The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting • Hacker News Board

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#251

Post by ryandrake » Sat, Apr 26, 2025, 9:33 PM UTC

pesus wrote: post #229

tdrz wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they are not anti-social, they are just not being social to you! They have no obligation to entertain you even if your kids are playing together.

> They have no obligation to entertain you even if your kids are playing together. This is a really cynical and negative way to view basic human interaction, the cornerstone of our species and civilization. I've been seeing it a lot lately online, and it doesn't surprise me that people are lonely and aren't making friends if they adopt an attitude like that.

That's right. The whole "He is under no obligation to [do nice thing | be social | act friendly]" is a very Reddit attitude. Yes, it's technically correct: You don't have to be nice. But you are allowed to be nice, and that choice doesn't hurt or cost anything.

If you go up to a fellow parent and say, "Hey, nice to see you again." and they just ignore you scrolling their phones, sure, they have a Constitutional right to do that and are under no obligation to return the greeting. But going through life only doing what you are "obligated" to do seems like a very miserable and anti-social way to live.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#252

Post by api » Sat, Apr 26, 2025, 9:34 PM UTC

9rx wrote: post #132

api wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you moved from a high cost of living city back to your home town, how much did that have to do with it? In HCOL cities the crazy rent or mortgage costs keep everyone running and cut into discretionary funds for assistance.

The more interesting question is: If people in HCOL areas are so poor that they can't even afford to make time to bask in friendships with the people the city has to offer, why are they still there?

Usually to build career.

Most small towns and medium sized cities, at least in the USA, have a serious lack of stepping stone opportunities. There are low-paying service and entry level jobs and there are high paying jobs that require extensive experience. There is often nothing in between.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#253

Post by jddj » Sat, Apr 26, 2025, 9:36 PM UTC

em-bee wrote: post #224

hollerith wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Did you also hate it when your parents hosted a party for adults in your home?

that's different. in my home i can disappear into my room and keep myself busy there. when at another place i have to behave, i can't go run around and explore (unless they have a garden and kids are allowed to go outside) as a parent i would not drag my kids to a place unless there are other kids or i know there is something interesting for them. but right on topic, the solution is to not live alone with your kids.…

Just a 'temporary boredom as a child is/was pretty normal' datapoint, I remember sometimes falling asleep at the table in the restaurant out of sheer boredom while the adults finished chatting. I don't harbour any resentment for that, and I completely understand that they needed to hang out once in a while.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#254

Post by toomuchtodo » Sat, Apr 26, 2025, 9:49 PM UTC

mikemcquaid wrote: post #244

toomuchtodo wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have resources many parents don’t. Congrats on the luck (genuinely, no snark), but the median is having a much worse time. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/parents-under-pressu...

I don’t live in the US so have no idea about that. I have friends who are parents who make below the median household income in the U.K. who make time for hobbies and socialising (including with me). Resources help but I know many people with far more resources than I who would say on forums like this my life is impossible.

UK specific data source:

Childless by choice becomes new normal for young UK adults, survey finds - https://www.news-medical.net/news/20240118/Childless-by-choi...

(touches on UK childcare as being a contributing factor)

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#255

Post by Noumenon72 » Sat, Apr 26, 2025, 9:50 PM UTC

0n0n0m0uz wrote: post #195

I am an introvert who prefers solitude to human interaction as my base mode. I find most interactions to be draining and unnecessary. They basically only increase or serve as a source of stress while offering nothing meaningful that somehow improves my mental state. I probably had this tendency but never had enough solitude to really recognize how much I preferred it. It is actually addicting and almost impossible to…

Yeah, I'm totally equipped with the empathy and wit to make friends and I do it sort of naturally at work, but whenever I change jobs and look back at the friendships I'm like, why did I bother. Solitude is so much better now that we have computers to interact with costlessly.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#256

Post by redczar » Sat, Apr 26, 2025, 9:55 PM UTC

em-bee wrote: post #217

redczar wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

you got cause and effect wrong. desegregation is not the cause. racism is. it takes a lot more than laws to root out racism.

I think it’s clear that the reason desegration was the starting point is racism.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#257

Post by graemep » Sat, Apr 26, 2025, 10:08 PM UTC

redczar wrote: post #32

dm03514 wrote: post #16

For the us, I feel like it’s late stage individualism. This is what happens I think when people prioritize themselves over their communities, I think we have less dependence on our communities than ever thanks to the internet and being able to physically avoid community. We have less interaction than before. We can order grocery pickup and not even have to be physically around people for basic life tasks. We order ne…

The less dependence on community started with desegregation. There used to be community pools and rec centers. Garbage pickup was a municipal service. Ambulances were free. These things and more all ended with desegregation. Now we live in a society in which people don’t walk and don’t have places in their neighborhood where others congregate. Kids rarely play in the street anymore. The notion of it taking a village…

If that was true it would only be a problem in the US. It is not. The same has happened where there never was segregation.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

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Post by tayo42 » Sat, Apr 26, 2025, 10:09 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #157

phil21 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on where you live this is pretty affordable for even an average midwestern senior dev salary. Especially in a two income household. As in cut out daily Starbucks level affordable. It’s the first “luxury” I pay for when able to right after air conditioning, and I did it even when I was single with a roommate. Costs where I live are $200 or so twice a month to have my entire place cleaned top to bottom and I…

5k/year is serious money. It’s affordable the way most things are affordable making it a priority over other things. IMO it’s low on the dollars per hour saved to use a regular cleaning service, where it’s worth it is you want a clean home and just don’t keep it up. However, there’s significant diminishing returns on weekly or biweekly cleaning service vs monthly or by monthly. Especially if you can use a robotic vac…

How does air filtration reduce the frequency of cleaning?

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#259

Post by h2zizzle » Sat, Apr 26, 2025, 10:18 PM UTC

decimalenough wrote: post #247

sgt wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, with 3x/week or even 7x/week housekeeper you'll be cleaning something . Even Jeff Bezos probably wipes a plate clean once in a while, or makes a sandwich. They're not going to be right next to you 24/7.

24/7 live-in maids are quite common in places like Southeast Asia, India or the Middle East. And yes, 24/7 really means that: always on call.

In many cases, it's slavery (immigrants whose documents have been taken away). Occasionally, you have tragedies occur, like the Kenyan woman who received 3rd degree burns over most of her body, and her family didn't know until she was shipped back home to die.

Extreme, but is that what we're aspiring to?

But then, it would be incorrect of me to say that I'm making a purely economic argument because I've clearly moved into making a value judgment. I think that's still valid though. Do we want to live in a country where wealthy people - or even just the well-off top half/three-fifths/whatever - expect never to have to clean up after themselves? We don't even have to ask what kind of society that creates, it's in our national memory.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#260

Post by zemvpferreira » Sat, Apr 26, 2025, 10:26 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #249

closewith wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect, I think this is quite a sad and revealing comment, but your Hollywood definition of a friend fits my friends. I wonder if you maybe never experienced friendship but rather just acquaintances.

The friends who would throw down for you in a fight at age 19 when you reach age 40, will have families to look after and a lot more to lose than they used to have, like a nice house and a good job or they'll be at the far end of a skype link / international flight or they'll have discovered a new chill side to themselves now they don't have 19-year-old energy and hormone levels and you'll realise you don't want your…

I’m 40. I didn’t throw down for my friends when I was 19, but I support those same friends through divorces, cancer, deaths now. They’ll do the same for me.

Some friends are closer than family. That’s luck, but also intention.