Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

thetimes.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 440 posts

Re: Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

#171

Post by [deleted] »

garmaine wrote: post #145
buro9 wrote: post #87

I run 300 forums, and I had a startup for them. The lofty goal of the startup was to "cure loneliness" but I never told the users that. My path to doing this was to encourage interest based communication, in a way that would allow them to take it offline. How? Well to make it interest + geography, i.e. horology nerds in Cumbria, cyclists in London, petrol heads in Cornwall, audiophiles in Suffolk. By binding together…

Just FYI, “have no close friend” and “loneliness” aren’t the same thing. I have no close friends, and I prefer it. Don’t try to “cure” people like me.

[deleted]

Re: Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

#172

Post by hogFeast »

guerrilla wrote: post #151
hogFeast wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is talking about the UK. There is a huge bias against single males here. To give one example: the number and size of tax benefits aimed at families is massive. Spending on these is something like £33bn...that may or may not sound huge to you but the total NHS budget (i.e. healthcare costs for 70-80m people) is ~£115bn. Not everyone thinks this. But it is definitely far to say that is the general view (and it is wh…

Families get help from the state, so the public hates single males? > that is the general view You should prove that.

Yes. I am not sure exactly what proof you are expecting but that is all the proof that exists (for obvious reasons, surveys do not generally ask specifically...do you hate X group of people? In the UK, saying that you do has legal implications besides anything else).

It is equally true to say this of lone single female parents but that doesn't appear to have quite the same effect on tilting the Daily Mail crowd (because poor powerless women aren't seen as a threat whereas young single males are).

Re: Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

#173

Post by throwawawathrow »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #146
throwawawathrow wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an American thing. I'm European, 27 and I'm regularly shocked after conversing with people my age on the other continent casually mentioning their 'husband' or 'wife and kids'.

It’s not an American thing. It’s like this everywhere. Poland, England, Germany, uSA, Ireland, Australia. Everywhere.

Lol no it's not. Mean age when having one's first child is 29+ among EU women: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/D...

Also keep in mind that this age is inversely correlated with education level, so among the typical HN crowd and their social circles (among which I expect people often have a college degree or even a PhD) it's even higher.

Re: Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

#174

Post by icebraining »

reaperducer wrote: post #154
jcims wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes wonder if I’m broken when I see comments like yours, which seem heartfelt and correct and as it should be (the desire for friendships that is). Maybe it’s because my wife and kids fill the void, but I just have no interest in making or maintaining friendships. My wife has a really cool coworker that tries to get me out of the house but i just kinda flop on him. I live in a secluded spot that you can’t see…

You're not broken. If your family is your number one interest and responsibility, then you're doing life correctly. Don't let anyone else tell you differently.

Just be careful not to smother your family with your interest in them. I've met some parents with broken relationships with their kids because they failed to recognize that they needed some space as they got older.

Re: Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

#175

Post by daenz »

throwaway66920 wrote: post #147
daenz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The gap is a bit smaller for best friends too. It's not: 32% for men, 24% for women. Also, this attitude is why "men are the disposable gender" is a thing. Real problems that are correlated with men are dismissed and ignored as not significant.

It’s not that significant though. For every 4 men with no best friend there are 3 women in the same position. If being a man is so difficult, this is a small part of it relative to being a woman; and I would wager that women do better here simply because they put in more effort.

Acknowledging a real problem facing men is not the same as claiming "being a man is so difficult," and you immediately jumping to that conclusion makes me question your motives.

Re: Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

#176

Post by buboard »

jcims wrote: post #33
paganel wrote: post #5

As a man is pretty damn hard keeping friends after the age of 30, especially if you happen to go trough a divorce when suddenly more than half (if not more) of your friends get to “choose” the other side. Yeah, you get to ask your friends back from high-school or college out for a beer but chances are they’re also in a middle of a divorce or they’re too busy with family requirements (can’t blame them) or too stressed…

I sometimes wonder if I’m broken when I see comments like yours, which seem heartfelt and correct and as it should be (the desire for friendships that is). Maybe it’s because my wife and kids fill the void, but I just have no interest in making or maintaining friendships. My wife has a really cool coworker that tries to get me out of the house but i just kinda flop on him. I live in a secluded spot that you can’t see…

> but I just have no interest in making or maintaining friendships.

