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I made a website for lonely people, and got >100 people to log their locations

lonelyworld.info

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Re: I made a website for lonely people, and got >100 people to log their locations

#121

Post by RamblingCTO »

hasbot wrote: post #96
RamblingCTO wrote: post #55

What the discussion about loneliness almost never talks about is skills that people that are lonely might lack or any mental health issues they might have. I had a very strong social anxiety 10 years ago. I never left the house. I lacked the skills to cope with that. (Therapy in that case helps.) If you're lonely because you don't know how to connect with people, that's an even easier skill to acquire (i.e. read "say…

You say read "Say What You Mean" but there are multiple books with a title containing that phrase. Can you disambiguate?

Ah, didn't know that. I mean the one from Oren Sofer!

Re: I made a website for lonely people, and got >100 people to log their locations

#122

Post by RamblingCTO »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #88
mach1ne wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, few people understand that basic human communication abilities are actually not given, but learned. If an individual lacked the necessary comrades in their youth they might actually be incapable of forming proper relationships, at all. The skills do come with practice, but that requires a great deal of discomfort, since you're knowingly putting yourself in situations which most likely do fail miserably due to y…

> If an individual lacked the necessary comrades in their youth they might actually be incapable of forming proper relationships, at all. I think the struggle for a lot of adults is not in the interaction or in the start but in the maintaining relationships. This is easy in school and university because of the free time and co-location, the challenge is to do it when we all go our separate ways. In that sense I do fe…

That's a point the book I mentioned actually touches. We're not in tune with our needs and don't work on our problems, so we focus on work, social media etc. But we lack the focus on what makes life worth living. It's human connection, being in tune with yourself, nature. You have to make the time to focus on these things. We are very easily distracted by non-important things. We have to put in the work to stay connected (to others and ourselves) and get our needs met, simple as that.

So what I'm saying is: not sure it's a skill problem (it might be if we're talking about staying connected to what you need) but a societal problem

Re: I made a website for lonely people, and got >100 people to log their locations

#123

Post by trompetenaccoun »

boring_twenties wrote: post #120
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made the mistake of organizing a meetup through reddit once. The people that showed up were weird and socially awkward. Not saying that to hate on the site, it's just something I'll definitely never do again. Meetup is slightly better because it's more of a mixed bag but you still regularly get creepy or annoying people. The problem with all these sites for using them to meet people imo is that they're too open. If…

Wouldn't this strongly select for only desperately (for lack of a better word) lonely people? For everyone else, simply talking to strangers in real life is less friction than tackling some online quiz.

My thinking is talking to random people is... random. We can do this outside the internet, don't really need an app for that. Being able to prescreen is less friction than spending time meeting uninteresting people. And having no barriers seems to be a recipe for that in my experience, it attracts those who're desperate because they can't meet people any other way. So if I want a way to remove those people, I'd want to have a higher barrier, not lower. Is the idea flawed?

Re: I made a website for lonely people, and got >100 people to log their locations

#124

Post by skirt8193 »

epistemer wrote: post #105
bubblic wrote: post #10

Someone had a very good point that the wording seems to only imply that the loneliness is caused by lacking the listed qualities when in fact, some are lonely because of their strong attributes (good looking, smart, wealthy). I made an update so that all future messages will "attribute" to these qualities, instead of these qualities 'holding them back'. Thank you, anonymous user!

A person claiming to be lonely because they are too smart/wealthy/good looking sounds incredibly narcissistic. I highly doubt that is actually the issue with their loneliness.

That doesn't mean their loneliness is any less real

Re: I made a website for lonely people, and got >100 people to log their locations

#125

Post by mikeuxinnuendo »

bubblic wrote: post #34
geuis wrote: post #29

After I pinch and zoom to my location and tap on a circle the map seems to jump to a random place in the world. Also the slider is really difficult to drag on iPad os. Like the concept.

It jumps to random places because a new person just logged their location! I wanted to make the whole experience dynamic and real. It worked well when there weren't so many people logging their location all at the same time haha I will need to add features to: make toggle more user friendly; and have option to make the map jump around or not. Thank you for feedback!

It's hella laggy, you have too many results in the page, a simple case of too many divs I think.

Re: I made a website for lonely people, and got >100 people to log their locations

#126

Post by totetsu »

nofreelunch wrote: post #110
totetsu wrote: post #89

This reminds me of the work of the Japanese artist Watanabe Atsushi. He collaborated with people living shut in lives to all take photos of the moon together and collected them into an visual art work. Even though they're all alone everyone is looking at the same moon. https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/special/hikikomori/pages/article...

This is wonderful. Would love to see the book someday. (It is titled I'm Here if anyone is curious but doesnt want to dig thru a bunch of kanji)

That book is about his work where he breaks out of a concrete room with a sledgehammer, and smashes concrete objects that are symbols of his shutin period and reconnects the pieces with golden metal.

Re: I made a website for lonely people, and got >100 people to log their locations

#127

Post by nofreelunch »

totetsu wrote: post #126
nofreelunch wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wonderful. Would love to see the book someday. (It is titled I'm Here if anyone is curious but doesnt want to dig thru a bunch of kanji)

That book is about his work where he breaks out of a concrete room with a sledgehammer, and smashes concrete objects that are symbols of his shutin period and reconnects the pieces with golden metal.

Whoops, my mistake, but that book also sounds great.

Re: I made a website for lonely people, and got >100 people to log their locations

#128

Post by boring_twenties »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #123
boring_twenties wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't this strongly select for only desperately (for lack of a better word) lonely people? For everyone else, simply talking to strangers in real life is less friction than tackling some online quiz.

My thinking is talking to random people is... random. We can do this outside the internet, don't really need an app for that. Being able to prescreen is less friction than spending time meeting uninteresting people. And having no barriers seems to be a recipe for that in my experience, it attracts those who're desperate because they can't meet people any other way. So if I want a way to remove those people, I'd want…

I don't know if it's a flaw per se, but you're not only removing uninteresting people, but also interesting people who aren't interested in taking online quizzes.

> Being able to prescreen is less friction than spending time meeting uninteresting people.

This is probably true for some individuals (e.g. those with social anxiety, or those who work 16 hours a day or something), but certainly not all. Even uninteresting people are often moderately entertaining for a short while, which is much more than I can say for taking an online quiz.

Additionally, there's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem regarding the reputation of the group itself. If I can be pretty sure ahead of time that being admitted to the group will be worth it, then I will probably suck it up and take the quiz. This pretty much requires someone who is already a member convincing me. Otherwise it might well turn out to be a ghost town, or full of holier-than-thou nerds, or just not a fit for whatever other reason. I wouldn't want to go through a prescreening process just to find that out -- easier and more fun to just stick with meeting randos.

Re: I made a website for lonely people, and got >100 people to log their locations

#130

Post by bubblic »

mikeuxinnuendo wrote: post #125
bubblic wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It jumps to random places because a new person just logged their location! I wanted to make the whole experience dynamic and real. It worked well when there weren't so many people logging their location all at the same time haha I will need to add features to: make toggle more user friendly; and have option to make the map jump around or not. Thank you for feedback!

It's hella laggy, you have too many results in the page, a simple case of too many divs I think.

I think it was caused by too frequently updating map. If you get a chance to check it out again, let me know if the issue has been resolved :)
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