I eat this stuff up as a constantly lonely person, not in the "I wish I had a boyfriend" sense, in the "theres nobody to talk to, ever" sense. Like you get up, you work, you consume entertainment, maybe you go on HN or Reddit or Twitter or whatever and you throw words out that other people filter through like junk food, maybe you even go so far to join a fan community for something for a week or two and talk about it a bit and then... move on, because none of this is building a meaningful relationship with another human being at all. Its just consumptive, but even trying to be creative nobody has the time or interest to see whatever "ideas you have". Everyone is stuck in their own silos of consumption at this point and it leaves a lot of us just stuck on an isolated island by themselves.
It doesn't hurt that from this position almost anyone you would find to interact with is in some way predatory. Like anyone who didn't fail at socializing has their closed off peer group they spend their time with by now. The doors closed and all that is left is this perpetual limbo of fluctuating between distracting from the sadness and being overwhelmed by it. In the same way corporate social media, entertainment, and trying to bond with others over that or the total inability to form creative bonds with others to actually make stuff are all vacuous and unfulfilling. In the same vein paying someone to keep you company ultimately cannot fill that missing piece in a person that wants others to just want them to be there for themselves. You can't commodify that.
So uh, I can highly relate to what the Japanese are going through with how even more regimented and structured their society is pressed upon them as being. Its stifling enough in the US culture of hyper-consumerism. It seems like a stifling nightmare over there. Welcome to the NHK is a great anime on this subject if anyone is interested in getting into a, to be fair romanticized, version of these kinds of experiences. It touches well on the psychological hole you get yourself in though.
Its kind of absurdist to think about, how capitalism is trying to respond to the endemic loneliness that if you really get into it can kind of be attributed to the way modern life is commodified and made competitive and consumptive. People are lonely because nobody has the time, patience, or desire left to be communal. At least not comprehensively for those of us on the social fringes. But there is no community because it isn't economically efficient to capital for one to exist. It gets eaten away to be replaced with more consumption for more profit and its leaving growing segments of society hollow husks. So you end up with rent a girlfriends and companionship bars instead of actual friends.