Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about just more third-spaces without the classist gatekeeping?
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I don't think 'class' is a nazi barrier, at any level.
I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic
301–310 of 728 posts
Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic
#302Earlier 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…
Why does the presence of women cause men to not have male friends?
The group dynamic changes the moment it is not single sex anymore.
Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic
#303Sometimes I wish we could have "gentlemen's clubs" of the sort that existed in Victorian Britain (not the US strip club version), third-spaces where one could go to read or converse or play cards with other men or even have a meal or a drink. Having social space that's limited to a set of people one knows, more or less, and that has rules on behavior seems like a civilizing influence that's missing today.
For me those were always local role playing associations, I was a member of 3 during my youth.
Me and my brother would go there after school to play some board games or dungeons and dragons during the weekends.
Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic
#304Some schools have alumni clubs. Harvard has a whole chain of them. Here's the New York City branch.[1] It's modeled after classic English clubs. It's still thriving. But the Princeton Club went broke and the Yale Club is in trouble. Stanford never got into this. Stanford's alumni association is mostly a front for the "development office", the alumni donation extraction operation. Silicon Valley had the Capital Club i…
There's also the Olympic club in Sf proper
Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic
#305I've never felt more connected to people than in NYC. I knew my neighbors, I had a huge social network, I just didn't like the NYC that much. I honestly blame residential zoning. The place we would get to know our neighbors was at the corner shop, bar a block away, salon and pizza shop downstairs. All that goes away when you're walking more than a couple blocks to do anything.
I always hear stereotypes about people in big cities being unfriendly and there being no sense of community, but I've had the opposite experience. Coming from a town with a population of hundreds, yeah, everyone knew everybody, but the connections people had were decades old. And everyone hated everybody who wasn't already part of their very tight social network (and they hated most of the people in the network as well, but they just had no other choice but to deal with it). And nobody wanted to associate with direct neighbors.
But living in a city, I've had shopkeepers who regularly see me set aside items that they know I'll like and make sure nobody buys it before I get a chance. I have neighbors that greet me every time they see me. Some chat me up. I've stopped in random hole in the wall restaurants and had other regulars (who I didn't know) randomly give me free stuff to welcome me to the community. People were willing to welcome new people in.
Now I know people will want to rush in and say, "That's not a city experience. My small town has all that and your small town just sucked!" To which I say, okay. That's your anecdote against mine. But cities are just as welcoming as people think small towns are. If you choose to stay in your room and grimace every time you do happen to go outside, yeah, it's lonely. But it's very easy to turn that around in a city with potential friends everywhere you look. And having been to cities around the world, I see loads of people chatting and laughing outside.
Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic
#306This 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…
You are not supposed to stop by. You are supposed to spend money and keep going.
Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic
#307I think loneliness is a consequence of choice,
people had less choice about their inclusion into the social networks, so they were more social, but now interaction is more voluntary. This is a much higher threshold (opt out vs opt in) and less and less interactions meet it, which further degrades future social interactions.
Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In a big city you can really be yourself because there's always others that > are like you and you can meet them in like-minded places. > And you can make real ties there. This is a massive assumption, but maybe 'yourself' is limited to a standard deviation from the accepted mean.
Is it really that outrageous of an assumption to think that most people are not too far from the majority?
What's the majority? There's so much difference in people. There's the IT/intellectual worker and there's blue collar workers, there's sport fans and book enthusiasts, there's religious communities and lgbt-friendly ones. All examples of dualities that are common to some degree but don't have so much overlap in interests.
In my experience social settings work a lot better when they're a bit more specific. Like, about something. And there's not really one majority that fits all. In the US even the two major parties are extremely polarised and yet they are about equal in size.
Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic
#309Is this really a problem? I get the feeling that the male loneliness epidemic is more described by people about others than themselves. For my part, the world doesn't seem that way at all. I have many friends who live close by and who are a part of my life. We play basketball and poker and board games together. We go to nearby bars occasionally and to each others' homes regularly. We lift together though I haven't be…
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Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those clubs still exist in London but they're just for the elite to make shady backroom deals with their rich buddies :) They're really exclusive and they always have been. You and I would not get in, not now and not in the Victorian days. Even 'new money' is usually not ok. You really have to have gone to the right school and have the right family.
The working class used to have working men’s clubs, but they no longer serve the same purpose.
Ah I see, I misread that. I wasn't aware of those. Thanks!