11 ms·

People need to purposefully and intentionally do things. Sitting home on an app, watching TV is easy. There is no fear or rejection, there is no work to get out

• pkulak 9mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
  • dymk 9mo ago
    Exactly this. Vote for representatives that want to build walkable cities, support small businesses, and want to build parks. Suburban sprawl sucks.
    • toomuchtodo 9mo ago
      This. I also like the idea of libraries having a cafe, internet access, a place to meet, all non profit and owned by the community. Community is a function of distance, broadly speaking.
      • reaperducer 9mo ago
        I also like the idea of libraries having a cafe, internet access, a place to meet, all non profit and owned by the community. There are lots of libraries with cafes, maker spaces, and more. Seattle is one. If yours doesn't, this is your wake-up call to get involved with your local library. Stop waiting for someone else to do things.
        • huhkerrf 9mo ago
          I'm willing to bet that the libraries near the person you're talking to have all but maybe a cafe. I mean, I've never seen a library in the US that didn't have internet access and a place to meet and that weren't nonprofit.
        • nereye 9mo ago
          Which Seattle library (am assuming you're referring to SPL/Seattle Public Library system) has a maker space? There is no maker space listed at https://www.spl.org/programs-and-services/a-z-programs-and-services https://www.spl.org/programs-and-services/a-z-programs-and-s.... Within KCLS, there are two public libraries that have maker spaces (AFAIK): Bellevue, Federal Way. PS this is not meant to be confrontational, would love it if there were more maker spaces in libraries (when have asked in the past, the usual answer is that they do not have enough space for it).
          • reaperducer 9mo ago
            No, the Seattle reference was for the cafe, not a maker space.
    • SoftTalker 9mo ago
      Suburban sprawl is not going to be "fixed" in anyones lifetime. But it doesn't have to be limiting. I grew up in a very typical suburban style neighborhood in the 1970s. Tract homes, lots of cul-de-sac streets. But neighbors talked to one another, kids played together, there were summer gatherings in those cul-de-sacs on the 4th of July or Labor Day. Don't think you have to live in some idealized fantasy land to go talk to your neighbors.
      • ecshafer 9mo ago
        I live in a suburban neighborhood with a couple bag ends, our neighborhood is pretty social. couple of neighborhood bbqs a year, kids all playing together every day, dinners, etc. It is quiet and not a lot of traffic with long term residents. I am not 100% on what exactly the key is for a town is, I think style matters, but Ive been in walkable neighborhoods without a good community, and non-walkable neighborhoods with one.
        • SoftTalker 9mo ago
          I'll say that when I was a kid, the neighborhood was still as it was originally built, no sidewalks. Didn't stop anyone from socializing, didn't stop kids from biking around. The city added sidewalks there in the '00s or so, but when I go back there I almost never see anyone using them. I think the trend of isolation and loneliness is not really related to infrastructure or stuff like "walkability." Those things are pretty minor obstacles.
          • johnpaulkiser 9mo ago
            How big were the lots? How far of a walk was the closest bar, grocery store, cafe? Do you have to walk onto someone's property to talk to them if they are sitting on the porch? I lived in a car dependent burb for 20+ years and would rarely, if ever, run into my neighbors out on the town. Living in a walkable neighborhood in a medium-low density city for under a year and I regularly run into my neighbors.
            • 9mo ago
    • BurningFrog 9mo ago
      Voting isn't going to fix this problem in our lifetimes. We need to do things ourselves.
    • eddieroger 9mo ago
      No it doesn't. I live in a planned neighborhood in the suburbs. I can walk to a branch of my local library, a few restaurants, a bar, a bookstore, I even get my haircut in my neighborhood. And even if none of that existed, nothing has stopped me from being friends with my neighbors, or the parents of my kid's friends. The suburbs are a different model with tradeoffs, but they're also useful for periods and phases of life different from the ones served by urban settings.
      • stryan 9mo ago
        A planned neighborhood is technically by definition not suburban sprawl, as sprawl requires a lack of planning. On the other hand, I'd argue if you can do all of that (and said walking distance is under a mile[0]) you're not even in a suburb, you're in a dense enough location to be a town or small city. Unfortunately thanks to American zoning and planning it can be very difficult to know what your home area is actually considered and it makes this type of anecdotal evidence not particularly useful[1]. [0] A mile is essentially the farthest the average person will comfortable walk versus driving a car for travel that does not require carrying anything back. Once you add in carrying things (e.g. groceries) it drops to half a mile. Anything less dense than that and people won't want to walk, anything more dense than that and you're into standard city planning. [1] Assuming you're American of course and obviously I'm not about to ask you to dox yourself, considering this type of thing can vary right down to the neighbourhood level.
