31 1y ago
    You're definitely on to something. Although early 30s doesn't seem so old, the intense nostalgia of college has definitely waned. I would say I'm more grappling with the reality that it really won't ever again feel like that. I know it's true from a time perspective... I'm married and have a full-time job. But I figured I couldn't let the dream die that easily :) Do you really develop lasting friendships on the course or in rec league sports? I just haven't had that experience and the popularity of those activities is sky rocketing (see: running clubs) while the problem doesn't seem to be getting any better.
    • bluefirebrand 1y ago
• Telemakhos 1y ago
  Sometimes I wish we could have "gentlemen's clubs" of the sort that existed in Victorian Britain (not the US strip club version), third-spaces where one could go to read or converse or play cards with other men or even have a meal or a drink. Having social space that's limited to a set of people one knows, more or less, and that has rules on behavior seems like a civilizing influence that's missing today.
  • Plasmoid 1y ago
    Those still exist but often have very high membership fees. Thousands per year plus minimum spend amounts
  • nswizzle31 1y ago
    That is the exact long-term vision. Isn't that the absolute dream? Have to start a bit decentralized but I would love to eventually get a physical location to have that important third-space.
  • throwaway81523 1y ago
    Hacker spaces are sort of like that, it seems to me.
    • robotguy 1y ago
      I am very sad that my local hackerspace seems to eschew any of the social aspects and focuses (at least outwardly from what I can see) solely on entrepreneurship.
  • systemswizard 1y ago
    These places exist but are usually financially prohibitive for most people, and that’s even if they meet whatever requirements they have to join
    • lolinder 1y ago
      To be fair to our modern world this is how the Victorian gentleman's clubs were too—it's even in the name. If you weren't a gentleman you had the pub.
• jaitaiwan 1y ago
  In Queensland Australia there are men’s sheds which are great. The local pub. If you’re near a good church they often have lots of social stuff too, even basketball and soccer clubs.
  • worthless-trash 1y ago
    https://mensshed.org/ https://mensshed.org/ for anyone who needs a specific link. Each shed has its own policy and opening hours, best to look up your own local shed.
• ojbyrne 1y ago
  My mother, somewhere around 1976, told me that basically when men get married, they lose all their friends. But they get all their wife’s friends. Which seems prescient to me. Including their husbands, obviously.
  • SoftTalker 1y ago
    I think most men do not maintain friendships unless there is some outside circumstances that keeps them in touch. School, work, church, clubs, or even just being neighbors. Without exception the people who were my closest friends in high school didn't really keep in touch when we all went off to college. The friendships I made in college did not persist after graduation. There's a guy at work I had lunch with almost every day for years, he retired and that was the last time I saw him. There was a group of fathers I was friendly with because our kids were playing ball together on the same team. The kids got older and went their separate ways, and we really don't see each other anymore. Maintaining friendships takes work if circumstances don't assist. Might be largely the same for women, but it seems to me they tend to make more of an effort to keep in touch and keep getting together. This is all just my experience so I could be way off I guess.
    • throwaway2037 1y ago
      You just wrote my biography. Incredible. My experience is nearly identical.
    • cogogo 1y ago
      I read somewhere long ago that the biggest factor in building friendships is shared experience - like the “circumstances” you described. More important than anything else. Ones those experiences go away so does the common ground.
      • kelnos 1y ago
        You specifically mention building friendships. What it takes to build and maintain friendships can be different. Once friendships are built on the back of a shared experience, they can survive the loss of that shared experience, if the parties recognize that things have changed, continue to value the friendship, and understand that maintaining the friendship will require a different kind of commitment and different levels and styles of interaction. I'm not saying this is always easy, and sometimes one or more people in the friend group just decide that the friendships aren't that important to them to maintain. But it's absolutely possible, and can be very rewarding.
• throwanem 1y ago
  Homepage leaves me asking why this website wasn't a Meetup group for AI-generated stock photos. What's to resonate? I hate to have to be the one to say it, but speaking from my mid-forties, what you are experiencing is called "entering your 30s." If you try to sell "fix loneliness" to a "not committed yet to growing TF up" market you're cooked. Ironically, I'm probably pretty close to who you think you want to hear from and speak to. But you can't justify my time and wouldn't hear me in any case. Find something else to sell and someone else to sell to.
  • ramoz 1y ago
    15 years ago it wasn't the norm to spend all day at a desk in your home. Especially after a rapid induction to isolated living over a ~2year period; during the midst of cultural revolutions that pitted most young men in these forums in the bottom of the social barrel.
    • rchaud 1y ago
      15 years ago is 2010, socially inept men were absolutely spending time alone at home. They had videogames, internet and MMA/wrestling back then too.
  • deleted 1y ago
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  • pconte 1y ago
    I get where you’re coming from, but I don’t think it’s just a “you’re in your 30s, deal with it” thing. A lot of guys lose connection over time.. not because they’re flaky, but because work, family, and life get in the way. To me this doesn't feel like some cheesy attempt to fix loneliness with tech. It’s just creating a space for something that’s clearly missing for a lot of people. Writing it off feels like part of the problem..
    • throwanem 1y ago
      Where does the time come from to spend in that space? It isn't that I lack sympathy for the problem, for goodness' sake. Indeed to a reasonable first approximation the only reason I bothered to comment is that "male loneliness" is of interest to me, enough so that a solution aimed at an irrelevant epiphenomenon of a different problem strikes me as worth objecting to on that basis. That said, the formulation deserves some obloquy of its own, in that I think it likewise hits the nail squarely on the side by misattributing a problem of general social atomization. It isn't a "men problem" per se, so much as that - for various reasons related largely to social roles and experiences, and varying interests and approaches to same - men tend to make a good bellwether for some aspects of what I maintain is a broader social problem. Think "bedrotting" versus "gooncaving" - different codings, especially as respects men being defined as the sexually assertive gender, but the same basic social behavior. (Or asocial behavior, which is of course the crux of the problem.) Note too that that isn't the "early 30s in Park Slope" problem. (I guess Boston has different trendoid neighborhoods. I don't care.) That, to reiterate, is the very natural shift of focus as young careers and young families both demand time and interest, as described in the OP. That's normal for this stage of life, and while it is very much worthwhile to try to maintain a broad circle, that really will not be effectively fostered by college-style social events no one is going to have the time to attend anyway - not when the same time could be spent more productively on social events that also build and reinforce bonds in the spheres which do and should absorb your interest at this time.
• Tasboo 1y ago
  Male loneliness talk aside, why wouldn’t you start a Facebook group to get a gauge for actual interest? I know you mentioned deliberately not using Facebook and Meetup, but spinning up a whole new site just to connect with people seems like a lot of work for something that is largely a solved problem on those platforms. Facebook groups are very popular because so many people are already connected into it. Getting people onto and engaged with your club, regardless of topic, is one of the hardest parts of something like this, not the actual website part. A Facebook group would allow you to get people connected ASAP.
