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

‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ knew the cure for loneliness

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–109 of 109 posts

Re: ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ knew the cure for loneliness

#101

Post by harperlee »

fatnoah wrote: post #40
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems nuts to me. I grew up in Colorado and have also lived in several other states where people are more comfortable and likely to bump into each other in public spaces than NYC. In NYC, people are nearly all strangers and in a big hurry. Even living in Mountain View was better. In terms of serendipity, I'd put a college town far ahead of a large city.

> In terms of serendipity, I'd put a college town far ahead of a large city My family moved from a suburb to downtown Boston just before our child entered kindergarten. We ran into people we knew literally every day. It became a running joke because we made it almost 80 straight days in the summer of randomly running into someone. The best moment came while attending a work event with a visiting coworker. I mentioned…

Agree!

I’ve run into friends during car commute (which is more complicated due to car sizes, separate lanes, slow relative speeds, etc. greatly reducing the number of cars you are near enough to, on a given day).

What do you do then? Honk and wave? Call their phone? Quite a different thing than running into someone on the bus, subway or walking, where you can talk for 10 minutes easily.

Re: ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ knew the cure for loneliness

#102

Post by spicyusername »

dopidopHN wrote: post #90

> In Germany, they have a term for the beer you drink as you walk to the next bar, a "wegbier." The US has that too, but in New Orleans mostly. It’s called a too go cup and it’s mighty convenient. Also, New Orleans is full of third places and so tiny that a bike is plenty to move around

New Orleans is such a treasure. One of the few "European" cities in the U.S..

It's a real shame it's going to be taken by the sea.

Re: ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ knew the cure for loneliness

#103

Post by em-bee »

atoav wrote: post #84
doublerabbit wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add in regularity. Friendship doesn't happen overnight. I've just started taking up sword fencing again at a local club. It takes time for people to build up a rapport of yourself. If I look decent, and turn up each week that's the image I paint. They have no other image of knowing me outside the club so that's the image they'll judge you on. Also, subconsciously shoes are always the first thing a person will home-in…

Good addition to my post. People forget that when they originally made friends (involuntary) regularity was a big part of it. Your parents might have expectwd you to go to $SPORT, so you went and got to know people there, some of which might have become your friends. Same but even greater in magnitude for school. Now some might have terrible memories of school ans maybe never found a decent friend there, but as someo…

not just regularity of going there yourself, but you also need to pick places or activities where most of the participants are regulars too.

and that is more likely the case for small active groups or clubs, not bars or museums. but it could be boardgame nights at a bar, anything that draws only a small group.

on events that draw a larger crowd, you have to pay attention to who the regulars are and focus on associating with those if you want to develop any kind of friendship.

Re: ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ knew the cure for loneliness

#104

Post by fatnoah »

borg16 wrote: post #69
fatnoah wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In terms of serendipity, I'd put a college town far ahead of a large city My family moved from a suburb to downtown Boston just before our child entered kindergarten. We ran into people we knew literally every day. It became a running joke because we made it almost 80 straight days in the summer of randomly running into someone. The best moment came while attending a work event with a visiting coworker. I mentioned…

> It sounds weird, but running into friends and acquaintances is one of the things I miss the most about living in the city. you do not sound weird. what you are suggesting is the best part of being part of a "community"

> It sounds weird, but running into friends and acquaintances is one of the things I miss the most about living in the city

Hah, I guess I worded that awkwardly. The weird part isn't the joy of running into people, it's that it was a very common occurrence in the city, which (I think) is unexpected for many people.

Re: ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ knew the cure for loneliness

#105

Post by rashkov »

b_f wrote: post #79
archo wrote: post #25

https://archive.is/RAOw9

I... does anyone else have issues with the captchas used on this site? I never previously questioned my humanity but I can't seem to satisfy its definition of bridges and motorcycles.

It’s because you use cloudflare dns. Switch to another dns provider. Seems to be a spat between the author of archive and cloudflare about what the proper dns protocol requires. Can read more about it if you search through hacker news

Re: ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ knew the cure for loneliness

#106

Post by dopidopHN »

spicyusername wrote: post #102
dopidopHN wrote: post #90

> In Germany, they have a term for the beer you drink as you walk to the next bar, a "wegbier." The US has that too, but in New Orleans mostly. It’s called a too go cup and it’s mighty convenient. Also, New Orleans is full of third places and so tiny that a bike is plenty to move around

New Orleans is such a treasure. One of the few "European" cities in the U.S.. It's a real shame it's going to be taken by the sea.

Yeah, there is still some good time to be had in the meantime.

I can picture the last days of the city already. It will be a drunk brass band on a Cajun navy boat, parading into oblivion.

Re: ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ knew the cure for loneliness

#107

Post by tonyedgecombe »

xrd wrote: post #15

Wouldn't it be ironic if the current worry in the US about public spaces (i.e. homeless and/or drug addicts) were two sides of the same coin: the goal is to isolate yourself in a massive home in the suburbs to protect yourself from the homeless and drug addicts. And, if you fail at that goal, you then have no choice but to become what everyone fears.

The more people succeed at isolating themselves the bigger the problems of social isolation including homelessness and drug addiction.

Re: ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ knew the cure for loneliness

#108

Post by ryanklee »

legerdemain wrote: post #82
afavour wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my experience NYC has nothing in it that you can't find in dozens of other US cities for far cheaper. Then you haven’t truly experienced NYC, I’m sorry. It’s simply not a true statement. I’m not saying NYC is for everyone or that you even have to like it, but it having nothing you can’t find in dozens of other cities? To paraphrase Principal Skinner: “can it be that I simply don’t know NYC as well as I should? N…

I 100% concur with afavour that regularly running into acquaintances around town is magical, and wonderful, and pro-social, and a rare privilege . I've had that experience only once in my life, when I lived literally in the center of town in Palo Alto, and ran into coworkers very regularly on the street, because our company gave us a subsidy of hundreds of dollars every month to live within a 10-block radius of the o…

The experience of serendipity of urban life is available in almost every mid-tier city. No one in this thread has offered any explanation or example of some unique thing that NYC has that other places don't that leaves their their poor, clueless denizens deprived of cultural benefits they just can't understand.

Re: ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ knew the cure for loneliness

#109

Post by blharr »

bitschubser_ wrote: post #87
legerdemain wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In threads like this, people often bring up gyms as social spaces. Hell. No. I've been using a gym for most of my adult life. Gyms are anti-social spaces. Big box gyms, sports clubs, the gym at the Y, campus gyms, the gyms that most people go to. Maybe boutique gyms and gyms where you always work with a personal trainer are different. Every gym I've been to: hell, no.

wow... for me gyms (or sports in general) was the #1 place to meet new people, here where I live and in my bubble (germany) it's quite common to spend a few hours in the local boulder gym, or climbing gym, drinking coffee, grep a pizza boulder/climb a bit and small talk, meet friends and new people, same on the local skate park or pump track, hang around, skate, talk, and meet new people, also the sauna/pool areas of…

A climbing or sports gym is different than a typical weightlifting gym. I mostly see people doing their sets alone, or running on treadmills and such
Post reply on HN