      • PaulHoule 9mo ago
        Urban environments blunt people's connection to other people too, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese If you pack people in too tight they just tune each other out.
        • huhkerrf 9mo ago
          I mean, the very first paragraph of your own link says: "However, subsequent investigations revealed that the extent of public apathy was exaggerated." and the second paragraph says, "Researchers have since uncovered major inaccuracies in the Times article, and police interviews revealed that some witnesses had attempted to contact authorities."
    • tokioyoyo 9mo ago
      I live in probably the most walkable city in the world, but there are millions of lonely people here as well. From any of my observations, I can’t pinpoint to one single problem. It might be a composite effect of different things contributing to the easiness of being alone. Cultural skill that overtime gets eroded, and as less time people spend among others, it becomes even harder to go back.
  • srean 9mo ago
    Yes. Our lopsided emphasis on individualism, our definition of economic efficiency that does not include the mental health value, these have been detrimental to our connections, roots, community, family etc. We said, let the mom and pop stores die, their replacements provide the same value but more efficiently. Let community bonds die they intrude upon our individual destiny. But we did not correctly account for the value provided by those that we chose to replace. So it is not surprising that we find ourselves here. Could it have played out any other way ? I doubt it. Our world is an underdamped system, so we will keep swinging towards the extremes, till we figure out how to get a critically damped system. The other serious problem is that the feedback system is so laggy, that's a biggy in feedback control loops.
    • LorenPechtel 9mo ago
      The world has become a much bigger place. You used to know who to avoid, the default was someone was acceptable. Now the ones to avoid move around and it's all too likely that a newcomer is such a person.
      • tenacious_tuna 9mo ago
        > Now the ones to avoid move around and it's all too likely that a newcomer is such a person. This seems a wild generalization to make, though I guess "be suspicious of newcomers" is a little biologically hardwired. What's your epistemology for believing "newcomers" are "the ones to avoid"?
        • LorenPechtel 9mo ago
          The problem is the bad guys move around a lot more than the good guys.
          • tenacious_tuna 9mo ago
            That's not an explanation, that's a restatement of the claim.
      • 9mo ago
  • Aurornis 9mo ago
    The common retort is that these don't exist any more, but in my experience they're all over. If you have kids you start seeing them everywhere, too. They're not as classically romantic as an ancient Greek agora, but there are plenty of spaces. During the summer I'm probably at a different space 5 days a week with the kids after school. I think the real problem is that some people forget how to go places. It's so easy to do the routine of work -> dinner -> screen time -> sleep -> repeat that time vanishes from people. Whenever I hear people, usually young and single, complain that their 8 hour job leaves 0 hours in the day to do anything and they're too tired on the weekends to go out, it's always this: Their time is disappearing into their screens, which makes it feel like their only waking hours go to work. I try to give gentle nudges to help give people ideas, but none of them really want to hear that it's something they can change. It's just so easy to believe that life has thrust this situation upon us and there's nothing we can do about it.
    • kmeisthax 9mo ago
      Also, people forgot how to find places. If you're driving a car, places speed by too fast to see or remember (and it's dangerous to spend too much time looking at them). On Google, places are actively hidden from you for the sake of making the map look "cleaner". Every time I go downtown (on transit, not by car) I notice new shit that just doesn't exist on the map unless you specifically type in the name to get Google to admit that it exists.
      • immibis 9mo ago
        I noticed this the first time I took a walk by myself to the town center rather than letting my parents drive me there. You know the routine: drive to the mall parking lot, go and get the thing you're looking for, drive home. Well, I didn't have my own car and figured I could walk there (about an hour, so probably 2-3km, in a country that uses sidewalks). It's basically magical how much stuff you notice that you would just ignore when in the car, even as a passenger.
    • cybwraith 9mo ago
      > The common retort is that these don't exist any more Usually when I see the retort, its also with the understanding that 3rd places need to be free, or essentially free. If theres a significant expectation of money being spent in order to spend time there, its not really a “3rd place” by the intended definition. (Thats the argument I’ve seen)
• bherms 9mo ago
  this is one reason, while i personally work from home, i actually lament that many 20-somethings will never be in an office i'm nearing 40, have a wife and kid, house in the mountains, etc... but, damn, those office days were foundational to the person I am today
  • rootusrootus 9mo ago
    For sure. I would have been in real trouble if covid had happened when I was 20. The few times I tried to work remotely it took a matter of just a few days to go stir crazy. The office was a good environment for me (it helped that it was legitimately a good environment with good coworkers, not everyone has that). As a family man with a wife, two kids, two cats, and a dog ... working from home is no big deal for me now. I prefer it. I got lucky that we did not get forced into this until I was in a position to handle it well.
  • vel0city 9mo ago
    I agree with this take. I'm definitely not friends with everyone I've worked with in person, but some of the most meaningful post-college friendships were formed by socializing with the people in the office (or people I met through socializing with office friends).