  • benchloftbrunch 1y ago
    That would exclude me and others who refuse on principle to use Facebook (or really any social media owned by Meta).
    • wiseowise 1y ago
      Right. Excluding, let’s be honest, a couple of weirdos who don’t use FB as ideological stance is a problem. Excluding huge swaths of “normies”(who are majority of people) by setting up third party website with zero reputation is not.
      • dokyun 1y ago
        Yes.
      • SunlitCat 1y ago
        Well, take me. I joined facebook two years ago after avoiding it for years not (just) because of the reasons you mentioned but also because i was very privacy focused. The only thing i found out, after connecting with a few people i know around me and scrolling through their history on facebook...the big party is over and i am too late. Facebook isn't what it was anymore and people don't use it that much to connect with others.
• temptemptemp111 1y ago
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• informal007 1y ago
  On the one hand, it's helpful to join a new friendship club if we truely admit that most of friendship is going to disappear as we are getting old. On the other hand, some people are shamed to admit this point, as a result, joining this kind of club will make them look more shamed. It's just nature of humanity. I think there should be a better idea for the second type of people.
  • daseiner1 1y ago
    I think the failing point with all(?) of the attempts in this space is that, to phrase it in a very handwavy pseudo graph way, “real world” social groups depend on people who are “hubs” with a disproportionately large number of links to individuals, the majority of whom have far fewer links comparatively. Communities are anchored by these “super friends”. Those are exactly the least likely people to ever consider using a site/app like the above, but the most important to have as they are the ones with the requisite initiative and/or social clout to actually "herd the cats". Basically, the Friendship Paradox https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Friendship_paradox https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Friendship_paradox
• deleted 1y ago
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• zug_zug 1y ago
  I like the idea, on principle, any attempt to build community should be supported. I'm may not be the target audience if this is recently post-college, but the thing that strikes me is these activities feel a bit performatively male. I guess my hot-take is there are certain things that people genuinely love (e.g. improv, dnd, video games, rock-climbing) perception be damned, and there are certain things that people do because they are socially acceptable stereotypes for males: drink craft beer, whiskey, poker, grilling, sports? And that it's about 20x easier to make real friends from the former than the latter. My experience has always been if somebody says "Come over for poker night," it's gonna be much more awkward than if somebody says "Come over because I'm gonna play video games on the couch and smoke a joint and it'd be fun to have somebody to chat with while I do that." [I'd be curious to hear where other people fall on that topic] Anyways, not to discourage your current tack, nor even say you should do a blunts and video-games event, but I just think some of the activities on the website seem branded to a very narrow type of guy (business majors? for lack of a better stereotype)
  • lovich 1y ago
    > I guess my hot-take is there are certain things that people genuinely love (e.g. improv, dnd, video games, rock-climbing) perception be damned, and there are certain things that people do because they are socially acceptable stereotypes for males: drink craft beer, whiskey, poker, grilling, sports? And that it's about 20x easier to make real friends from the former than the latter. Brah that's just your experience. The activities that you described as `socially acceptable stereotypes for males` haven't been popular for longer than any ancestor you've spoken to has been alive as a conspiracy theory. Some people legitimately like these activities and have the same reaction to `improv, dnd, video games, rock-climbing` as you do to the stereotypically male activities
    • zug_zug 1y ago
      > conspiracy theory ? We all live in this interconnected thing called a "culture." Maybe you've heard of it. It affects what we all do it at all times, the clothes we wear, what we value, who we strive to be, and where we spend most of our money. In fact, some people would even give up their lives if the cultural pressure told them to. I bet most people are so heavily subjected to the pressures of cultures that they wouldn't violate harmless cultural norms for $1,000 a day (e.g. crossdressing). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture
• smitty1e 1y ago
  I chef a monthly breakfast for the fellas. We're working through R. Kent Hughes "Disciplines of a Godly Man". https://a.co/d/7jeAATr https://a.co/d/7jeAATr
• hobbitstan 1y ago
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• pconte 1y ago
  Makes sense. A lot of guys feel this.. respect for actually doing something about it.
• b3ing 1y ago
  Most dudes are too busy looking to hook up with women (maybe because dating is harder than before, not sure but at meetups you can see the desperation sometimes) or they feel hanging around guys is “gay” or that’s the stigma that started in the 90s
• ramoz 1y ago
  Would love for poker nights to be spun up in LA.
• fiforpg 1y ago
  I'd like to offer a contrarian view. Much of the NYT article can be explained away by the Gell-Mann effect. During most of human history it was hard to maintain multiple strong bonds anyway; long distance communication pre-internet was hard too. There are plenty of modern opportunities for finding friends based on interests: conferences, concerts, sports bars etc. How much of this discussion is a moral panic caused by imprecise notions which by definition cannot be described by hard data?
• billy99k 1y ago
  "but it doesn't feel like when I was in college and hung out with a crew of 10+ people on a weekly basis. " I'm in my 40s and in my 20s (shortly after college), I created a meetup group and regularly met with a group of 10-12 people weekly (parties, hangouts, dinner, activities). We are all married now (some with kids) and now meet once/month and the meetup group disbanded before covid. As I've gotten older, I realized that some friends don't make it to a new phase of life. Sometimes because it was a friendship of proximity (like a neighbor or co-worker) and other times because you are doing something different with your life.
  • kelnos 1y ago
    I think the main difference is that when you and your friends live near each other (and/or work together) and enjoy the same sorts of activities, maintaining those friendships (even at a deeper level than "hey let's go to the club and hang out without much real social interaction") isn't too difficult. When people get married, change jobs, start families, move away... then it actually requires a solid amount of effort to maintain those friendships. For some people they really value the friendships enough to put in that work, and for others they don't (and when they do, it has to be mutual for it to work out). The sad part is when people value the friendships, but don't understand that shift, and what's required, and those friendships fizzle out. I still maintain friendships with a 10-15 people who no longer live near me, and who are doing different things with their lives, and are in very different circumstances than I am. The oldest of these friendships are pushing 30 years now. It's doable, but everyone needs to be on the same page as to what they expect from and what effort they're willing to put into the friendships.
• benchloftbrunch 1y ago
  I'd be interested, but it's not in my city (Houston) so tough beans I guess, unless someone else wants to start it here. I very much agree with this being its own thing independent of Big Social Media. We need more of that. Too many of these types of things have the flaw that their only online presence is a Facebook group, which implicitly excludes me and anyone else who doesn't have nor want a FB account.
• undisclosedUser 1y ago
  Generally, I'm a fan of the idea of creating social groups that meet in person and are accessible to people who are a little more offline. I will say that you've run into a rather awkward name collision. The Third Wave (when not referencing feminist theory, or surfer lingo) usually refers to a specific social experiment where a teacher created mini-fascism (okay, that's a tldr, but it was an interesting educational thing). Generally it's a great idea though, might be worth a rebrand tho!
