How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart • Hacker News Board

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#81

Post by madengr » Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 2:18 PM UTC

clarry wrote: post #28

npunt wrote: post #17

Suburbs are structurally lonely (your own castle with as little reliance on others as possible), and only ‘work’ when paired with other sources of community. Those sources are disappearing for a variety of reasons but the transfer from physical -> digital, communal [1] -> personalized, eating out -> eating in [2], public space -> private space, friend time —> media time all add up. We also don’t have strong culture a…

> Suburbs are structurally lonely My European perspective. I wouldn't blame it on suburbs in particular. I would blame most if not all forms of city living. Most people live in flats where nobody wants to have anything to do with their neighbor and there is no communality. People move in and move out, nobody cares. The less you have to hear of your neighbor, the better. FWIW I would rather have a 'burb castle than a…

You nailed it. I live in a ‘burb castle’. I was grateful to get out of my apartment. The woman in the adjacent unit would burn a dozen candles and stumble in drunk every night. The guy below would scream and break stuff during football games. Another would blast rap music at 4 AM.

Screw apartments. Now I can put up ham radio antennas, have a nice lab, garage for bike, etc.. I could not fathom living in a dense city.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#82

Post by sethammons » Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 2:30 PM UTC

booleandilemma wrote: post #51

I’ve lived in the US my entire life, and I’ve come to feel like American society is one big competition to be more well-off than everyone else. Does anyone else feel this way? I think this is why I have difficulty making friends.

I think it is the type of people in your circles. Social elite, east coast, etc is where I hear that sentiment.

I grew up poor. The only one-upsmanship I recall was in story telling or joking.

Now as a well off adult, my social circle is much smaller, and since I just moved, it is about zero, but I've not seen this competition from my cohorts at work.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#83

Post by wild_preference » Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 2:40 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #79

bragh wrote: post #9

There is a good reason why people are escaping small towns. If you are even a little bit outside of the mold, such as being into reading instead of cars as a guy, you will be ostracized by a huge part of the community. And may God have mercy on you if you are into the really weird stuff, such as liking programming, tinkering with electronics or anime.

Do people on HN really believe that people in smaller towns don’t read ?

Yeah, and kinda shows their age wrt "haha this guy uses a computer, what a nerd."

Even playing video games is pretty cool and mainstream now.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#84

Post by androidgirl » Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 2:41 PM UTC

Is there anything we can do to stop being lonely?

Over the past few months, I have made great progress on developing habits to fight my depression. I wake up very early, hike, work on my side projects, and go to communal hacker spaces sometimes.

However, I and many others still feel very lonely, it's like we all live in seperate bubbles and can't connect deeply. I have no idea what causes this divide. Have humans always felt like this?

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#85

Post by endomatrix1 » Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 2:42 PM UTC

The funny thing about this article is that it says political tribes are the reason for American division.

Then the NYT editors choose to award cogent comment status to a list of comments blaming it all on the GOP.

They can’t help themselves.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#86

Post by someguydave » Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 2:43 PM UTC

rubidium wrote: post #76

solatic wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived on a kibbutz after college. It has its own set of problems. The closer you live to people, the more politics enters the picture. The less money there is to go around, the more that politics revolves around the relatively financially trivial. You can't force people to like each other just because they live in close proximity. The problem isn't finding people with shared interests and values, it's in building r…

I live in a Christian community focused on in-common living. Community requires commitment to stick things through. Having a common vision is important. More important is having the commitment to sticking with it, and relationship tools to help keep friendships intact in tough times. Some key tools: -right speech: no gossip, slander, or negative humor -forgiveness: saying I’m sorry when offending or harming someone,…

Where is your community located?

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#87

Post by thomasz » Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 2:43 PM UTC

kitten_mittens_ wrote: post #39

clarry wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not believe people are leaving small towns because they can't watch anime or whatever. They're leaving small towns because small towns are not the place to look for education and work. Idk what constitutes small in your book. I grew up in towns of around 10k to 23k people. Had no trouble being a nerd, playing video games, reading, watching anime, coding. Now I'm in a city an order of magnitude larger, and more l…

I lived in the Northeast Megalopolis for a bit before moving to Germany. In the eastern US, I didn’t know anyone prior to moving there for work. The city was very anonymous, to put it lightly. The only people talking to you on the street were homeless. I’d go to meetups and flit around, but it was hard to put down roots where everyone was friends with their college buddies from MIT or Harvard. The school I went to in…

Are you taking lessons in German? Besides teaching you important skills, those are great opportunities to meet a huge variety of people in a somewhat similar situation.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#88

Post by JackFr » Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 2:47 PM UTC

clarry wrote: post #28

npunt wrote: post #17

Suburbs are structurally lonely (your own castle with as little reliance on others as possible), and only ‘work’ when paired with other sources of community. Those sources are disappearing for a variety of reasons but the transfer from physical -> digital, communal [1] -> personalized, eating out -> eating in [2], public space -> private space, friend time —> media time all add up. We also don’t have strong culture a…

> Suburbs are structurally lonely My European perspective. I wouldn't blame it on suburbs in particular. I would blame most if not all forms of city living. Most people live in flats where nobody wants to have anything to do with their neighbor and there is no communality. People move in and move out, nobody cares. The less you have to hear of your neighbor, the better. FWIW I would rather have a 'burb castle than a…

> And I think I'd rather get to know the neighbors over at the adjoining castle than the scum in these neighboring flats.

Don’t worry — I’m sure the scum feel pretty much the same about you.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#89

Post by Spooky23 » Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 2:47 PM UTC

softwaredoug wrote: post #61

I’m highly skeptical. There’s only one piece of data cited in the article. In that data, the only mention of a possible trend is this > shows that loneliness is worse in each successive generation. Basically if you read the linked to report, the data show older people are less lonely than younger people right now. That’s not the same as showing loneliness increasing over time. There are many plausible reasons for you…

Social institutions started falling down once TV appeared and was demanding of attention. You had to be around at 8pm on Tuesday to see your show.

Now with phones we have even bigger attention sinks.

End of the day, the rise of cheap entertainment and the long decline of mainline religious organizations, erosion of ethnic organizations, etc have led to a lot of social problems. There was an article a few weeks ago suggesting that even romantic relationships are having problems as people have trouble with social contact and apps have made sex on demand a thing.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#90

Post by phaedryx » Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 2:47 PM UTC

androidgirl wrote: post #84

Is there anything we can do to stop being lonely? Over the past few months, I have made great progress on developing habits to fight my depression. I wake up very early, hike, work on my side projects, and go to communal hacker spaces sometimes. However, I and many others still feel very lonely, it's like we all live in seperate bubbles and can't connect deeply. I have no idea what causes this divide. Have humans alw…

Overcoming depression is a real struggle; I'm glad you're making progress.