    • bherms 9mo ago
      Yep, I met my wife at an office party - she didn't work for the company, just stopped by with someone who did And not just the office friends that come from it -- I spent an hour a day on the bus, grabbed lunch around town, was downtown when work wrapped up and ended up at a nearby bar/restaurant, went to shows because I was downtown, etc. Just being forced out of the house led to SO MUCH MORE. Now I work from home and while we do travel a lot, we barely ever leave the house when we're home. We didn't make a single new friend for like 5 years (and we are a VERY social couple, generally the center of most of our friend groups). We've only just now started making new friends again now that our daughter is a toddler and getting us out of the house -- and it is incredibly refreshing
      • 9mo ago
• theroncross 9mo ago
  Agreed. I'm not sure how it happened, but it feels like we've experienced a societal shift where a large number of people now expect and wait for other people to create nicely packaged solutions to their (real or imagined) problems. From social apps to medicine to play dates to curated vacations, too many people are unwilling to face "the great unknown" that is just going out and seeing what happens, warts and all. Somehow the ability of boomers to make conversation with strangers has become a meme instead of a norm - they're good at it because they practice it.
• rootusrootus 9mo ago
  I think what makes this good advice especially difficult is that it cannot be one-sided. When everyone is letting doom-scrolling replace their social interaction, then one person won't easily solve their own problem by going out to socialize. We need a broader solution, probably a cultural shift away from using technology as a crutch to avoid other people. Maybe the current younger generations will evolve a balance.
  • wanderingstan 9mo ago
    Yes, for years now I’ve had this creeping feeling that it’s a social version of the prisoners dilemma: if you’re the only one that puts down the phone (or gets off social media, etc) then you’re just left behind. It’s a coordination problem.
  • ecshafer 9mo ago
    I think that there are a lot of people that are kind of waiting for other people to pitch something to do. Maybe you want to call them type A and B, leader and follower, I think of it as the Host and Attendees. The more of the Hosts the more things that will be happening, so trying to become a Host is just creates more opportunities.
• aleph_minus_one 9mo ago
  > People need to purposefully and intentionally do things. Sitting home on an app, watching TV is easy. There is no fear or rejection, there is no work to get out of the house, there is no risk. But there is also no reward. This is the wrong model: Sitting (alone) at home and working on program code or reading scientific textbooks does have a reward. Many things for which you go outside of the house or where you interact with other people have a much lower reward. So you rather loose a rather decent local optimum, and if you don't know very well where to look outside for something really good, you get much worse results than if you simply stayed at home and do there what you love.
  • jselysianeagle 9mo ago
    I think by "reward" in the context of this discussion on loneliness, OP may have meant the opportunity to meet people, make friends, perhaps hit it off with someone and land a date, if you're single. Not that it's entirely useless/detrimental to spend time at home reading or pursuing whatever solo hobbies you happen to have. To be sure, there certainly are many introverts who are perfectly happy on their own with no need to get out and meet people. More power to them! But there are many that crave human connection, even if they happen to have many intellectual interests and for these types of individuals, they would be well served at least carving out some portion of their time to get out of the house with the explicit aim of meeting people. And yes, not every such outing will lead to lifelong friends or meeting your next soulmate, but it's a numbers game.
    • watwut 9mo ago
      "Opportunity" is not reward. Actually making friends is reward. And that actually making friends requires a lot more then just "go outside somewhere we cant tell you where". If you just go to a cafe or club, you will sit alone in cafe or club. And if you walk to someone randomly, they wont appreciate it because it is weird.
  • acron0 9mo ago
    We are optimising for reducing loneliness, remember.
• wanderingstan 9mo ago
  > Attend every week. In my experience, this is the key. “90% of life is showing up.” If you are around the same people every week, for whatever reason, with even a minimal amount of openness and friendliness, you will get community.
  • aqme28 9mo ago
    Exactly. It can take a month or more but the secret for me is to “become a regular” at places I like.
  • blahaj 9mo ago
    That doesn't work for everyone and everywhere.
    • Gooblebrai 9mo ago
      But it works for most in most places
  • pmg101 9mo ago
    I'm open and friendly to everyone I meet but get treated like a weirdo and ostracized (I am also a weirdo). You don't only have to be "open and friendly", you have to say the correct things in the correct way in the correct order in order for people to accept you.
• asdfman123 9mo ago
  I think the trick is getting off social media. When I was a computer nerd in the 2000s, I noticed people used to like to hang around and chat, but I mostly didn't. Now, everyone is an internet addict, and I was just ahead of the curve. No one hangs around and chats anymore. When you get off social media, real life becomes far more interesting. The problem with addiction is that it's so stimulating that everything else is boring. You have to let your mind reset.