  • sfmz 1y ago
    I associate 3rd wave with coffee, fwiw
• solraph 1y ago
  I like the idea in general principle - but if I lived in the right city/country, and didn't already have something similar, my first thought based on the landing page pictures would be; "This is only for white guys in their twenties." I don't know if that's intentional, but if I was in the location target market, I'd close the tab at that point.
  • deleted 1y ago
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  • sandspar 1y ago
    This comment inadvertently reveals why clubs like this can't exist: there's always someone counting races and genders in photos. High functioning male social clubs generally have implicit rules, like "straight-acting gay guys are fine but don't make it weird" or "no weird lefties". But you can't have those rules anymore. So "male social clubs" get overrun with board game types who are OK with accepting everyone. Which means high status guys, the kind of guys who are trend setters, tend to stay away.
    • wkat4242 1y ago
      > High functioning male social clubs generally have implicit rules, like "straight acting gay guys are fine but don't make it weird" or "no weird lefties". I think that whole conformation thing is why they don't work. Nobody wants to hang out with people pretending to be someone else so they fit in. Any social connection you make is then fake too. > Which means high status guys, the kind of guys who are trend setters, tend to stay away. The board games types can also be high status trend setters, just not in your circle. That's fine though. Nothing wrong with seeking out people that are like yourself. But there's plenty of places where you can find what it sounds like you're looking for. Like sports bars. Won't find the board games types there and not many women either.
      • sandspar 1y ago
        Huh? "Conformist" is the most common type of person on Earth and conformists prefer hanging out with conformists. Social clubs are entirely a conformist phenomena, almost by definition. All those Elk clubs and bowling clubs and so on were chock full of conformists.
• kebokyo 1y ago
  It would be really cool to see more Mastodon instances that’s solely focused on people within a certain geographical area. It would be this but without the trendy startup energy. Also if I don’t hear a single MTG Commander game come out of this project we have all failed as a species.
  • tbrownaw 1y ago
    Isn't there already a "social" site that instances itself by neighborhood? I think I remember having a login there that I never use.
• deleted 1y ago
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• nprateem 1y ago
  Weird survey questions. How about "none of the above", "yeah maybe it depends", etc. I don't know what you hope to achieve with such a limited set of answers.
• 1123581321 1y ago
  Neat. There may be an issue in the sign-up flow. I said I was in Other city, wasn’t asked where specifically. After I made an account, I RSVPed for an event which details will be revealed a couple days before. Is it just mixing all the other city people together or is that going to be in one of the cities where you’re established? Male friendships are valuable. I either walk and get coffee, or we make breakfast every week. It started as three guys and averages 6-8 now, and some of our kids have become best friends. We also do a book club and some less frequent full family events.
• solarized 1y ago
  the awkwardness moments when lonely person meet each other. :D.
• Slava_Propanei 1y ago
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• som 1y ago
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  • cedws 1y ago
    Introducing women to a group of men completely changes the dynamics, and vice versa. Genders have fundamental differences, and it's human nature to act differently in the presence of the other. Consider also that men may not be willing to be themselves or be open in the presence of women. Are they not allowed to have a space for this? A mixed gender social club inevitably gets raided by a load of dudebros who want to get laid. Keeping it men only prevents this and keeps it genuine. There's no reason women can't have something like this for themselves too you know.
    • rchaud 1y ago
      I don't think the OP comment was about women, I read it discriminatory in terms of social class and "culture fit".
      • somishere 1y ago
        I think the comments and down votes are fairly self evident here, despite what I may or may not have meant. Discrimination is a fairly well defined term. Another hot take - the healthiest communities are those that people self-identity into. Like HN ;)
    • bluefirebrand 1y ago
      > There's no reason women can't have something like this for themselves too you know. Women do have things like this. There are tons of female exclusive events and spaces in society still Men aren't allowed to have male-only gyms but women do That's only one example
      • solraph 1y ago
        > Men aren't allowed to have male-only gyms but women do Is that legally true? AFAICT, nobodies opening male-only gyms because there's no demand for them.
• os2warpman 1y ago
  In my 30s I found myself slipping into the chasm of loneliness. It was particularly difficult for me because I had been in the Army for 10 years and was used to having many male friends I was extremely close with. All I was doing on the weekends was sitting on the couch and I hate sitting on the couch. I decided to fight it by focusing on three aspects of my personality and finding activities that suited them. First was my nerdy side and for that I joined my local amateur radio and astronomy clubs. The amateur radio club is all old guys, but there's nothing wrong with that-- I'm on my way there too. But there is field day, volunteer opportunities, and monthly talks. Same for the astronomy club but slightly younger. You don't even need an expensive radio or telescope, or radio telescope. A pair of binoculars and a cheap handheld radio will get you started. My astronomy club is focused on astrophotography. I will never dive into that nightmare of cost but I have purchased a star tracker and learned to take deep sky photos with a DSLR. Also, if you want 20 different opinions on how to do something, tell an amateur radio club about your plan to do something-- sometimes their input is useful. Sometimes. Time commitment: one day per month per club and the occasional volunteer event. Financial commitment: if you have self control, minimal. Next was my desire for mental and physical fitness and for that I, a hairy sweaty middle-aged man who couldn't touch his toes, joined a yoga studio and started going regularly. There aren't a lot of men who go to yoga but they do exist and after a couple of months we started to get to know each other. Now every single Sunday after Yin we go get coffee. We are all into scuba so we go on an annual retreat each year to somewhere with yoga and good diving sites. The teachers think it's adorable, our little yoga men's club. Now I can touch my toes. And do a headstand. edit: and I don't know if it is a quirk of my area but every dude who is in to yoga is also, apparently, in to clay pigeon shooting as well so we do that too. Time commitment: six hours per week, plus retreats. Financial commitment: large. Finally was my desire to serve my community. This led me to joining my local volunteer fire company, going through EMT training, and going through the firefighter training pipeline, doing driver and pump operator training, and this fall I'm starting the officer pipeline. Now I staff the ambulance, do CPR training for the community, do a shift on the engine a couple of times per month, am on the board, and MOST IMPORTANTLY drive the engine in every single parade I can. The only reason I am up so late on a Thursday is that this evening was forcible entry training so I'm still amped up a little from hammering on the door training prop for three hours. Time commitment: don't ask, it's practically a second job. Financial commitment: none, volunteers in my area get property and income tax credits and all training and gear is free. I don't need to do all three, any single one of these would be fulfilling enough to make me happy-- but my kids are grown and gone and I've decided that working myself to death isn't worth it so I have the time. Now instead of sitting on the couch all weekend doing nothing I have to specifically schedule weekends and tell people to leave me alone so I can sit on the couch all weekend and relax. And if I need help moving that couch there is no shortage of volunteers. Your personality is different but I guarantee, no matter where you live or what you're in to, there is some group somewhere that is looking for you.
