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US friendship is in freefall – shredding bonds and cutting lives short

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Re: US friendship is in freefall – shredding bonds and cutting lives short

#31

Post by johnnyanmac »

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #28
johnnyanmac wrote: post #10

>A nation that lacks interpersonal relationships is a lower-trust society, more prone to crime and unrest. That seems to unfortunately track. No bonds, less to lose by lashing out. A Mexican idiom comes to mind: El Que Tranza, No Avanza ("he who doesn't cheat, doesn't get ahead") So when you dehumanize your fellow man, life is just a rat race and you don't care who you step over to succeed. Not really a nation make.…

"El Que Tranza, No Avanza" You got the exact opposite of what that means. Unless you forgot to negate Tranza. "El que NO Tranza, NO avanza" Source: Native Spanish Speaker.

I'm not native but had some family-esque members tell it to me. And I tried to copy the quote from a search precisely to prevent this.

How embarrassing. But yes, I'm sure I missed the first no.

Re: US friendship is in freefall – shredding bonds and cutting lives short

#32

Post by johnnyanmac »

david38 wrote: post #29
kelseyfrog wrote: post #22

It's easier than ever to make friends. When you switch from a demand mindset to a supply mindset, the opportunities present themselves. Think of it this way, all those lonely people out there are just waiting for someone to reach out and do something with? It's like shooting fish in a barrel. I'm able to get out on average 10hrs/week just socializing without much effort by just putting myself out there and making eve…

It’s not because friendships are largely made from shared suffering. In a time of further independence, over choice, and tech to hold onto previous friends, making friends who actually will physically meet up with you frequently is definitely harder.

I wouldn't put it in the same league as dating, but it still has that element where effort doesn't correlate with success, or at least you personally perceive it as so. You can try to schedule plenty of get together and still feel like loose colleagues. Or sometimes you randomly invite someone at the 11th hour and now you're best friends who meet every week. That can be a bit frustrating for someone perhaps someonhwre on the neuro divergent spectrum.

But in a way, yes. Shared moments of triumph or suffering can accelerate that process. Those aren't necessarily moments you can always replicate, though.

Re: US friendship is in freefall – shredding bonds and cutting lives short

#33

Post by johnnyanmac »

darth_avocado wrote: post #6
KittenInABox wrote: post #2

--I cut a misinterpretation here.-- > We’ve long pondered why the marriage rate, and the corresponding birth rate, has plummeted in America. Answers often focus on financial stressors: Young Americans can’t afford a home like their parents could at their age, some speculate; others blame limited parental leave or poor day-care options. > Perhaps — but the corresponding slump in close friendships doesn’t add up. Peopl…

The article may be a bunch of slop but there is something deeply cultural in the US that is contributing to this. Not being able to afford things or social media or pretty much anything that gets the blame for the “loneliness pandemic” isn’t unique to the US. My personal experience has been that the same individualistic culture that allows people to do whatever they want and become whoever they want, that yields grea…

It's not unique to the US but there are factors that accelerate the lack of ability to freely be around people.Some a unique-ish societal problem (declines of US malls while EU is fine) . And part of that is indeed cultural attitude.

>Do you really stop seeing a friend because they can’t afford to go places?

On a personal level, it's because I was traditionally the one planning get togethers, and then life got rough and I just planned less with no one to step up. Maybe they are also on hard times, maybe they had other groups they prioritized. Hard to tell.

I still try to at least check up once and a while remotely, but I do miss those times.

Re: US friendship is in freefall – shredding bonds and cutting lives short

#34

Post by kelseyfrog »

mamidon wrote: post #24
kelseyfrog wrote: post #22

It's easier than ever to make friends. When you switch from a demand mindset to a supply mindset, the opportunities present themselves. Think of it this way, all those lonely people out there are just waiting for someone to reach out and do something with? It's like shooting fish in a barrel. I'm able to get out on average 10hrs/week just socializing without much effort by just putting myself out there and making eve…

100% I've had great success inviting people to dinner parties and such. This works great for people I already know. I've tried hosting public groups, with partial success. Have you got any ideas there? I've tried posting events on local Facebook groups, mostly. But my experience is that very few people are actually active online and willing to physically do something.

Success really depends on the pool you're drawing from. A public open invite on FB is one of the hardest approaches. Kudos to the people who can pull it off.

The easiest for me was using my city's discord server as a launch pad for running book clubs, coffee meetups, and hikes. After a few successes, it's easy to gain a reputation for making things happen and it sort of snowballs from there.