  • munificent 9mo ago
    I agree but if your goal is to socialize more, it's not enough to get off social media. You need to be in a place where enough other people do too. Think of a city as both a spatial and a temporal grouping of people that are in the same place at the same time. Every hour a person spends at home on social media is an hour that they aren't really in the city and are not available for you to socialize with. The cumulative hours that people spend staring at their phones are effectively a massive loss of population density. That lost density makes it harder to find people even if you yourself are getting off a screen and looking for them.
    • publicdebates 9mo ago
      I thought of this the other day. I was on the train ride back from Chicago, and there was a family of four adults, sitting across from me, all just staring at their phones. I was effectively alone at that point in time. None of them were present. But you explained it in a new way I had not thought of before. They're quite literally not there in that moment, for however long that moment lasts.
      • netsharc 9mo ago
        I heard the unofficial motto for BlackBerry from friends, something along the lines of "make distant friends be nearby, and nearby friends distant"
      • munificent 9mo ago
        I took the train from Seattle to Portland last fall. Half of the people in the observation car were on Nintendo Switches the entire time. In the observation car.
• swah 9mo ago
  1. fair 2. did this but they are all 80+ 3. ok 4. not that good at anything, too old for most groups. gym no one talks with anyone. bjj was the best for this, since its more older and mostly men 5. remote work ruined my mental health
  • throwaway2037 9mo ago
    > gym no one talks with anyone My experience is similar. I think there is a combination of "some gyms are more social" and "some people are good at breaking the ice with strangers". On social media, I frequently hear people say stuff like: "Oh yeah, I have a bunch of friends at the gym." I am not doubting their story, but it doesn't happen to me. > remote work ruined my mental health I'm sorry to hear it. I'm not here to start a holy war about remote work. Can you share some details? For me, remote work has me very quickly "falling apart" -- showering at 2PM or not at all. Going to the office forces some structure into my life and everything else flows from that. To be clear: I understand that a lot of people love remote work.
    • mystifyingpoi 9mo ago
      > "Oh yeah, I have a bunch of friends at the gym." Their definition of "a friend" can wildly vary from yours. Especially if such relationship is cultivated only at the gym. I'd hardly call it "friendship".
      • zem 9mo ago
        on the other hand, having people you see regularly and exchange pleasantries with can change gymming from a lonely to a sociable experience.
    • theshackleford 9mo ago
      Remote work has allowed me to build the structure I need to function and perform at a high level. I have severe ADHD and do not fit well into conventional office environments, not because I lack capability, but because my work is most effective when done on my own terms and schedule. I've worked remotely on and off for most of my life (I grew up on a farm, so "working from home" was already quite natural to me.) This is also colored a little by the fact that remote work is no longer really just an optional for me. Due to a spinal cord injury, I need flexibility to manage just ongoing existence, rehabilitation, and frequent medical appointments. An in-office role simply isn’t compatible with those realities, though the most recent surgeries do make it more viable than it was even twelve months ago. I’m fortunate to work for a remote organisation that recognises this arrangement as mutually beneficial: I’m able to do my best work, and they get the full value of my expertise. With all of that being said, I know people whom are far more aligned with you. Remote work is not particuarly beneficial for them, they indeed need an externally inforced structure and so would be best (and happiest) in office. I would never tell them otherwise and nor would they do the same to me. I am thankful for the most part that many (though not all) of us somewhat have the ability to work in the way in which is best for us (and those employing us.)
• digbybk 9mo ago
  This is good advice for your friends and family, but a bad answer to the question. "How can we solve the obesity epidemic? Stop eating so much and get some exercise." Well sure, but this misses the big picture. We built a social infrastructure that encourages a sedentary, solitary life. We shouldn't be confused by physical and emotional health implications. We can expect some people to be proactive about it, but we can't expect that of everyone.
  • ecshafer 9mo ago
    I guess we need to delete the internet and tv from existence. I think that the more people getting out and putting effort in the better, it helps create a knock on effect.
    • digbybk 9mo ago
      > I guess we need to delete the internet and tv from existence. If only. My preferred solution is a 4 year national service. College is a key place to form a friend network, but not everyone gets to go.
      • MrVandemar 9mo ago
        National Service means largely: * Giving people guns and teaching them to kill * Teaching people to blindly follow orders barked at them by an authority figure * Enormous potential for mental health problems, including bullying, abuse and suicide * Wasting 4 productive years of someones life I'm pretty certain national service is a Bad Idea™
        • redhed 9mo ago
          Yeah there's countries who have faced actual existential threat (South Korea, Finland, Israel, etc) and national service is still extremely unpopular.