• bradlys 1y ago
  I’m not the target audience but I wonder if I’m the type of individual it wishes would attend. (There is a caveat) I’m in my mid-30s, relatively successful, educated, friendly, outgoing, and so on. When I think of many men in my life, I am there for them emotionally and mentally. I’ve been there when times were good and bad. But, I have no interest in this even a little. If I wanted more male friends, it’d be trivial. I workout all the time and there’s tons of dudes from my gym who want to go out practically every night (currently live in nyc). There’s an extreme amount of men in my hobbies who are looking for new close friends. I’ve been invited to numerous outings and so on. Yet, this is where I wouldn’t be a good fit, I cannot be bothered because I just want a family and I’ve been deeply single for four years without any hope of a relationship. For me, the loneliness epidemic is more to do with how deeply single I am and how little women want to love me. That’s my whole concern. I moved to nyc just to be able to run into women because I had no ability to do that back in SF. My friends in nyc try to invite me to shit all the time but I refuse because it’s just gonna be men hanging out and I don’t care. I’ve even gone as far as not working for three years and I just turned down an offer to work at Meta today because I don’t want to become an incel like half of the men in the tech world back in SF are. I’ve given up so much money over these last few years all just so that I could focus on my own startup - having a family. Failed miserably at it too like most founders but still trying.
  • SoftTalker 1y ago
    No women at the gym? OK it sounds obvious but you just need to get involved with things where there is female participation and not just dudes. Pottery, book clubs, hiking/biking groups, cooking groups, dance lessons, various volunteer groups, even church, etc. But it has to be stuff you're genuinely interested in regardless. Nothing will come off worse than a new guy who's clearly there just to meet women (although, women sometimes join groups to meet men also). Let me also add, I'm a good 20 years older than you. Don't get too wired into a vision of "family" because if and when it does happen, it might not work out the way you imagine. It sure didn't for me. Focus on being content and happy with yourself, and then worry about meeting someone.
    • bradlys 1y ago
• abhisek 1y ago
  Hmm. Not sure if discovery and connection will solve the root cause of the problem that you highlighted. I think it’s more to do with dopamine rush from social media and decreasing ability for people to people IRL connection.
• jghn 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • rhubarbtree 1y ago
    It’s worth taking a moment to consider that loneliness can have serious consequences, perhaps explaining the high male suicide rate in these life stages.
  • parasti 1y ago
    It is not gender-specific for sure, but it is also not imaginary. It's depression caused by lack of face-to-face socializing and internet-fueled escapism. When you're in that, you can't really get out by yourself. Finding a social circle in my city, meeting real people and eventually my future wife is literally what got me out.
• listenallyall 1y ago
  I'm torn on whether this has any potential for success but I strongly believe you chose the wrong launch cities. These are all crowded, "destination" cities with tons of people to meet and places to go, with a large urban core. I imagine people in growing cities without much of a central core and far less "personality" would desire something like this a lot more. Think Phoenix, Charlotte, Minneapolis, etc.
• amir734jj 1y ago
  I think we (hacker news community) can make a difference in dating industry by creating an open-source free to use dating app. Same quality as Hinge/Bumble but free of cost and free of algorithm manipulation. I have been thinking about it for a while. I am a software engineer but doing this requires a massive group effort. Maybe let's chat about it. amirhesamyan [at] gmail.com
  • kupfer 1y ago
    What is missing for you in Alovoa? Can you maybe contribute it?
  • gaws 1y ago
    Women don't care about open-source or free software. They want an app that's popular and easy to use on their phones. Bumble, Hinge, and Tinder have concerned that market.
• keiferski 1y ago
  This idea appears every once in awhile, as it’s obviously a major issue in modern life. The interesting thing though is how the solution is always location-agnostic. By that I mean it’s never really about a specific cafe or restaurant or soccer field, it’s always an app or service that organizes people to show up in various places. I bring this up because if you look at places that had lively social activities a few decades or a century ago, they were almost always a specific place. The neighborhood cafe where locals can stop by at any time and see other locals. The bar that everyone stops by after work twice a week. These are stationary physical locations that don’t require pre-planning, schedules, apps, or anything else.
  • JimDabell 1y ago
    It’s not always location-agnostic, but you’re more likely to hear about location-agnostic efforts because they have further reach. For instance Men’s Sheds are a local effort with a thousand locations in the UK: > Men’s Sheds encourage people to come together to make, repair and repurpose, supporting projects in their local communities. Improving wellbeing, reducing loneliness and combatting social isolation. > Research gathered by the UKMSA Health and Wellbeing Survey, 2023, suggests 96% of Men’s Shed attendees feel less lonely since joining a Shed. — https://menssheds.org.uk https://menssheds.org.uk Unfortunately, sometimes you get things like this happening: > 'We put the pressure on to join Men in Sheds' > The 74-year-old added: "Eventually they let us in, just one morning, eventually it became all the time, and now it's 50% women, and we absolutely love it." > When the women were allowed into the workshop, members decided to keep a quiet room with a model railway display in it, just for men. > "We [the men] escape now and again [to the quiet room] and have a chat and weigh things up." — https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg5qd9l3094o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg5qd9l3094o
    • jamesdeluk 1y ago
      Why didn't they start Women's Sheds?
      • subscribed 1y ago
• seydor 1y ago
  i ll just go to a sauna
• xkcd1963 1y ago
  How is it not obvious to just start a hobby or activity where people do something together, heck you even might find some women.
• pjerem 1y ago
  Congrats on your launch, that’s a truly nice issue to address. For what I feel, boy friends doing whisky and poker night in seemingly high end places, that sounds like a boring cliché. That’s not how I would make friends so this don’t look appealing to me at all. It doesn’t feel like a setting to be natural for me. It feels cold. It’s exactly how I imagine American superficial "friendships" (I know it’s a cliché but it feels reinforced here). I understand it may be more than that but that’s what is advertised. But maybe that’s just a cultural gap on my side and since the service is US cities only, maybe it’s fitting well there. It also feels like you exclude half your potential market by being male only. Nowadays, women also have hard time creating relationships.
