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

wave3.social

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

#511

Post by maxerickson »

lupusreal wrote: post #362
JimDabell wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not always location-agnostic, but you’re more likely to hear about location-agnostic efforts because they have further reach. For instance Men’s Sheds are a local effort with a thousand locations in the UK: > Men’s Sheds encourage people to come together to make, repair and repurpose, supporting projects in their local communities. Improving wellbeing, reducing loneliness and combatting social isolation. > Resea…

What I find a bit remarkable is how they lost control of their club dynamics so severely. I've been a regular attendee of a few hacker spaces that were open to the public but never had the problem they describe. I think maybe a key aspect is ensuring that all men, particular the ones that are classically unattractive (even repulsive) feel welcome as valued equals. Many women cannot countenance this and will try to sh…

This is a hilarious take.

Men must be welcome as an absolute, women must conform to your expectations or be excluded.

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

#512

Post by [deleted] »

ReptileMan wrote: post #456
rxtexit wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it basically changes to men complaining about women. The people with a good sex life end up becoming therapists for the group. Mixed groups on the other hand turn into a soap opera. What is needed is a strong common interest that binds the group beyond these tendencies to stave off the soap opera entropy. The soap opera entropy will always increase with time though until the group dissolves. It is still more sta…

>Yes, it basically changes to men complaining about women. The people with a good sex life end up becoming therapists for the group. Just not true. Men only groups are rarely misogynist, more often they are homophobic in the sense that everyone is trying to imply that everyone else is secretly gay. There is also various forms of dick measuring contests - who can grill better, who caught bigger fish and so on. Also fo…

[deleted]

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

#513

Post by antisthenes »

keiferski wrote: post #173

This idea appears every once in awhile, as it’s obviously a major issue in modern life. The interesting thing though is how the solution is always location-agnostic. By that I mean it’s never really about a specific cafe or restaurant or soccer field, it’s always an app or service that organizes people to show up in various places. I bring this up because if you look at places that had lively social activities a few…

I mean, you do realize you FIRST need to be location-agnostic to find some people, right?

Only then can your group start to develop favorite local places to hang around at.

> I bring this up because if you look at places that had lively social activities a few decades or a century ago, they were almost always a specific place.

Which is basically irrelevant, as you can come up with a similar example of pre-covid, during-covid and post-covid changes for how people hang out. People adapt pretty quickly.

> The neighborhood cafe where locals can stop by at any time and see other locals. The bar that everyone stops by after work twice a week.

I'm not sure these places really ever existed with such a stability as you describe outside of _really_ small towns. Like under 5000 pop towns.

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

#515

Post by tayo42 »

lambdaphagy wrote: post #317
tayo42 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Practically every culture on earth (except ours as of 10 minutes ago) had some sort of place for single-sex bonding, which suggests there’s something important to it. Traditional cultures aren’t incel, to the contrary it’s only in modern cultures that mass-scale failures of relations between the sexes seem to arise. As for bjj, the scenario of the instructor dating a female student and breaking up the gym in the ensu…

Every culture that treated women equally? Or were there male only spaces because women were seen at 2nd (or 3rd tier people, below the pets?)

I trained at a gym where that scenario happened, people were already leaving because the teacher was an ass in general, played favorites with the male students and created at cliquey environment.

There really isn't anything women can't handle in front of men. Thinking you have some dark thing that cant be said in front of women or that you need to change how you behave is odd and exclusive to you.

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

#516

Post by tayo42 »

parpfish wrote: post #486
tayo42 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but thanks to broadcast updates on social media, your friends already know what have you've been up to, so they can delude themselves into thinking that they've maintained a relationship because they know superficial details. I don't think this is really a big deal. "hey I saw you posted pictures from your trip. How was it" there, conversation started. Social media posts are basically all conversation starters. Assu…

The problem is more that you never bother to have the convo where ask how things are going because your in your mind you think you’re all up-to-date.

I get the hypothetical but in reality it doesn't happen. Social media posts don't have details.

Do you know ignore your friends because you think your caught up?

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

#517

Post by amelius »

gilbetron wrote: post #494
amelius wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans will probably never admit it but they are really bad at urban planning.

Funny that you were downvoted after saying that. As an American I agree with what I think you mean, but I believe Americans think they are good at urban planning because what they plan for is just different. They plan for cars and single family homes.

Well, Europe has cars and families too, so it sounds like what Americans plan for is not different, but instead they are taking into account a very limited set of requirements.

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

#518

Post by UncleMeat »

ReptileMan wrote: post #446
bregma wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

The "separate graduation ceremonies" were not that. A group of people from a black student group celebrating is not the same as separate graduation ceremonies. These kids also attended to the main ceremony.

I'm visibly jewish and have been attending pride events and lgbt activist events for ages. I've never even heard of what you describe.

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

#519

Post by steveBK123 »

542354234235 wrote: post #504
const_cast wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO this mostly stems from not having walkable, livable communities. People live in detached homes and they drive to work and the grocery store and… that’s it. There’s next to zero room for random events because travel becomes such a deliberate action. I can’t just pop into a cafe - first I need to find it and drive there. Also our social signals are completely fucked up. Headphones and phones means that most interac…

To add, in walkable communities you are much more likely to be a “regular” at more places, since you are walking to the places nearby, and to share multiple regular places with other people. Walking 15 minutes to 30 minutes still keep you in about a 1-2 mile radius, which is pretty small and has a lot of overlap with other people walking. So you are likely to see the same people at the bar as at the gym or the coffee…

It's more cultural than walkability. I've lived about 20 years in NYC but now spend months at a time outside the city as well.

In the US, in VHCOL places like NYC filled with upper middle class striver / PMC types.. everything is so fleeting & ephemeral you just don't have "regulars". You just feel anonymous. Everything is moving/changing all the time, expectations and trust are low. There is a lot of classism.

I lived in buildings 8 years & had neighbors on my floor who re-introduced themselves to me many times, somehow forgetting we've met. I knew their dogs names.

The shops I go 2x/week have 50-150% annual staff turnover and even the staff that somehow last 5 years barely acknowledge recognizing me. The staff who work in my building disappear without a trace one day. My condo board president introduced herself to me for the third time recently. We stopped having package pickup for a couple years because allegedly our staff & mail woman didn't get along.

Meanwhile in the small town I spend more time, I drive, but I am a regular at some restaurants that I go maybe monthly or less. Regular to the point of waiters sending us free drinks, or knowing the same waiter from 3 different restaurants he's worked over the years, being on a first name basis. I knew my last mailman by name and sent him a retirement card. I bump into the postal clerk at my vet. The guy who cleaned my chimney gave me a great greenhouse recommendation recently.

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

#520

Post by steveBK123 »

aaronbaugher wrote: post #500
steveBK123 wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have a hard time reconciling the difference between “raise group X up” and “knock group Y down”. The former is a universal good and the correct way to remedy historical injustice. The latter is punishing people, literally, for the sins of their fathers. There is of course complexity and some zero sum situations where raising X harms Y, but most of the world is not zero sum and you do not have to start from tha…

True. I suppose the problem is that knocking down Y is often easier than raising up X. And group revenge can feel good.

Indeed, it is a dysfunction of our political system that the most politically engaged & active on each side .. rarely touches grass.
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