        • digbybk 9mo ago
          Maybe it's a bad idea, but it is an idea. "People should get out more" is _not even wrong_
• throwup238 9mo ago
  > (unwalkable towns where all of the houses are big garages in the front and no porches) You can turn the garage into a hangout spot. A neighbor has a full bar with communal table plus TV for sports and he opens up the garage door once a week on a schedule (Sunday game day or whatever depending on the season) and whenever he feels like it on work week evenings. As people pass by we invite them over and after a few months everyone knows that when the garage is open, they can come over for a drink and to shoot the shit. Low pressure social interactions that often turn into weekend outings, regular poker games, etc. Now years later we get impromptu block parties when he brings out the grill onto the driveway. It’s done wonders for our community in an otherwise unwalkable SoCal suburb.
  • publicdebates 9mo ago
    This is something I absolutely would not feel comfortable doing unless I was warmly encouraged to join in, that's how I've been turned into a social outcast in my youth. I know some people who for a fact feel the same way. Maybe one solution is therapy, to help massage them out of their shell, to help them learn to be vulnerable and unafraid and friendly. But many of them refuse to go to therapy for whatever reason also. These are things I will be running into as I try to resolve this. I have already encountered a young man named Daniel who remembered me, and told me that he was hospitalized, and that the thought of me and my sign helped him get through it. I'm dealing with people on all spectrums of mental health. In fact, maybe that's kind of the point. I'm trying to reach out to people who refuse to go to therapy, who have internal thoughts berating them all day long, and I have the unique opportunity of helping them through the darkness and into the light of the truth, that they are valuable and lovable, if only people saw the true them, and trusted them to become that.
    • Fr0styMatt88 9mo ago
      Yep. I grew up in the era of ‘stranger danger’. We were explicitly taught as kids to fear strangers and socialising. We were taught “don’t be rude and butt in to conversations uninvited”, etc. Still, something else is off. In the 90s, the Internet was a way to expand your social circle. So many friends made on IRC groups that moved into real life. Nowadays yeah, commenting on Reddit and chatting to friends in message groups does feel like socialising, even though you might go two weeks without seeing anyone other than coworkers, cashiers (maybe) and Uber Eats delivery drivers.
• publicdebates 9mo ago
  Sure, but what about the people who don't do this? Those who sit at home all day, scrolling away, drinking themselves to death, wondering why life is so lonely. The only time you ever see such people is when they're walking to the grocery store. How do you reach out to them to let them know about these ideas or encourage them to try it? Especially when they're filled with discouraging thoughts? What if all they need is one single person to say hi? How can I find them, reach them? This is what I'm asking.
  • luplex 9mo ago
    We need the Tiktoks of the world to realize their responsibility: users get addicted to the apps in order to numb their feelings of loneliness. So we'd need an intervention within these apps that makes them unbearable for the lonely, combined with a healthier way to engage with loneliness. Imagine TikTok asking you "you've scrolled for 30 minutes. You might be in a loneliness spiral. Write down the name of someone you would like to be closer to."
    • publicdebates 9mo ago
      TikTok does in fact remind you, quite often, that you've been scrolling for a while, and suggests taking a break. Last year, for most of each day, I would just ignore this and keep scrolling. I'd see it so many times each day. That wouldn't change if they added a suggestion like writing a name down. I'd still ignore it, and I think most people in the same situation would too. But when I was at the store, or walking to the store, that's when someone could have found a way in, and been able to get me to make a connection and open up.
      • SchemaLoad 9mo ago
        Sure, in the same way gambling companies tell you to "Gamble responsibly" at the end of their advert to get you to gamble more. Imo short form video with infinite scrolling is straight up poison and it's impossible to resolve without just completely destroying it.
    • randysalami 9mo ago
• throwaway314155 9mo ago
  > 2. Join a religious organization. Go to church, but also join the mens/womens group, join a bible studies class. Attend every week. So no atheists then?
  • tyg13 9mo ago
    Surprised to see this comment strike a nerve with the HN crowd. That was my first thought as well. Religious organizations? No thanks.
    • groundzeros2015 9mo ago
      Well that’s part of the problem. secularism didn’t make an alternative.
    • embedding-shape 9mo ago
      If you agree with the entire comment, except just that line, do you upvote or not? I think maybe that's why :) If that line was the only thing in the comment, the reaction would probably have been different.
  • RiverCrochet 9mo ago
    Start an atheist club.
    • deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    • onemoresoop 9mo ago
      Or join some community.
  • bell-cot 9mo ago
    if [ atheist ] then 's/joins a religious org/join a service org/' Similar 'bible studies' => 'torah studies' or 'quran studies' if you're Jewish or Muslim. Just ask if you're unsure of the details.
  • 9mo ago
• fbn79 9mo ago
  Join a religious organization to fight loneliness is like start smoking to loose weight.
