Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

happiness.hks.harvard.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 469 posts

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#41

Post by BigGreenJorts »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #37
torben-friis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not only lack of dependence, but also lack of idleness. Most of my friend interactions would come from things like having a moment with nothing to do in the bus, realizing I have no particular plans this weekend and reaching out to a couple friends to see if they’re available. Now those moments are instantly drowned by opening instagram before a thought bubbles up. And when the weekend eventually comes and there…

It's not only modern technology taking up time. I foolishly bought a project house and have spent nearly every weekend and some weeknights doing repairs and improvements. My SO also tends toward time consuming hobbies like gardening and aquariums. Add young children and every free moment in between is precious.

On one hand I'm inclined to believe this particular example relies on personality. My aunts and uncles had their home hobby projects and so did they're friends. They'd help either other out on their projects and then take a break over a beer or cigs, chatting the rest of the evening away.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#42

Post by sameasiteverwas »

BruceEel wrote: post #30
tycho-newman wrote: post #12

It's not lost, just no longer necessary for survival. Also, bad communities fail. They should be allowed to fail. Until recently, individuals needed to be part of some sort of kinship group to get their needs met and to survive. To communicate with anyone in near real time you had to be close by. We have managed to engineer a society where individuals can survive "on their own" - basically outside their kinship group…

> Also, bad communities fail. They should be allowed to fail. Are there circumstances under which nation states could/should be seen as 'communities', I wonder. And, what would be some sensible ways of detecting and handling failure at such scale.

> sensible ways of detecting and handling failure at such scale

War and revolution. 'Burn it down and start from scratch' is an extreme path to fix a failing country. Historically, the people that rebuild are rarely the same people that burned it down.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#43

Post by paulryanrogers »

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…

Having talked to folks from the segregation era, you may be thinking of red-lining and white flight. As folks realized cities and schools were desegregating many moved out of urban environments to suburbs and rural areas, then excluded POC through zoning.

Even if we accept that as the primary cause (which I don't) that would mean cowardice and racism are the root cause. An irrational fear of people who don't look and talk like us.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#44

Post by sylens »

I wonder how much the polarization of politics contributes to this. I have friends on opposite sides of the political spectrum than me, but were able to basically segment off that area of discussion to enjoy each others company in other areas. It may be because we go back 20+ years with many shared experiences. I would guess many friendships do not have that level of bedrock to ground them, so developments like the recent political climate can easily uproot them

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#45

Post by creata »

sltr wrote: post #4

> online friendships require a different set of social behaviors than in-person ones Yeah. In real life there's no karma value next to your name and no string of reactions next to every statement you utter. Imagine a VR-based dystopia which displayed such information to everyone you encounter.

> no string of reactions next to every statement you utter.

I always assumed reactions were meant to be analogous to people making facial expressions as you spoke.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#46

Post by FollowingTheDao »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #37
torben-friis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not only lack of dependence, but also lack of idleness. Most of my friend interactions would come from things like having a moment with nothing to do in the bus, realizing I have no particular plans this weekend and reaching out to a couple friends to see if they’re available. Now those moments are instantly drowned by opening instagram before a thought bubbles up. And when the weekend eventually comes and there…

It's not only modern technology taking up time. I foolishly bought a project house and have spent nearly every weekend and some weeknights doing repairs and improvements. My SO also tends toward time consuming hobbies like gardening and aquariums. Add young children and every free moment in between is precious.

But you see the Amish, they just rebuilt a whole lumber sawmill in only eight days.

https://x.com/matt_vanswol/status/1915121027820159414

Your project house was an individual pursuit when it should be a collective one.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#47

Post by bilsbie »

phalangion wrote: post #26
bilsbie wrote: post #5

It’s crazy out there for a 40yo. One thing I’m considering is that maybe it’s ok if friends don’t reciprocate. I think some people just have to be the inviters or relationships fall apart.

> I think some people just have to be the inviters or relationships fall apart. As annoying as it is, this is definitely true. I've only recently become an inviter, and it's made all the difference. It helps to recognize that not everybody is an inviter/organizer.

Any tips?

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#48

Post by BigGreenJorts »

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…

> There used to be community pools and rec centers. Garbage pickup was a municipal service. Ambulances were free.

I live in place where this is still true. The rec centers are barely solvent and it's mostly retirees and summer camps (cheap daycare) that keeps them afloat.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#49

Post by redczar »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #43
redczar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Having talked to folks from the segregation era, you may be thinking of red-lining and white flight. As folks realized cities and schools were desegregating many moved out of urban environments to suburbs and rural areas, then excluded POC through zoning. Even if we accept that as the primary cause (which I don't) that would mean cowardice and racism are the root cause. An irrational fear of people who don't look and…

Redlining and white flight definitely happened. It also happened that cities stopped funding municipal pools and other services. Things like Elks Lodges went into long term decline when women and blacks had to be admitted.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#50

Post by tycho-newman »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #40
tycho-newman wrote: post #12

It's not lost, just no longer necessary for survival. Also, bad communities fail. They should be allowed to fail. Until recently, individuals needed to be part of some sort of kinship group to get their needs met and to survive. To communicate with anyone in near real time you had to be close by. We have managed to engineer a society where individuals can survive "on their own" - basically outside their kinship group…

"Also, bad communities fail. They should be allowed to fail." Are you not assuming something is not killing these communities from the outside? Should all people who get an infection be allowed to die? People are being squeezed to death by hypercapitalism and you blame the communities?

Life has a 100 percent fatality rate

People fight for communities they want to preserve. There’s no guarantees that fight will be successful.

But when they don’t fight? Maybe it’s because they can’t. Or don’t want to. No one should ask them or force them to.

Post reply on HN