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Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#251

Post by cpsns »

gherkinnn wrote: post #37
ilaksh wrote: post #11

A few thoughts: 1. The internet means we have many forms of entertainment available without needing to go anywhere. 2. Many of those are social activities, even though we are physically alone. This is completely different from being totally isolated (as implied by the article). 3. The declining economic situation affects the ability of people to pursue leisure activities that would involve actually going somewhere th…

I find this very hard to believe. Real interactions are so rich, how could these goggles even hope to get there in a few years? What is having dinner together if you didn’t even eat the same? And this is the most banal example I could think of. I’d sooner become an actual hermit than to share a soggy McD burger over VR.

I could honestly see it happening. Something like VRchat is never going to replicate IRL socialization, but it's close enough that it could fill a huge gap for a lot of people.

VR socialization might not be great, but like the BigMac is to food it might be just good enough for many.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#252

Post by novok »

midhhhthrow wrote: post #211
dangus wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not, big cities have pretty good quality of life and people who live there do actually have friends and social lives. I grew up in the suburbs, and I've lived in big cities, urban areas in medium sized cities, and exurbs as well. The cities aren't as different as non-urban people think. But also, they're better in a lot of the ways that most people would expect: more things to do, better food, better sh…

Cities have much lower standard of living because no one can afford shelter. There’s too much traffic which means you can’t go anywhere except walking range. So there may actually be equal or less to do in the city simply because your range is so short. And crime is huge problem too, now more than ever

This is an american problem and an american choice that started with white flight in the 50s and a lack of investment into public transit to make it you don't need a car in the city. Many other countries do cities correctly, for cheaper, and far more social order. Most american cities are also not cities, except maybe the grandfathered in choice of NYC and SF somewhat.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#253

Post by doliveira »

trophycase wrote: post #78
standardUser wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is the "negative marketing" that you think is manipulating women into having fewer children?

How it's expensive, how it will ruin your career, how it will destroy your body, etc. Talk to gen-Z women, many of them are inundated with this kind of thinking.

I mean, it's a wonder women still choose to have children. I see it is a triumph of the human spirit, because through a purely capitalist and individualist lenses having children doesn't make much sense.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#254

Post by Nomentatus »

foobarian wrote: post #123
EE84M3i wrote: post #92

I live in a big city, but I'm terribly lonely. - I live alone. - I work hybrid, but when I go into the office, it's more or less empty and I spend all my time on zoom calls. - My family lives far away. - I'm single. Most weeks, my only social interaction is at the local bar, where I'm a regular, or various dates from apps. Excesses of both of these is unhealthy in different ways. I've been pushing myself to go to mee…

As kid I spent time in an old fashioned Russian serf type village, where a bunch of families lived together and worked a bunch of strips of land. It was the best time I ever had. Everyone had a job to do, and they were happy to let you help. The tasks you were given seemed fulfilling and meaningful. Today is horrible. Nobody lives with family or knows neighbors around here. No more church. There are some craft clubs,…

Marx was wrong about some big things (innovation, depressions) and right about some big things - alienation, meaning destruction of community.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#255

Post by anonreeeeplor »

I need to answer this because I solved this problem as a super introvert. This reply will get buried.

Quite honestly, I realized I was boring and my life was boring. I had a boring job with no travel that didn’t involve meeting anyone interesting.

I quit my boring career and deliberately filtered for:

- has a technical element but not software development - travel, or interact with a lot of people as a result of the job - has some interesting exciting, creative element

If your life sucks. It sucks. I used to be hyper depressed and tried all these superficial mental self motivation techniques, dating apps, meetups, social groups. It felt totally forced and fake.

A lot of people on here said it already: if you are going to a meet up or other event to try to make friends as an introvert. It feels desperate, unnatural, forced and wrong. It doesn’t work because you are doing it out of desperation and bring desperate, negative feelings into it and it doesn’t leave you relaxed and able to connect properly with a bunch of strangers who you are trying to force yourself to talk to.

At one point I finally had enough. I said fuck this I am not living like this. It lead me to be way more selective about jobs; I filtered the shit out of every boring ass job. If it was some job sitting inside typing computer codes I didn’t want it. There are unlimited supply.

If you want to meet women, work on things related to climate, sustainability and impact. Seriously.

You guys are a bunch of boring fucks programming database software. Women don’t want to hear it. Women care about impact and social causes. If I had to do it over again as a developer, I’d pick a job with an impact, climate, sustainability or democracy or emerging markets element. Unlimited interesting and educated women in those fields to talk to.