  • PlatoIsADisease 9mo ago
    Yeah I thought that was weird, along with joining ethnic organizations. I don't really need to explain the religion thing, but ethnic organizations are weird since you are forming an identity based on your unchoosable parent's DNA. I've seen both used by leaders to weaponize their members at their members detriment. Although, if you are doing politics, I can see this being pragmatically useful.
    • juggerl3 9mo ago
      [flagged]
      • throwaway38297 9mo ago
        Telling people to bond over traits they can't choose seems like an excellent way to isolate people with rare traits they can't choose. I have more in common with a factory worker in China than I do with the president of my own country, even if we happen to share the same skin tone. I am defined by my experiences, after all, not things like genetics, culture or history.
    • ecshafer 9mo ago
      So in my city there used to be some clubs, like the Ukrainian Lounge, the Polish Club, etc. which was a club where people paid dues and the only real requirement was to be part polish, ukrainian etc. It was basically just a bar to hang out at. The reason I put it there is that those guys seemed to get lifelong companionship and socialization out of it. Instead of shaming people for what may drive them, I am throwing out options I have observed.
  • Barrin92 9mo ago
    it also doesn't even fight loneliness. Loneliness isn't solved by merely not being physically alone. I grew up in a Catholic environment but because I bought exactly none of it the religious environments were exactly where I felt most isolated. You're not solving loneliness by joining a cult or a gang. You can only deal with it by making authentic connections to people you actually want to be with. Countless of people are lonely and miserable within families.
• stronglikedan 9mo ago
  > Sitting home on an app, watching TV is easy. ...there is also no reward. Like hell there isn't. Speak for yourself.
• browningstreet 9mo ago
  A somewhat cynical response given the frequency of this topic/question being posted here and on other social media platforms. Add a weak "/s but not really" if you want: People sitting at home living on apps and watching TV who decide to go to a new group social event to change things up will struggle to make a connection with someone else who was at home on an app and watching TV deciding to get out and meet someone else. The people who have friends.. already have friends. Those who don't are numerous social cycle iterations in on that. And how long before those people just end up talking about TV shows anyway?
  • StevePerkins 9mo ago
    Nonsense. It's fine to be boring, and to have boring friends. This expectation that you need to be travel influencer or a deep philosopher in order to have anything to talk about is an artifact of social media. I'm old enough to remember what socialization was like pre-Internet. And by curated social media standards, it was really boring. It was also great.
    • browningstreet 9mo ago
      My post wasn't about socializing, it was in the context of the "loneliness epidemic" as a social topic construct.
      • habinero 9mo ago
        I mean, if you've already convinced yourself that you'll have a bad time and no one will like you...that's what they call a self-fulfilling prophesy. It's fine to feel intimidated or shy, but then find something else that does feel manageable. It's something you can get better with by practicing. And I say that as an introvert who went semi-feral after Covid lol.
  • technothrasher 9mo ago
    > who decide to go to a new group social event to change things up will struggle to make a connection with someone else I can't imagine going to a general "group social event" like a party and making a connection. I'd end up just sitting there being bored until I left. I don't have the personality to just strike up a conversation about nothing with some one I don't know. But I do somewhat often go to events that revolve around my hobbies. There, I already have a connection with the strangers, through the hobby, and I have something to talk about or listen to. I've met plenty of new friends that way.
• BikiniPrince 9mo ago
  I always tell people to find a meetup group and then you will run into people with similar interests. I’ve made some good friends that way.
• dyauspitr 9mo ago
  I think part of the problem is the stuff you’re suggesting. I think everyday life needs to happen organically and if everything is scheduled and regimented and needs to be planned for, it’s very hard for the vast majority of people to actually accomplish. In the past the way, this worked was you went to church which was societally and peer enforced. People need to have marriages that last a lifetime. It’s my opinion that marriages that are a partnership without any sort of hierarchy like we had in the past are essentially doomed to fail except in a small percentage of cases. You need to have kids with stable homes that can go out on the street and be outside all day without fear of crime. Extended families need to live close to each other so there are a lot of folks raising kids and approaching life’s every day problems together. You need to shut off indoor sources of entertainment like social media and video gaming. You need to have a solid education system that is factual and science based, and only lets kids get through on the basis of meritocracy so they can be good informed citizens, and not vote for populist nonsense like we currently have. In a nutshell, what I’m trying to say is people cannot act on what’s best for them but society can put enough peer pressure on everyone for everyone’s good. This might be very hard to listen to in an individualistic society like ours and I don’t even know if I would want to live in this society, but I believe that if that’s the only option, everyone is better off.
• FrustratedMonky 9mo ago
  Sounds like a lot of work. Isn't there an app where I can just order a temporary friend for a few hours. Uber Friend.
  • chasd00 9mo ago
    > Isn't there an app where I can just order a temporary friend for a few hours there's two. Only Fans and making an appointment with a therapist (basically a professional listener/friend educated in helping you help yourself).
