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I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

wave3.social

61–70 of 728 posts

Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

#61
I'd be interested, but it's not in my city (Houston) so tough beans I guess, unless someone else wants to start it here.

I very much agree with this being its own thing independent of Big Social Media. We need more of that. Too many of these types of things have the flaw that their only online presence is a Facebook group, which implicitly excludes me and anyone else who doesn't have nor want a FB account.

Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

#62

I think this is a good idea but I think to get it really going good you need to have a social club. The old ethnic, religious an society social clubs all had a common factor of a club house. You could go to the American Legion, or Elks, or Masons, or Knights of columbus or Polish club or whatever at any time when you were a member you had old timers hanging out and doing things regularly. Youe event schedule will als…

That is the goal, for sure. Soho House almost gets it right.

Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

#63
Generally, I'm a fan of the idea of creating social groups that meet in person and are accessible to people who are a little more offline. I will say that you've run into a rather awkward name collision. The Third Wave (when not referencing feminist theory, or surfer lingo) usually refers to a specific social experiment where a teacher created mini-fascism (okay, that's a tldr, but it was an interesting educational thing). Generally it's a great idea though, might be worth a rebrand tho!

Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

#64

The lack of deep friendships feel like a 3-fold problem. 1. You can't ever be real, if you are real, you are likely to be recorded doing something someone somewhere on the largest stage in the world (the public web) that someone will disapprove of, and someone else will raise their own profile by mining your impiety to prove their own concern and moral superiority. 2. Everyone is so mobile and connected online, they…

Male cops have changed from being thin and fit men (or average man) in the 1960's to large men with muscles, and sometimes roid rage.

People earn good money playing video games now (that wasn't the case in the 1980's) or streaming video games.

The sports heros children had while growing up used performance enhancing drugs in the 1990's.

> Not to mention testosterone levels dropping, schools being geared towards women, always co-ed spaces ...

If your childhood heros take the lazy way to success, why do we need to blame it on the other things? Using your brain is hard, as it turns out.

I've always detested parents who saw sports as the only path of success for their children. So often they were disappointed. If the parents spent time and sucked up and learned the math/science/etc their kids were learning, it may have been a better outcome for all involved.

Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

#65

Homepage leaves me asking why this website wasn't a Meetup group for AI-generated stock photos. What's to resonate? I hate to have to be the one to say it, but speaking from my mid-forties, what you are experiencing is called "entering your 30s." If you try to sell "fix loneliness" to a "not committed yet to growing TF up" market you're cooked. Ironically, I'm probably pretty close to who you think you want to hear f…

I think the concept clearly resonates with people. There is an article every week NYT, etc about how like most men have at most one friend. It seems you think the execution is off, which I wouldn't disagree on. Happy to hear what you have to say - email is in my bio - although I doubt we'd have a meaningful conversation if you write me off as trying to sell something instead of taking the more gracious interpretation…

It isn't a question of grace, or of motivation. If you understood the problem you purport to seek to solve, you wouldn't need telling that a doomed attempt to recreate an unrecreateable social and personal milieu isn't going to do that, and it will probably fail pretty quickly absent an unsustainable burn rate, as people discover that what's bringing them apart - as their family and professional responsibilities multiply - is not a simple lack of incidental, interpersonal physical proximity. Depending on how much you spend giving people reasons to show up anyway that outcome may take more or less time to happen, but it will happen.

Don't get me wrong; I think you'll probably pivot to something more successful if you abandon the sunk cost soon enough. Just that I am extremely confident you will need to make that pivot. Of course you shouldn't take my word for it, though.

Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

#66
post #52

Homepage leaves me asking why this website wasn't a Meetup group for AI-generated stock photos. What's to resonate? I hate to have to be the one to say it, but speaking from my mid-forties, what you are experiencing is called "entering your 30s." If you try to sell "fix loneliness" to a "not committed yet to growing TF up" market you're cooked. Ironically, I'm probably pretty close to who you think you want to hear f…

I get where you’re coming from, but I don’t think it’s just a “you’re in your 30s, deal with it” thing. A lot of guys lose connection over time.. not because they’re flaky, but because work, family, and life get in the way. To me this doesn't feel like some cheesy attempt to fix loneliness with tech. It’s just creating a space for something that’s clearly missing for a lot of people. Writing it off feels like part of…

Where does the time come from to spend in that space?

It isn't that I lack sympathy for the problem, for goodness' sake. Indeed to a reasonable first approximation the only reason I bothered to comment is that "male loneliness" is of interest to me, enough so that a solution aimed at an irrelevant epiphenomenon of a different problem strikes me as worth objecting to on that basis.

That said, the formulation deserves some obloquy of its own, in that I think it likewise hits the nail squarely on the side by misattributing a problem of general social atomization. It isn't a "men problem" per se, so much as that - for various reasons related largely to social roles and experiences, and varying interests and approaches to same - men tend to make a good bellwether for some aspects of what I maintain is a broader social problem. Think "bedrotting" versus "gooncaving" - different codings, especially as respects men being defined as the sexually assertive gender, but the same basic social behavior. (Or asocial behavior, which is of course the crux of the problem.)

Note too that that isn't the "early 30s in Park Slope" problem. (I guess Boston has different trendoid neighborhoods. I don't care.) That, to reiterate, is the very natural shift of focus as young careers and young families both demand time and interest, as described in the OP. That's normal for this stage of life, and while it is very much worthwhile to try to maintain a broad circle, that really will not be effectively fostered by college-style social events no one is going to have the time to attend anyway - not when the same time could be spent more productively on social events that also build and reinforce bonds in the spheres which do and should absorb your interest at this time.

Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

#67
post #53

Homepage leaves me asking why this website wasn't a Meetup group for AI-generated stock photos. What's to resonate? I hate to have to be the one to say it, but speaking from my mid-forties, what you are experiencing is called "entering your 30s." If you try to sell "fix loneliness" to a "not committed yet to growing TF up" market you're cooked. Ironically, I'm probably pretty close to who you think you want to hear f…

There are different ways to cope with loneliness, some find ways to fix it, others post assholes comments on people's projects trying to fix it

I think it'd be a shame to see someone make what looks to me like a mistake with a potentially severe opportunity cost. I'm an asshole for not keeping my mouth shut? It's just a website. Nobody has to listen.

Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

#68
I like the idea in general principle - but if I lived in the right city/country, and didn't already have something similar, my first thought based on the landing page pictures would be;

"This is only for white guys in their twenties."

I don't know if that's intentional, but if I was in the location target market, I'd close the tab at that point.

Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

#69
It would be really cool to see more Mastodon instances that’s solely focused on people within a certain geographical area. It would be this but without the trendy startup energy.

Also if I don’t hear a single MTG Commander game come out of this project we have all failed as a species.

Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These places exist but are usually financially prohibitive for most people, and that’s even if they meet whatever requirements they have to join

To be fair to our modern world this is how the Victorian gentleman's clubs were too—it's even in the name. If you weren't a gentleman you had the pub.

There are also Working men's clubs and varieties thereof:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_men's_club

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