Re: US friendship is in freefall – shredding bonds and cutting lives short

#35

Post by johnnyanmac »

OutOfHere wrote: post #27

"Close friends" is not a good metric anyone. A better metric is the count of token output of personal life. This includes all online chats, including with AI, on apps, and all social sites. I am pretty sure this metric has been trending very high.

You're somewhat correct, and a bit off:

>In 2018, a Pew Research Poll found that teenagers who were connected with their friends online were more likely to also hang out in person. By 2022, in-person outings for teens had collapsed.

>Can their online friends fill the role that real-life ones once did? Maybe — if those “friends” even exist.

>Last year one study found a full 25% of young adults “believe that AI has the potential to replace real-life romantic relationships.”

Those are factors, but it's pretty clear the pandemic accelerated such things as such that these cause isolation rather than a conduit to meet up.

And AI romance is on the rise. Is this healthy? I wouldn't think so; and I'm mostly saying that because I hate the idea of a corporate server having such a dangerously intimate connection with a human. Sounds like a Black Mirror episode.

I'll begrudgingly stay open to the more general theory of a personal AI you fall in love with otherwise. Very fearful, but I'd feel like a hypocrite as a game dev who has technically done tiny contributions to this if I suddenly say "you can't care about fictional characters".

Re: US friendship is in freefall – shredding bonds and cutting lives short

#36

Post by rightbyte »

mamidon wrote: post #24
kelseyfrog wrote: post #22

It's easier than ever to make friends. When you switch from a demand mindset to a supply mindset, the opportunities present themselves. Think of it this way, all those lonely people out there are just waiting for someone to reach out and do something with? It's like shooting fish in a barrel. I'm able to get out on average 10hrs/week just socializing without much effort by just putting myself out there and making eve…

100% I've had great success inviting people to dinner parties and such. This works great for people I already know. I've tried hosting public groups, with partial success. Have you got any ideas there? I've tried posting events on local Facebook groups, mostly. But my experience is that very few people are actually active online and willing to physically do something.

> I've tried hosting public groups, with partial success. Have you got any ideas there?

It is way easier if you give away free food. Like, it could be coffee or donuts. It just have to be some token value, such that people don't feel that they only go there for the nominal reason if the event sucks.

When my local party has like booths talking with voters we have like cookies and coffee such that there is an indirect reason to stand there talking to us. Some sort of plausible denialability.

Also, there is the automatic social aspect of food.

Re: US friendship is in freefall – shredding bonds and cutting lives short

#37

Post by xracy »

araes wrote: post #17

The article in the New York Post, appears to be referencing this article by Daniel Cox of the "Survey Center on American Life". [1] The article itself on americansurveycenter website is far more extensive with a much larger discussion. [1] https://www.americansurveycenter.org/research/disconnected-p... Much of the article that is the source is actually devoted to the discussion about working class vs educated divides…

The sad part here is that the 4-year degree vs high-school also feels like it's probably more of a class divide than anything else.

Re: US friendship is in freefall – shredding bonds and cutting lives short

#39

Post by rightbyte »

wkat4242 wrote: post #14

I think the extreme political hardlining makes this happen too. I've never been to the US but this extreme-right stuff has made its way to Holland too. They already gained 30% of votes in the last election. Meaning I had to drop a lot of friends. Once they start screaming about "woke" or bitching about trans people they are forever out of my life. At first I used to try to reason with them. I thought sure, it's just…

> Meaning I had to drop a lot of friends. Once they start screaming about "woke" or bitching about trans people they are forever out of my life.

This is somewhat unfortunate. People like this need to go to a political meating and see what is talked about. There might be exceptions but the media and thus public conception about what parties talk about and think are prioritised question seems more or less made up.

I agree feed based social media is to blame. But I would say the problem is bilateral and need mutual understanding in the communication.

Re: US friendship is in freefall – shredding bonds and cutting lives short

#40

Post by rightbyte »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #34
mamidon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% I've had great success inviting people to dinner parties and such. This works great for people I already know. I've tried hosting public groups, with partial success. Have you got any ideas there? I've tried posting events on local Facebook groups, mostly. But my experience is that very few people are actually active online and willing to physically do something.

Success really depends on the pool you're drawing from. A public open invite on FB is one of the hardest approaches. Kudos to the people who can pull it off. The easiest for me was using my city's discord server as a launch pad for running book clubs, coffee meetups, and hikes. After a few successes, it's easy to gain a reputation for making things happen and it sort of snowballs from there.

It is also important to not become bitter when you fail. Starting up community activities is hard. It is somewhat like seeding servers in classic multiplayer games like CS1.6.
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