    • ashtakeaway 9mo ago
      It was just a couple of months ago where I found myself complaining that we shouldn't have to pay exorbitant amounts of money for friendship. Last time I went to a bar a pretty woman and her friends decided to sit next to me only after I closed my tab and was getting an Uber to go back home. She seemed super nervous just sitting next to me and I assumed that if I butted into their conversation I'd get ignored like last time.
  • gulugawa 9mo ago
    I'm working on a decentralized open source Meetup alternative where people can find social events and meet new friends. https://codeberg.org/createthirdplaces https://codeberg.org/createthirdplaces
• deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
• dfabulich 9mo ago
  This is answering the wrong question. You're answering the question, "In a loneliness epidemic, what can I do to be less lonely?" Your answer is to use self discipline (which is hard) to get out of your house consistently, a decent answer to that question. To actually fix the loneliness epidemic, you'd have to get everyone else to do that. In the 20th century, getting out of the house consistently was the easiest way to interact with other people. Now, you can interact with lots of other people (in a less satisfying way) without leaving your house. What's going to fix that? How do we get everyone to eat better? How do we get everyone to get enough sleep? How do we get everyone to exercise more? "Just tell them to do it" won't work. "Why don't we all just put our phones away?" won't work. We'd need a policy. (My best guess: in the US, mandate that health insurers pay for therapy, and provide therapy at low/no cost in countries with national health care.)
  • publicdebates 9mo ago
    I was with you up until you said policy was the solution. No, action must come first. Policy needs people to agree on it, and can take a long time to enact. Action can be done now, and allows experimentation and disagreement. I am looking for actionable solutions that I can experiment with as one lone individual with time to spare on Sundays.
    • dfabulich 9mo ago
      If you're looking for individual advice, instead of "solving" the whole epidemic, then here's mine. To solve loneliness for yourself, you've got to get out of the house more. But, deep down, you already knew that, right? Just like we all know we should exercise more, eat better, etc. Self discipline is hard. So, my advice for that is to work with a therapist. A therapist can help you do the thing that you know you need to do but can't make yourself do. People often think therapy is only for "serious" problems, but it's great for just helping you to stop sabotaging yourself (and we all sabotage ourselves, in big ways and small). Therapists have regularly scheduled appointments, which also helps in its own right. (You'll get better workout results if you exercise weekly with a trainer.) Scheduled recurring appointments make it easier to attend other social gatherings, too. The chess club means every Tuesday night. People will be watching Monday night football at the bar. Church is on Sunday. (Temple is on Saturday, Jumu'ah is on Friday, etc.) But you knew all that, already, too. To do what you already knew you need to do, try therapy.
• conductr 9mo ago
  I do this. Even to the point where I go to church yet am openly agnostic. Takes the right church, I enjoy a good pastor and message even if I don’t technically believe it can be rooted in morality or philosophy and I can filter out the religious aspects. I could do without the singing but that’s my wife’s favorite part. The thing is, church works for this because it’s an agreed upon and set time of the week. It’s also a broad group of people. Having friends of all ages is beneficial. I prefer it to a hobby group or our parent groups where we are all very similar in many aspects, although I do those too I just feel like their impact is less on building my own character. It’s hard to lose what has been lost in the macro sense and then go from 0 to 1. A social movement like “screen free Saturday” or something would be ideal. Kids had to prearrange where to meet, where the teens will party (they don’t party anymore yall!), arrange logistics, and deal with being bored during some part of the day (underrated life skill, as a busy adult I love being bored, but hated it when young). I just recently explained to my kid how TV worked in the 80s. You couldn’t pick what to watch and there were very few times when cartoons were on. You either watched the news or MASH with the adults or found something else to do out of boredom.