• Animats 1y ago
  Some schools have alumni clubs. Harvard has a whole chain of them. Here's the New York City branch.[1] It's modeled after classic English clubs. It's still thriving. But the Princeton Club went broke and the Yale Club is in trouble. Stanford never got into this. Stanford's alumni association is mostly a front for the "development office", the alumni donation extraction operation. Silicon Valley had the Capital Club in San Jose (closed). There's something called the Alexandria in San Carlos, which has a restaurant and a gym.[2] Cafe Borrone in Menlo Park is a hangout of sorts, and it's next to the British Bankers Club, which used to be a pub but upgraded to a fancy restaurant. There's happy hour at the Sand Hill Sundeck, at 3000 Sand Hill Road.[3] There's Hacker Dojo [4] But after two moves and COVID, it's a shadow of what it once was. Those are places you go to make deals, or at least talk to people who do deals. [1] https://www.hcny.com/ https://www.hcny.com/ [2] https://www.invitedclubs.com/clubs/the-alexandria-san-carlos/our-story https://www.invitedclubs.com/clubs/the-alexandria-san-carlos... [3] https://www.sandhillsundeck.com/ https://www.sandhillsundeck.com/ [4] https://hackerdojo.org/ https://hackerdojo.org/
  • paradox460 1y ago
    There's also the Olympic club in Sf proper
• renewiltord 1y ago
  Is this really a problem? I get the feeling that the male loneliness epidemic is more described by people about others than themselves. For my part, the world doesn't seem that way at all. I have many friends who live close by and who are a part of my life. We play basketball and poker and board games together. We go to nearby bars occasionally and to each others' homes regularly. We lift together though I haven't been good about keeping up with that. And my apartment building is home to some 500 people, all of whom are quite normal. People borrow a spoon of yogurt or a USB cable, or ask for a jump start, or help with plumbing. It all feels very normal and about the right scale of human interaction. Considering all that, and that people generally report happiness, and that these things come and go without success we must conclude the whole thing is illusory like so many other Complaints About The Modern World.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • floodle 1y ago
    You can't extrapolate from your own experience in that way. There are billions of people having a different experience to you in a multitude of different ways.
  • alpaca128 1y ago
    It's great that you have a good social life, but calling this problem illusory based on just your anecdotal experience is just denying reality when you look at statistics: > 52% of Americans report feeling lonely while 47% report their relationships with others are not meaningful > 55% of London residents say they feel lonely > Social isolation is a problem in Europe: 18% of its citizens, the equivalent of 75 million people, are socially isolated > 43% of those aged 17-25 feel lonely and less than half of them feel loved > The suicide rate for persons aged 10–14 [..] nearly tripled from 2007 to 2017 https://www.rootsofloneliness.com/loneliness-statistics https://www.rootsofloneliness.com/loneliness-statistics > Thirty years ago, a majority of men (55 percent) reported having at least six close friends. Today, that number has been cut in half. Slightly more than one in four (27 percent) men have six or more close friends today. Fifteen percent of men have no close friendships at all, a fivefold increase since 1990 https://www.americansurveycenter.org/why-mens-social-circles-are-shrinking/ https://www.americansurveycenter.org/why-mens-social-circles...
• jonfromsf 1y ago
  These were a huge part of the American social fabric in the past. Most of the organizations are still active, although smaller than before. There's Freemasons, The Elks, Rotary International, American Legion, VFW, Knights of Columbus, Loyal order of Moose, Shriners, Lions Club, Kiwanis ...
  • ngc248 1y ago
    Also, as compared to before, the amount of solitary activities one can do have increased a lot. This has also led to these asspciations becoming smaller.
  • kelnos 1y ago
    I do wonder what percentage of people (men, in particular, I guess) are members of such organizations. I'm pretty sure I don't even know one person who is a member. I certainly have my own bubble, though, so I assume they're still decently active, but my general impression is that it's likely, say, under 5% of the US population that belongs to one of those.
• protocolture 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • gambiting 1y ago
    >>I am literally batting social opportunities away due to lack of time and resources. That is exactly what the "male loneliness epidemic" is though, no? I don't know what definition you are using, but to me it's definitely the fact that we just don't have the time to go out and be social among other things, not that there aren't opportunities in the first place.
    • mynameajeff 1y ago
      I agree that's definitely the main culprit for many adult men but given this is the first mention I've seen of this idea after scrolling past dozens of comments above this one either attempting to re-invent the country club or immediately ascribe the problem to laundry list of imagined cultural enemies, I have to conclude we're either describing a different issue entirely or people generally have no idea why they're actually lonely
    • protocolture 1y ago
      >That is exactly what the "male loneliness epidemic" is though If thats the case, then why does one more social club resolve the issue?
      • gambiting 1y ago
        It doesn't.
  • tdb7893 1y ago
    Yeah, I've seen a lot on the "male loneliness epidemic" and I've been lonely myself sometimes but people framing it as a lack of spaces accepting of men is really confusing to me. Do people really think there's some dearth of clubs to join for men out that adding another one will make a difference? Like I couldn't avoid being in clubs without fully dropping my hobbies. Martial arts is a good example of a generally pretty social space that's obviously very welcoming to men (I've recently been doing historical longsword fencing and there are a wide variety of weirdos successfully socializing in there) but I also do birdwatching with a group and volunteer at a wildlife rehabilitator and both of those are also pretty social.
• cjohnson318 1y ago
  I think a lot of this boils down to the fact that most men are too insecure to engage with each other meaningfully. This causes them to appear overly competitive, or uninterested. How many times have you spoken to another man that can't stop trying to one-up you, or cannot be bothered to ask you a single question? That's the majority of my interactions with other men.
  • blablabla123 1y ago
    Yeah, problems are way deeper and would have to be addressed in such a concept. Last year I read a Graphical Novel about it (Seek You) which goes into great detail. Root causes includes dysfunctional TV stereotypes (the lonely hero) among others.
    • cjohnson318 1y ago
      Dysfunctional media is a big one, dysfunctional families, the disintegration of the middle class, the rise of techbro culture where a whole generation suddenly had this expectation that you can and should be as wealthy as a doctor, with a fraction of the training or oversight.
  • yesfitz 1y ago
    Is there a common thread between the men you describe beyond their gender? I haven't experienced what you described since I was socializing with programmers and scientists on the East Coast. Now most of the men I socialize with are artists (at least part time) and IT generalists in the Midwest.
    • cjohnson318 1y ago
      That's difficult to say. Right now, my cohort is mainly other dads at my kids school, so we're all busy and kind of tired. I want to make friends, but it's hard to find people that are (1) available and (2) friendly. Full disclosure, I have insecurities too: I've got zero interest in trying to make friends in a group where I feel like I'll be judged or looked down upon for whatever. I still socialize, and I've learned a lot about socialization from my wife, but yeah, I realize that I've got a chip on my shoulder also.
• smaudet 1y ago
  Hmm, I have used sites like this in past to some effect to make real world connections. Signed up, but despite asking if I lived in one of three cities and selecting "other", it seemed to stick me in some event without a location? There could be room for another app, e.g. Meetup has gotten particularly money hungry. If this is just a prototype I guess good luck!
  • nswizzle31 1y ago
    Thanks, I've fixed that now! I added the "other city" option as a way to let people express interest and if there is enough people + someone willing to show up then I'm happy to expand. Just want to focus on creating a good experience first.
• reify 1y ago
  Being a retired psychotherapist I realise how valuable places like this are for men. In therapy, For every 10 female clients, you get 1 male client, but most of the time that ratio is much worse. Here in the UK we have Andy's mans club. https://andysmanclub.co.uk/ https://andysmanclub.co.uk/ Its a male peer support group. Its a great place to go. Groups of men talking about stuff that impacts all men in their daily lives. A safe, supportive space to talk about problems: Relationships, employment, divorce, debt, family, violence, anger, grief, loss and everything men are not that forthcoming to share. Setup by the family of a young man who took his own life at 21 years old. The one I went to had about 60 men turn up every week, they were split into smaller groups. Men supporting men who have experienced the same shit life throw at you.
