181–190 of 245 posts
> "Despite minor differences between individual surveys, the data consistently show that the average number of close friendships rose from 2.2 in 2000 to 4.1 in 2024," says Hofer. If true, this is an astonishing social transformation, because it goes against everything we here about the loneliness epidemic getting worse . Or have people redefined what they consider to be "close friends"? Or are people actually genuin…
Anyone who has ever been to public school knows this in their bones.
Note that this study MAY not be accurate
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your discord friends can't come over and help you clean up after a flood, or watch your dogs while you're away on a sudden emergency, or cook you a meal when you're grieving a loss I'll make the counter argument that -- although I value those things and try to provide them to friends in need -- all of those can be addressed by hiring someone. On the other hand, I've recently received fantastic emotional support from…
Yeah and you can rent a truck every time you need to haul something, but it's nice when your friend lets you borrow his - and his manpower/time. And yeah, you can hire an emergency remediation company, or chef, or psychologist for your friends, but that seems... impersonal to me? I'm not trying to say there's no value to Discord friends, but I do think it's substantially less valuable to the human condition than real…
So I think it’s not about “internet bad” but more about how much harder it is to make ends meet / how much more intense capitalism has become.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> usually close friends are limited to people that share the same values and ideas as you That stirkes me as myopic. My closest friends--the ones I trust with all my secrets, with whom have have practically no secrets, the ones I'd hide if it came to that or risk my life to save--are all over the place values and ideas-wise. It's what makes their company fun. It's also what makes their advice useful, because they'll…
If you are far right, I have to keep secrets from you. For safety. And no, someone actively wanting to limit my freedom and safety because their ideology is that women must be limited cant be trusted. They cant be trusted in calling me on my shit, because what they perceive as shit is my self interest and my core values.
Wide gulf between “people that share the same values and ideas as you” and Nazis.
> "Despite minor differences between individual surveys, the data consistently show that the average number of close friendships rose from 2.2 in 2000 to 4.1 in 2024," says Hofer. If true, this is an astonishing social transformation, because it goes against everything we here about the loneliness epidemic getting worse . Or have people redefined what they consider to be "close friends"? Or are people actually genuin…
> And this increase happened suddenly, between 2008 and 2010 Occam’s Razor tells me that it’s almost certainly linked to the near-total failure of the economic system (and the very slow recovery outside specific US cities).
It is obviously social media: more connections does not equally mean social interactions - people substituted costly and hard in-person for cheap and easy online interactions, with AI optimization fueling the polarization.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keep in mind that it is "average" and it is about close friends. Anecdotally, the pandemic was the great cutting of weaker ties. I talk to far fewer people than I did pre-pandemic (and most friends report the same), but I speak to those people more often. I can easily see that ending in a way where some 20% find themselves with nobody. I would say I have 4 close friends. But some 10 weaker ties disappeared from my li…
I would agree - usually close friends are limited to people that share the same values and ideas as you. Having more close friends that all think alike would increase rejection of ideas not shared by other close friends. It is harder (but not impossible) to have close friends that have dramatically different lifestyles, ideals, or socioeconomic class. Weaker ties would include friends that have less in common, and ha…