There's a possibility that bowling alone often becomes so common that its hard to imagine bowling with others.

Re: Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

#177

Post by intrasight »

mieseratte wrote: post #163
intrasight wrote: post #149

Here's an easy solution guys - make friends with more women. A couple years ago my wife asked for a divorce (we are still married but separated). It was very much a wake up call that I was very dependent upon her emotionally and I had neglected my other friendships. I did two things. I invested myself in some old friends from high school and college, but as none of them are living in my city, I realized that I really…

To be frank, this rings a bit like “How to beat depression? Just be happier!” Of the “lonely men” I know most are the type who simply don’t put themselves out there to make friends in the first place. For some this is problematic, for a select few this is self imposed. As a guy, at least for friendship, I have no reservations about “putting myself out there.” You’d be surprised how many folks you meet can’t or won’t,…

I was of the type that didn't put myself out there. Certainly I had to get over that first. I have male friends who are lonely, and I keep saying that you do need to get outside your comfort zone.

Re: Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

#178

Post by buro9 »

ben_jones wrote: post #167
buro9 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all of them are applicable, the platform has also been used for forums that connect old-age pensioners homes (it's easy to use), and support networks for victims of domestic sexual and violent abuse in South London. However the largest example is the London cyclist one https://www.lfgss.com . I started with cycling and the plan was to saturate one sport/recreational interest before branching out. So I run a lot o…

Any plans to open source / open core this software? I've always been interested in forum software (my first real web project was a Reddit clone in Flask and the complexities and edgecases abound - moderation tools, rate limiting, scaling write-load, finding the minimum front-end that doesn't make users puke).

It is all open source.

The only thing that isn't is the very old puppet script that managed the deploy as it was rather bespoke for our setup.

To my own regret I focused far too much on making it an effective platform rather than an easy install, so that bit might feel gnarly but at least the errors are sane and guide you.

The Go API and PostgreSQL schemas: https://github.com/microcosm-cc/microcosm

The Django frontend (the client is nothing but a thin client over the API) https://github.com/microcosm-cc/microweb

The Bootstrap derived theme for the Django fronted https://github.com/microcosm-cc/microweb-bootstrap

And then other miscellaneous things:

The Go HTML sanitizer for user generated content https://github.com/microcosm-cc/bluemonday

Our legal policies for forums on this platform (expensive to produce, but perfectly fitting a forum platform with minimal exposure for the platform owner/admin and minimal but some liability for a forum owner) https://github.com/microcosm-cc/legal

There is also a newer thing, I was (/am?) intending to replace the Django layer with a Go frontend and templating, and then moving the API into this, such that the forum could become a single binary install and thus gain a new lease of life: https://github.com/buro9/microcosm . Once in a while I chip away on that.

Re: Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

#179

Post by bilbo0s »

paganel wrote: post #5

As a man is pretty damn hard keeping friends after the age of 30, especially if you happen to go trough a divorce when suddenly more than half (if not more) of your friends get to “choose” the other side. Yeah, you get to ask your friends back from high-school or college out for a beer but chances are they’re also in a middle of a divorce or they’re too busy with family requirements (can’t blame them) or too stressed…

>especially if you happen to go trough a divorce when suddenly more than half (if not more) of your friends get to “choose” the other side. Yeah, you get to ask your friends back from high-school or college out for a beer but chances are they’re also in a middle of a divorce

That's really interesting, because so few of my friends are even married at that age. But a lot of that may be where you're from.

Re: Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

#180

Post by black_puppydog »

Sorry, I know this will trigger some folks, but this is exactly why I never understood the backlash against "toxic masculinity" that I see from (male) friends whenever the term comes up. Who said it's supposed to be toxic only for others?

Being a stereotypically "manly" man would prevent me in particular from expressing some of the things that make me feel the least lonely, from simple things like cooking and being proud of having made some simple art or handicraft, to hugging friends when I feel down, or being able to vent frustration, fear and other negative feelings in a non-violent way. And I'm not even marginalized by any means. Straight white European tech bro, really. In essence, if I felt bound to any common stereotype of "Man: as seen on TV" I'd be barred from having meaningful connections with those I call friends.

Post reply on HN