• KolibriFly 1y ago
  Can we say that male loneliness is one of those issues that's quietly massive but rarely talked about seriously...
• anal_reactor 1y ago
  These ideas pop up once in a while, but they fail to address the core issue. We don't have friends because having friends actually negatively affects our ability to amass resources. In 2025 the only reason why we want friends is because our caveman instincts tell us to do so. Having friends feels nice, but it's an impractical luxury, like getting a big mansion or an expensive car. This is a fundamental shift to what friendships used to be, that is basic mechanism of survival. I think that the loneliness epidemic isn't a problem to solve, but rather an evolutionary filter. A bigger force we cannot combat. People who cannot function without social bonds will go crazy and die out. People who thrive in loneliness will live. That's it. Simply imagine a species of animals that are social, but then apply evolutionary pressure to convert them into solitary ones. This is what we're experiencing now as a humanity. Another comparison is the obesity epidemic. It just filters out people who are unable to control their appetite.
• openplatypus 1y ago
  > Male loneliness epidemic You are solving a non-existent problem. There is no "male loneliness epidemic". If anything, there might be a "human loneliness epidemic". This is not a DEI angle on the problem. Times have changed, societies have changed. But our expectations have not. It is literally time to grow up to the new reality. I think Professor Galloway, whom I am generally a fan of, is spreading a narrative based on selective statistics.
  • Sohcahtoa82 1y ago
    Nah, there IS a male loneliness epidemic, but it's entirely self-inflicted. If men feel like they can't open up to their friends because they're afraid they'll be ridiculed, that's on them. Get better friends.
• genezeta 1y ago
  I'm the guy that talks to lonely bus drivers. I don't know how it happens, but it does. I'm also the person a lot of old - and not-that-old - ladies will suddenly speak to at the bus stop. The weather, the waiting time, or whatever other subject that comes up. Again, I don't know why me. There's also other situations lone strangers -shopping, the park, whatever- will start talking to me. I do try to pet dogs sometimes and that sometimes leads to people talking to me but I'd say that's less surprising so it doesn't count. Once, years ago, a guy just greeted me when coming out from the subway and I was a bit confused because I didn't recognise him. So I asked and he told me that no, we hadn't met; we just passed each other sometimes when going in/out of the subway so he thought it would be nice to greet me. I smiled and appreciated the gesture. After that sometimes we would greet or at least nod. It didn't go further than that and after a while our schedules probably shifted a bit but it was a nice thing. Strangers you see routinely. It seems polite to greet them. And nice, a gentle gesture. My impression is that there are many, and many of them crave just being able to talk to someone for a little while. Sometimes, particularly older ones, mainly ramble almost uncontrollably. They need to talk. In a way it used to break my heart seeing that. Now I don't think much about it, it's ok; I just talk for a few minutes and smile, because smiling is nice and they smile back and it's warm. I don't initiate such conversations but I reckon I may somehow propitiate them by looking or nodding/greeting politely or something. Maybe it's that. But I've never been an extrovert and often I'm wearing headphones and have to take them off when they start because I didn't hear them at first. So, it's not like I'm particularly approachable, I'd say. Not handsome but neither ugly -I hope-. For a while I was a bit overweight. Now I'm clearly underweight but I don't think it shows so much that anyone would think I'm sick or dying or anything. I dress quite normal, have an about 1-1.5 inch beard, and in general I'd say nothing in my appearance particularly says "talk to me". But people often do. shrug In any case it feels nice seeing those people smile for a while. Particularly those older people that tell you about some mundane stuff that means a bit to them. Sometimes their stories carry the implications of some children or grandchildren they don't see too often and miss. Sometimes it's much more personal, health issues or other problems; and it still surprises me a bit how candid people can be with personal stuff. Other times it's just literally whatever, small things in their lives like the groceries they just bought or are going for or really anything. There was this nice old lady I used to see catch the bus to avoid a sloping street. She repeated often the same story about how she was going for bread and "if I see the bus approaching I take it" because the slope often left her quite tired. Once I noticed she'd fallen and bruised her face. She was fine, she said, but it feels nice that someone notices when something happens to you. I rarely go to that bus stop any more, since I now try to walk as much as possible, so I haven't seen her in more than a year. But she was from the neighbourhood so I may pass by her one of these days. Maybe. I know this may not mean much in their lives but I think it's a nice thing. It may brighten their day even just for a few minutes. Or maybe I'm one of the few people at all they talk to that day. Who knows. It may make a difference. Most probably not, but anyway...
• scoofy 1y ago
  I've never felt more connected to people than in NYC. I knew my neighbors, I had a huge social network, I just didn't like the NYC that much. I honestly blame residential zoning. The place we would get to know our neighbors was at the corner shop, bar a block away, salon and pizza shop downstairs. All that goes away when you're walking more than a couple blocks to do anything.
  • forgotoldacc 1y ago
    I always hear stereotypes about people in big cities being unfriendly and there being no sense of community, but I've had the opposite experience. Coming from a town with a population of hundreds, yeah, everyone knew everybody, but the connections people had were decades old. And everyone hated everybody who wasn't already part of their very tight social network (and they hated most of the people in the network as well, but they just had no other choice but to deal with it). And nobody wanted to associate with direct neighbors. But living in a city, I've had shopkeepers who regularly see me set aside items that they know I'll like and make sure nobody buys it before I get a chance. I have neighbors that greet me every time they see me. Some chat me up. I've stopped in random hole in the wall restaurants and had other regulars (who I didn't know) randomly give me free stuff to welcome me to the community. People were willing to welcome new people in. Now I know people will want to rush in and say, "That's not a city experience. My small town has all that and your small town just sucked!" To which I say, okay. That's your anecdote against mine. But cities are just as welcoming as people think small towns are. If you choose to stay in your room and grimace every time you do happen to go outside, yeah, it's lonely. But it's very easy to turn that around in a city with potential friends everywhere you look. And having been to cities around the world, I see loads of people chatting and laughing outside.
    • scoofy 1y ago
      Yea, I loved the relationships in NYC, just not the grind. Everyone was trying to "make it" everything was expensive while at the same time there is garbage juice on the street in 90º heat. I'd go see my friends shows, but never got on the list because they had to get paying customers to get invited back. Tough living, and that's not even saying anything about trying to be a cyclist in the city. I've lived in SF for the last decade, and I really see a difference. I know it's not that much less urban than Brooklyn or Queens, but it's the zoning. I don't have a convenience store on my block, much less a pizza restaurant or salon. We have a local bar, and have a similar relationship with the folks there as we did in Brooklyn, which is nice, but again, it's hard to get to know the folks in your "commercial zoned district" because everyone is slammed together, and you don't see them every day. Even though I live three blocks away, I'm still a face on the crowd. There's honestly a big difference between a shop on your street and a shop a few blocks away... because everyone in the neighborhood is a few blocks away.