Further more, your job is no longer fucking boring.

Sorry - you can transition programming skills into fields with a real world impact and your social circle will automatically explode and suddenly you will be hyper interesting and meet a ton of women and people who are passionate and care.

It might hurt to hear - but undifferentiated introverted nerd number 40 million is like krypontite to females. You have nothing going on inside your soul that is creative.

Women are emotions. If you are programming rust on embedded systems, that is not sexy. Your friends will be boring. Your life will be boring: you will be boring.

So I solved it by moving into an externally facing role That mixed programming with customer and other interactions.

Life doesn’t happen behind a desk. I looked in the mirror and I made the call: My life sucks. I need to fix it.

Once you realize your life sucks and you are boring, take six months to find a better job which bakes in the above.

Can’t help you otherwise.

Another great piece of advice is to find immigrants. Americans are not friendly. People in middle America are also more friendly.

I met my wife through a secretary who was a super extroverted person.

You know what I did? I asked her for help.

If you can find female friends, ask them for help. If you can’t make friends with a single woman, an extroverted one, without it being about how she looks that’s another problem.

Learn to make friends with women without trying to have sec with them. Women will get you other women.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#256

Post by woeirua »

ryandrake wrote: post #232
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am posting this as a person born and raised in a rather small community. I personally do not yearn for the good old days when 'everyone knew everyone' and there were things to do together. We did things together, because of geographical convenience and random chance. We had no other options so we did kids things. Granted, I was lucky to be included in that particular group, because they all were much, much smarter…

It's not just leave-me-alone individualism. It's this new, belligerent "Toxic Individualism" that's taken hold, supported by recent technological change (such as social media) and recent political/cultural change (many examples). A regular individualist simply prefers to operate on their own, outside of society and ignore collective activities. This new breed of individualism is more focused on attacking society and…

The anti-natalist movement is a good example of this.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#257

Post by SCUSKU »

midhhhthrow wrote: post #211
dangus wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not, big cities have pretty good quality of life and people who live there do actually have friends and social lives. I grew up in the suburbs, and I've lived in big cities, urban areas in medium sized cities, and exurbs as well. The cities aren't as different as non-urban people think. But also, they're better in a lot of the ways that most people would expect: more things to do, better food, better sh…

Cities have much lower standard of living because no one can afford shelter. There’s too much traffic which means you can’t go anywhere except walking range. So there may actually be equal or less to do in the city simply because your range is so short. And crime is huge problem too, now more than ever

I used to think the same think having lived in the suburbs my whole life, but once I moved to a city (San Francisco), I came to see that while there was certainly truth to the media hooplah, a lot of it was just hype designed to polarize us.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#258

Post by throwaway892238 »

What a fantastically low-effort op-ed. Not only is there complete hand-waiving of the negative effects of being alone - literally, there is no evidence given whatsoever of how being alone might be harmful to us - but the article just abruptly ends a couple paragraphs after this. There is literally no "Here's why" to follow up on the title ("Here’s why we should reverse that.").

It's like both the writer and the editor just... forgot to include the second half of the article. Did the guy have a stroke and die at the keyboard and they decided to print what he'd gotten through?

Meanwhile, the comments section is chock full of people debating the merits of something with no evidence. This is why journalism is supposed to be held to a higher standards. The human chickens will cluck-cluck-cluck about anything you put in front of them that seems mildly controversial. Maybe that's the point of this kind of shoddy writing. Generates comments/engagement without saying anything of value.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#259

Post by cmauniada »

snoot wrote: post #170
UweSchmidt wrote: post #125

The fundamental force behind this is individualism. Every single technological innovation has made it easier for the individual to function better alone. Every societal change has emphasized the individual right over the (real or perceived) benefit of the collective. This trend seems to accelerate and absolutely nothing that is happening in western society even remotely suggests a possible turnaround. You can take ac…

> But you'll do all that against massive societal forces. What forces exactly? > A few decades back you'd join one of the few organizations or clubs that happened in your area, and instantly be in a reliable community (if you adapt a little - let's ignore all the downsides for a moment). I’ve joined two different clubs. One 7 years ago and one this year. Both have resulted in good friends, outings, and even trips to…

Out of curiosity, where do you live?

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#260

Post by lajamerr »

What is loneliness people speak of? I am alone and I don't feel like I am missing out on anything. I am happy and content. I have fun. I am fine just entertaining myself or going out to do things. I'd say I am by myself 95% of the time of every day.

Is loneliness related to depression?

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