• PaulHoule 9mo ago
  This movie https://joinordiefilm.com/ https://joinordiefilm.com/ based on the work of Robert Putnam is an essential backgrounder on the topic. Yet, if you're concerned about Gen Z, 2-4 are aspirational at best. Churches, clubs, live music events, and every other group my son attends have a lot of people who are 35+ and children that tag along but the 18-30 demo is almost absolutely absent at events away from the local colleges and universities. [1] It's quite depressing for someone his age who is looking to connect with his cohort in person. Leaders of groups are somewhere between outright hostile, completely indifferent, or well-meaning but unable to do anything about the "cold start" problem. I'm sympathetic to the argument of Ancient Wisdom Tradition (AWT) practitioners that secularism is to blame, but my consistent advice to anyone is you can control what you can control and that secularism would not have encroached as much as it has if AWT organizations weren't asleep at the switch if not doing the devil's work for him. Personally in the last year I've found a lot of meaning being an event photographer for this group https://fingerlakesrunners.org/ https://fingerlakesrunners.org/ where I know you can find some people in the 18-30 hole because I read their age off their bibs. My son is doing all the ordinary things and I am supporting him in all the ordinary ways but I do believe extraordinary times require extraordinary methods. I can't advise that anyone follow my path but I felt a calling to shamanism two years ago which recently became real, I "go out" as https://mastodon.social/@UP8/115901190470904729 https://mastodon.social/@UP8/115901190470904729 who is a "kidult" and who embodies [2] the wisdom, calm and presence of a 1000-year old fox who's earned his nine tails. In one of the worlds I inhabit I'd call this a "platform" for gathering information and making interventions as it builds rapport and bypasses barriers and the social isolation of Gen Z is my top priority for activism in my circle of influence. [1] ... and our data there seems to indicates that Asian students seem to be OK and white kids, if they do anything at all, drink. [2] ... at least aspires to
  • juggerl3 9mo ago
    [flagged]
  • tern 9mo ago
    While I have no doubt that this is a liberating practice for you, for anyone else reading, you can also actually become a real shaman in pretty much any shamanic tradition, and I know many people who who have done that. This is, in fact, an excellent way to fill your life with meaning and connection if it's something you're called to.
• JoshTriplett 9mo ago
  > 1. People need to make a point to talk to their neighbors There are people who find this satisfying. However, you don't typically choose your neighbors. Don't be afraid to eschew spending time on this in favor of groups you deliberately choose based on common interests.
  • tyre 9mo ago
    You might not choose your neighbors but, like your family, they're a part of your life anyway. You can choose to build bonds with them (rely on them to water plants, pick up packages, borrow spices) or create your own little world. You can also find these things elsewhere—I know someone whose dry cleaner cat sits for her—but your relationship with your neighbors can still really affect your life.
  • huhkerrf 9mo ago
    The world could use a lot more of learning to like, or even love, the people you didn't choose. That's how it was forever. Now it's not, and we're talking about a loneliness epidemic. I don't think those things are unrelated.
    • JoshTriplett 9mo ago
      The people who enjoy doing that should absolutely feel free to do so. My comment was addressed at people who don't, to remind people that it's okay to not, and to choose to spend your time in other ways instead.
      • deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
      • huhkerrf 9mo ago
        You missed the point of my comment. My comment was saying that the people who _don't_ should learn how to do so. It's a skill like any others, and what you're proposing contributes to people being lonely. Instead of making connections with people around them, who they didn't choose, they hold out for some platonic ideal of a friend who they have the right amount of things in common with. You see it in this comment section where you've got people shooting down every idea that people put out there. Oh, I can't go to the gym, I don't like working out. Oh, I don't want to join clubs because they don't have my interests. But I also don't want to be lonely, so I guess I'm just stuck.
• diyseguy 9mo ago
  I see this as quite a problem in the US. The default place a lonely person has to go is usually a church - where you can expect a modicum, possibly even a seeming profusion, of welcome. This is their hook. They provide automatic acceptance - of sorts. This is also how the right wing fascist regime convinced people to let Trump take over the country - propaganda through the churches. The only other options people hear about are 'join a club.' Interesting clubs aren't that easy to find. Hanging out at the local pub has obvious downsides, though I guess it sorta works in some countries. We need more ways for people to casually meet others that aren't trying to manipulate you or program you with religious doctrine...
  • huhkerrf 9mo ago
    > where you can expect a modicum, possibly even a seeming profusion, of welcome. This is their hook. Do you think that, possibly, they're really just happy to see you?
    • diyseguy 9mo ago
      Sure, the way cult members are happy to greet new recruits. It's very insincere. If you have a real issue and you want to talk to someone - you are very likely to hear something like: "Well, pray to Jesus dear, only he can help you." In other words, if you actually need any support - go home and pray about it - don't expect real connection with people. The only connection comes through the imaginary friends they encourage you to divert all your attention and problems to...
      • diyseguy 9mo ago
        Also, you have to accept the brainworms to be accepted into the church community. You gotta join the Borg. You can't have a different opinion or be an atheist. Or you have to hide it well and be comfortable with doing that. It's a cult - a very old one, 20 centuries old. This longevity gives it a feeling of validity or that it's the 'only truth'. But it's really just collective sunk cost fallacy. It's the cultural bandaid that we apply to all problems because no one dares think up a new one. Rip off that bandaid and all kinds of problems it was patching emerge. That's why we dare not speak of parting ways with it.
• encrypted_bird 9mo ago
  I want to do this "grow at least 2 roots into your community" idea but a huge challenge for me is simply that I'm 2nd shift. That naturally leads to a lot more isolation than 1st shift. (3rd shifties, my heart goes out to you. I've done that job. Not a fun time personally.)