• nathias 1y ago
  I think loneliness is a consequence of choice, people had less choice about their inclusion into the social networks, so they were more social, but now interaction is more voluntary. This is a much higher threshold (opt out vs opt in) and less and less interactions meet it, which further degrades future social interactions.
• cultofmetatron 1y ago
  car centric urban design caused all of this. you don't see this level of male loneliness epidemic in south america or europe.
  • elevatortrim 1y ago
    I tend to disagree as European male. We are very lonely too in our walkable cities.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
• bagful 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • phrotoma 1y ago
    As is the case with everything, I'm certain it's more complicated than this, but I believe you've hit on a huge factor. I would encourage anyone who is interested in this (or skeptical of it!) to check out the work of Niobe Way, a psychologist who has been researching the social lives of adolescent boys for a couple decades. I would crudely summarize a key finding of her research as roughly: around 12-14 yrs of age boys stop saying things like "I love my best friend" and start saying things like "I'm not gay" and "I wish I was a girl so I could have feelings". I'm sad to say that last one is a direct quote. Hug your bros gentlemen. https://www.niobe-way.com/ https://www.niobe-way.com/
    • mensetmanusman 1y ago
      This is a natural response to the culture sexualizing everything and how lifestyles are celebrated.
      • phrotoma 1y ago
        I don't think I understand what you mean. If that were the case, wouldn't teen girls have the same issue? I know it's hard to convey sincerity by text so to be clear I'm not trying to be glib, genuinely curious about your ideas here.
      • UncleMeat 1y ago
        ...because we now are happy that gay people can leave the closet and overcome the threats that would keep them there, straight men can't share emotions? There are gay women. Why are friendships between women not a threat to the "no homo" need? There is evidence that the intimacy (especially physical intimacy) of male friendships declined starting in the 90s as more gay people left the closet and slowly worked towards social acceptance. But the "no homo, bro" reaction is entirely self inflicted and has absolutely nothing to do with a sexualized society. I'd actually wager that the straight men who spend the most time around out gay men are the least likely to feel the need to resist male intimacy out of a fear of a threat to their sexuality.
• nye2k 1y ago
  The problem to solve is that these clubs exist already with low membership. Join a local Masonic lodge, or other local social org if you want to meet men you will learn from. Boy Scouts, DeMolay and other boys youth orgs got their start in the 1910’s, joined by young men without fathers who were lonely due to their life situations. Many just need someone to take their hand and show them how to break the ice.
  • nappy-doo 1y ago
    Masons and the Scottish Rite (and even the Boy Scouts and DeMolay to some extent) have religious components that exclude people like me.
  • Mountain_Skies 1y ago
    All Masonic and similar type clubs in my area openly accept women.
  • Loughla 1y ago
    I joined the Lions about three years ago. Our local chapter was defunct, so I got it going again. Now we have about 40 members (for a town of 500, that's pretty damn good). We get together to do volunteer and fund raising events. But mostly we meet twice a month to eat supper and bullshit/play cards/pool/darts. It's awesome. I think we're going to bring back the formal dances they used to have in the 40's-60's. I think that would be fun.
• 0xEF 1y ago
  To be honest, I don't want another social media platform. I just want a group of people that I can talk computers, old tech and projects with and zero risk of politics, religion, or any of the various -isms entering the fray.
  • kelnos 1y ago
    It's funny because I want sort of the opposite. I have quite a few tech and tech-adjacent friends, and while I value those friendships a great deal, I want to make new friendships with people who aren't in tech and can talk about other topics. Both because I'm interested in other topics, and because I want to learn about and be involved in other things that are not tech.
    • 0xEF 1y ago
      That's also perfectly valid. Maybe it's a saturation thing. The people I call my friends are plenty ready to chat about philosophy, psychology, politics, money, television or books they like, maybe play some games...but they kinda just glaze over when I want to talk about computers or some silly electronics project I'm futzing with. I could see the opposite being true, as well. Balance in all things, I suppose.
• cogogo 1y ago
  I find it ironic that the site is missing information about its creators and their background given the mission/goals. Presume OP is the Nick in the contact at the bottom. If OP is reading I’d definitely suggest adding something about yourself and anyone else involved and why doing this matters to you.
  • nswizzle31 1y ago
    Thanks for this comment - I created the site quite quickly to gauge interest in this cause that's really important to me... the response has been overwhelming. I am adding some real pictures of myself and friends, along with more info about me both on the page and in the eventual instagram page. Little about me just for kicks - I'm early 30s, married, recently moved to Boston with a great tech job and a really solid group of friends from college that I unfortunately don't live close to anymore. I've made some good friends since moving here but it has all been through someone taking a herculean level of initiative to plan things and invite people to stuff. I want to lower that friction to have consistent IRL interactions with interesting people - whoever those people might be for a given person.
• _zaey 1y ago
  Bouldering (indoor climbing) is the most social sport I’ve tried, and I’d highly recommend going on your own as you will find opportunities to meet new people, and others will talk to you (as long as you’re not wearing headphones!). Bouldering provides an open space you can move freely in, with no inherent social hierarchy (no tutors, teachers), just people trying varying difficulties of bouldering routes. If someone can do a route you can’t, just ask them for tips, or if someone can’t do a route you can, ask if they want help, or cheer someone on when they do something difficult. Bouldering provides lots of easy conversation starters, and as with all social situations, going on your own and showing vulnerability will always be endearing to others.
  • profsummergig 1y ago
    Is it usually done in natural settings outdoors, or in a sort of gym, indoors?
    • tonightstoast 1y ago
      Both! Usually outdoor bouldering is a bit more of an undertaking to get into since you’ll have to travel and bring matts & additional gear. But look up “climbing gym” on google and you should be able to find some if you’re in a reasonably sized metro. Not sure if you’re in the USA but the southwest has a ton of great outdoor bouldering.
    • sigmoid10 1y ago
      It ranges from high tech indoor and outdoor gyms with customisable holds all the way to a random rock somewhere in the middle of nature where local guys put a few mats under. If you start going to a gym you'll naturally learn about all the other places very quickly.
    • _zaey 1y ago
      In my experience people will start indoors and build experience before heading outdoors. You could ask people in the bouldering gym whether they have any experience with outdoor bouldering and people will start sharing their favourite spots nearby, and might even invite you along. Outdoors requires: - your own climbing shoes - someone with a bouldering mat Whereas you will hire shoes from the bouldering gym as a beginner You won’t need to bring anything to the bouldering gym other than a water bottle and some loose fit clothing
• nanna 1y ago
  Man here. Female friends key to my not feeling lonely. Couldn't identify less with men who only see hanging out with men as key to not feeling lonely, which is what this app seems to offer. Seems like the target market for this is lonely lads, when lad culture is driving male loneliness. But hey, I guess some men, even in the West where this app is targeted, really just feel uncomfortable making friends who are women. Open yourself up, lads.
