131–140 of 234 posts
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To be fair, that's a sitcom. I think modern shows like BoJack Horseman are really good interpretations on how poorly those types of stories represented reality.
While I agree wholeheartedly, I cant help but think how funny it is that an absurdist cartoon with talking animals more accurately represents relationship stories.
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For people between 25 and 54, in America, there are almost exactly as many men as women, to within less than one percent. [0] So if you see more men than women around you, that's a filter bubble that you've artificially put yourself in. Therefore the converse must be that there are many other places in America where there are more women than men. So go out, socialize, get away from your bubble, and meet other people.…
Looking at this, singles between 18 and 44, there's just a massive amount of men compared to women: http://jonathansoma.com/singles/#1/6/2/0
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Friends is quaint. Thanks to dating applications in major cities (NYC, Paris, London, Bangkok, Shanghai) it's possible for a reasonably attractive man to go on multiple dates a night for weeks on end. There's also literally endless functions, meetups and places to hang out... if you can afford it. Outside of the cities, particularly in the US, it's shocking how mechanical and isolated people become. The combination o…
> In its place you find isolated exurb drug-addled dystopias. It's a bit horrifying. I think you may have spent more time reading Atlantic articles and listening to documentary podcasts about small town America than you’ve actually spent in it. It is still alive and well, in pretty much the way you describe, in many/most small towns.
Have you seen the movie "Shawshank Redemption"? It makes an interesting point about becoming institutionalized. There was an inmate that was released after ~50 years,he committed suicide because he couldn't adopt to living outside of the prison system. What they call the loneliness epidemic these days is a bit like that. In fact,I would say loneliness is social imprisonment. For one reason or the other individuals en…
I'm willing to put in a lot of work and have had great success at things where there is a clear goal and highly probable success if I put in the work: weight loss, fitness, studying, career changes, financial management, running a business etc. Relationships are so irritating to me because acquisition is a probabilistic, even random process which seems to have a very low success rate. I'm not fundamentally sold on the idea that it's worth the effort.
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Looking at this, singles between 18 and 44, there's just a massive amount of men compared to women: http://jonathansoma.com/singles/#1/6/2/0
How is that even possible?
I'd guess also more men than women migrate to the US for work.
Men used to die in large number from war and work, not so anymore.
So here we are.
Another thing I wondered about is the impact of automation and volatility on, for lack of a better word 'involuntary' micro social interactions. Until fairly recently people had 'forced' social interactions when doing their finances, shopping etc. Even if involuntary they 'trained' people's social skills and withered away at their acquired/innate social anxiety. Furthermore, even in these situations the persons you i…
It doesn't make any sense to blame technology. Believe it or not there are plenty of other cultures that have access to the same technology but don't produce the extreme isolation that's common in the US. There's much more powerful forces at work here than online banking and ecommerce. The reality is that in the US and likely the UK traditional social networks and graces have disintegrated. It's a cultural issue whic…
I think urbanization also plays a huge part in the trend. I grew up in a rural area, with pretty much most of my family located within a two-hour drive. This included my mom's side, who all grew up an hour away from where I did (which is where my dad's family is from). So it was easy for me to connect with family and friends, and I knew a lot of their friends' kids, etc.
Urbanization is changing this, though. People are leaving the rural areas (and for good reasons admittedly), but it's destroying the bonds that they form during their childhood and that continue across generations in some cases. Even a short stint away of 4 years, like what I did when I left to go to University, can make the connections difficult to reactivate when you come home (especially based on difference of shared experiences with those who didn't go to university, or who went somewhere local instead of out-of-state, etc.). And that's assuming your friend group from high school/right after stays around and doesn't leave the area themselves.
And, when you get to a new city, especially if it's after university (where you're forced to interact with people and where it's fairly easy to make friends), there's a good chance of knowing so few people it makes it difficult to enter social circles that don't involve work. Having hobbies definitely helps with this, but that also depends on having money in a lot of cases, and time in all cases.
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I agree with you 100% but I have an interesting personal anecdote, pretty much the opposite. When I was young I was very shy, painfully shy even into my early 20s. All social outings were family reunions or church. But I liked computers. So in the early 1990s I bought a computer and tried this thing called the Internet. By chance I discovered IRC. It was a world of strangers who interacted in real time. I could conve…
I think it’s fair to consider IRC a social tool. It’s build around small communities made up of people who both belong to and run the various rooms. So within that you have a social structure, you have familiarity and you have social hierarchies. This is different from most “social” platforms on the modern web. Reddit, twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, instagram, hackernews and so on are all global villages, operated by a…
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More and more muscle functions being eliminated by automation. Only trivially small ones that we'd do a few times a week. There's still lots of physical activity that we do (eg walking around, carrying things like shopping, sex, etc). Plus, many people have replaced the small manual activities like opening car windows with going to the gym. Anyone who has a sedentary desk job but tries to live a relatively healthy li…
> Only trivially small ones that we'd do a few times a week. There's still lots of physical activity that we do (eg walking around, carrying things like shopping, sex, etc). Not everywhere — one of the major reasons fitness (and BMI) is correlated with walkability of a city is that in many typical US cities, you barely have to walk anymore, while in the more walkable cities driving is less possible, and you’ll walk o…
It's not so much that as that you CAN'T walk around in most cities. The last place I lived Walmart was several miles down the road which had no sidewalks and was trenches for water 3 inches from the road. No bike lanes, no nothing. It isn't that most of America is difficult to walk through, it is impossible (if you don't want to be hit by a car at least).