  • gaws 1y ago
    > Female friends key to my not feeling lonely. Your girlfriend/wife would like a word.
• jasminebelmont 1y ago
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• Esophagus4 1y ago
  The idea of needing to impress an in-crowd enough to get an invite to join reminds me of fraternities in college (which I withdrew from half way through the process) and well-heeled yacht clubs or country clubs. I’d much rather make friends where I can just show up and have a nice time with someone based on a shared interest (like my local cycling club, where I’ve met a few folks I hang out with regularly… or even social dance clubs for those into ballroom or Latin dance). Meetups are obviously too transient, so I join clubs with consistent regular attendees. But maybe there are people this program will resonate with. Obviously, exclusive invite-only clubs like fraternities and country clubs are popular and I know many who joined, and even met life long friends there. …I guess, just not me. I probably have some weird outsider-exclusion-from-popular-kid-club complex that is well beyond the scope of this comment :) The same reason I won’t show up with a navy blazer to a yacht club social event to beg sponsorship from some commercial real estate agent with a chip on his shoulder because he has a quarter-zip polo from the club store and a member number like S29 he can use at the bar. That being said, good luck with the company, I hope it is successful and you meet a lot of great people.
  • nswizzle31 1y ago
    Totally get your perspective and appreciate the thoughts. In full transparency, this idea comes directly from my experience joining a fraternity and making a group of ~10 lifelong friends that I still get together with a few times a year. We have so little in common interest wise, but we bonded over just being in the same place repeatedly. I'm not in contact with anyone from my engineering program. That says a lot to me about shared interests as a (non-)driver of lasting friendships compared to shared EXPERIENCE, but I'm just one person. Obviously "frat culture" has an extreme negative connotation, but I will just say that not every fraternity is full of gym bros... they exist for every type of guy and I truly think the socially awkward guys I know who joined fraternities made significantly more meaningful relationship than the cool, good-looking guys who didn't.
• maerF0x0 1y ago
  adding one datapoint, maybe it will help the founders deal with an issue. On dating apps that have a friends component I've found a good percentage of the "friends" who connected with me were actually homosexual people hoping I was bi / curious. Could simply be a factor that the feature was grossly underused except by that segment, but addressing the non-negotiability of my preference. Yes they could have potentially been good friends, until they broke that boundary.
• nkotov 1y ago
  Finding a third place helps a lot. For me, it's church. That's my community that's outside of work and family. But I also have hobbies (karting, gun range, etc.) and through that, I meet new people.
  • kylehotchkiss 1y ago
    Church works for me because I tried to pursue one based on the quality of its small/home groups and not just off Sunday service. Most people are going to find a Sunday service they like and find themselves stuck trying to actually find community. I think it's fair to say churches are failing to facilitate small groups better. It's not just having them, it's spawning new ones regularly, making sure to reach all the demographics. It takes a lot of resources to do that, which means maybe pastor needs a slightly smaller trendy shoe budget.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• sfmz 1y ago
  Maybe an hour at the gym followed by some social event. You would have a spotter for your benchpress and some shared purpose.
• norir 1y ago
  Timely, relevant piece: https://psyche.co/ideas/is-being-single-a-happier-experience-for-women-or-men https://psyche.co/ideas/is-being-single-a-happier-experience...
• redtaperat 1y ago
  “Solve the straight male loneliness epidemic.” FTFY. Gay men have many more community options. Not sure why, but we just do togetherness inherently. Glad to see this though. It can only be solved by the people in the epidemic but it only takes the effort of a handful of organizers in the community/town/city to jumpstart events and hit critical mass. I’ve organized things on meetup and it takes persistence. Good luck!
  • gaws 1y ago
    > Gay men have many more community options. Not sure why, but we just do togetherness inherently. How much of that is motivated by dating and hooking up?
    • nathan_compton 1y ago
      I would guess its more like if you want to meet any other gay men you have to work at it because you are a minority. Being in a minority does engender some comradery all by itself.
• nerder92 1y ago
  Hey! We are building something in this space but connected with sports (starting from combat sports right now). We are Europe-based and we have some 60k users at the moment. I've sent you an email to have a chat and share some ideas!
• CrossdresserSWE 1y ago
  [flagged]
• matty22 1y ago
  I would argue that the fatal flaw of this idea is that it is an online app. If this was solvable with technology, Meetup.com has a 15 year head start on you and they didn't solve it. I think technology is antithetical to the goal you are working toward. Instead, start a local group and have a "all cellphones go here" basket when members enter so that when they are there, they are fully engaged and not doom scrolling the entire time.
  • phendrenad2 1y ago
    Meetup also raised many millions of dollars, so they had to enshittify fast.
• susiecambria 1y ago
  I very much appreciate these efforts. I don't think they, like I don't think men's sheds, have to be everything to all people. I DO think social isolation, white boys and men in the US (and elsewhere? I have no idea), and voluntarism have confronted challenges for years. Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone that came out in 2000, the Do Good Institute report on voluntarism (https://dogood.umd.edu/sites/default/files/2019-07/Where%20Are%20Americas%20Volunteers_Research%20Brief%20_Nov%202018.pdf https://dogood.umd.edu/sites/default/files/2019-07/Where%20A...) and the recent work of Scott Galloway and friends on boys are examples of investigations of problems, challenges, and solutions. Having been in the public policy world for 20+ years, government may be part of the solution (okay, not in this climate). But more often, it is part of the problem. Government is fickle about consistent and long term funding and evaluation and nonprofit organizations may not actually do work in a way that helps (meaning, is effective). Individuals and communities often step up to do something, often anything, that may address a need. Participation and reach may wax and wain and I think that's ok. It really is the nature of the beast. Best case, an effort fades away and there is already another underway or standing in the wings. The bottom line for me is that efforts are made. As a policy wonk and social worker, I'd very much like for efforts to be grounded in some sort of theory of change or best practice or something. But since I'm not a funder or a wielder of power, I don't get to make this decision.
• nsonha 1y ago
  I feel like the biggest problem with my attempts to make friends is that I don't have hobbies, interesting opinions, or "personality", put it a little blunt, can a club fix that?
  • gaws 1y ago
    No. The first step is finding a hobby that doesn't put you in front of a screen all day, then finding like-minded people who meet offline to discuss or do that hobby.
• ashoeafoot 1y ago
  These clubs are created . Then some social air superiority hag has fomo as part of her social circle takes part. So she comes crashing in driving the more shy members away. Repeat at infinitum.
  • gaws 1y ago
    Please share an example of this happening in real life.
• m_kos 1y ago
  I think it is a great idea, but the images on your page and lack of pricing details make me think it is expensive and focused on "manly" interests (gambling, whiskey, etc.).