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

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#431

Post by flopsamjetsam » Sun, Apr 27, 2025, 8:56 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #165

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 article talks about how it’s more of a younger generation phenomenon suggesting older generations still maintain their friendships Yea, this tracks my observations. A lot of adults make connections in their community through their kids and kids' friends. Kids pick their friends and their parents and guardians just go along for the ride, so when the kids play together, it kind of forces the parents to meet and i…

I see this in other social situations too (though social may be stretching it a little bit) e.g. in the gym, on the bike paths, and inside my apartment complex. I'm in my early 50s and people in their 20s and 30s aren't interested in saying hello in a polite way (and as neighbours especially), whereas older people (my age or older) are always interested in at least being friendly.

You can argue that, in gyms and on the bike path, people are more focused on their goal, but I still find in those situations that oldies are happy to chat for a bit, but younger people just want to block you out.

TBH I hate saying "young people" in this way. I feel like I'm running them down for what is their choice, and that feels bad. But it is something I have noticed in general i.e. not just 1 or 2 individuals.

I recently went back to studying, and it's almost the opposite there. Lots of people need "tutorial/lab friends," and so the barriers to conversation are really low. You literally stand next to someone and bam, instant friend (at least during the lab).

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#432

Post by mjevans » Sun, Apr 27, 2025, 9:09 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #401

mjevans wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dorms are a poor example. Everyone there expects it to be a temporary community other than larger structures like fraternal organizations that slowly nibble in new members and continuously digest them as things progress. It's not like you're in an apartment or house where you don't know if it'll be next year, 4-5 years, or 10 years when you move; only that someone's going to raise the rent, or you'll get a different…

Every community is temporary. The folly is thinking you need to find a “permanent” one to join.

Do you expect it to be commonplace that someone who starts living in a college dorm will still be there in 10 years? I hope they'd graduate by then, and failing that it seems likely they'd run out of debt to continue funding education.

Meanwhile, 'the golden days' of the American Dream included a stable house that lasted most of an adult's life, and maybe moving again at retirement. It also included a career track at a corporation that continued to pay well as an employee developed into a more valuable 'resource'. (back before Human Resources wasn't as transparently about harvesting all the value they could...)

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#433

Post by ryandrake » Sun, Apr 27, 2025, 9:13 PM UTC

stuxnet79 wrote: post #324

caseyy wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maintaining adult relationships post-Covid is hard as a millennial. Or rather, getting friendly relationships started/restarted has gotten very awkward. But I’ve noticed that most people respond very well to my efforts. I started texting my acquaintances and old friends at random just to ask what’s up every once a week or two. I also started calling some people instead. Almost everyone responded really well to that.…

> It’s okay to be the one who initiates. It seems like not everyone can, somehow the level of social anxiety has gone up in the world. In the end, I get my socialization full and so do they. So I’d recommend to whoever feels a bit lonely — reach out to your past friends and current acquaintances. Agreed. Before Covid I used to have a pretty vibrant social life but I was the initiator and back then I could easily set…

> Before Covid I used to have a pretty vibrant social life but I was the initiator and back then I could easily set up physical events. Covid obviously added a lot of friction to that. Now that we are half-way through the 2020s I have enough perspective to say the bad habits that a lot of folks developed during Covid have stuck and it's a shame.

Another thing that maybe people don't like to talk about so much: COVID outed a lot of really mentally unwell people who had prior to it managed to keep that part of their personality to themselves. COVID and stay-at-home brought out so much anti-social nastiness: Selfishness, anger, belligerence, rudeness, conspiracy theories, defiance, and just this sense of contrariness for the sake of contrariness. I got a text during the height of the pandemic from a (now former) friend saying "Dude, did you know there's a bar downtown that's ignoring stay-at-home and letting people in the back door? We should go!" Like, what the fuck, man, don't you see there's a deadly disease going around? What the hell is wrong with you? I think during that time we really saw a lot of "true selves" that we now can't unsee.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#434

Post by ryandrake » Sun, Apr 27, 2025, 9:17 PM UTC

flopsamjetsam wrote: post #431

ryandrake wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article talks about how it’s more of a younger generation phenomenon suggesting older generations still maintain their friendships Yea, this tracks my observations. A lot of adults make connections in their community through their kids and kids' friends. Kids pick their friends and their parents and guardians just go along for the ride, so when the kids play together, it kind of forces the parents to meet and i…

I see this in other social situations too (though social may be stretching it a little bit) e.g. in the gym, on the bike paths, and inside my apartment complex. I'm in my early 50s and people in their 20s and 30s aren't interested in saying hello in a polite way (and as neighbours especially), whereas older people (my age or older) are always interested in at least being friendly. You can argue that, in gyms and on t…

> TBH I hate saying "young people" in this way.

Yea, I also hesitated to post because I feel bad and don't want to be the stereotypical "grumpy old man complaining about young people" but the generational differences in attitudes towards IRL socializing are so stark and clear. It's hard to ignore.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#435

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 27, 2025, 9:21 PM UTC

dartharva wrote: post #121

prhn wrote: post #35

I'm not sure what caused this, but I think the expectations of modern friendship have become unrealistic. Maybe it's movies and TV, where a "close friend" is more or less a non judgemental therapist that will throw down in a fight for you. What is a close friend? Before we can start asking people if they have any we should probably agree on a definition. If you use the Hollywood standard, then probably none of us hav…

Have I been watching the wrong movies? Because from my perspective Hollywood's depiction of friends is a rather sorry benchmark - most depictions are of exemplarily bad friends.

[deleted]

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#436

Post by h2zizzle » Sun, Apr 27, 2025, 9:34 PM UTC

tock wrote: post #344

h2zizzle wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is every job. The rich paying the poor to do something that will bring them value. Every work visa is slavery by your argument. The reason cleaning as a job icks people out is because they see it as a "lesser" job. I am fine with it as long as the pay is good.

No, you're wrong. Someone with a work visa can leave if they want, they just can't stay if they don't meet certain conditions. However, they can travel to wherever they're authorized to. Difficult as it might be, they can also find another employer to sponsor them. They can also leave to visit home.

Someone who has their passport taken cannot leave. They may be deported, like someone with a lapsed visa, but unlike the aforementioned, they don't have the option to go somewhere other than the destination the deporting country decides is their home. Without documenation, they may be detained for an extended time, and cannot avail themselves of the resources available to people who can prove themselves citizens of another country.

I can leave my job - both permanently and for the evening. I can leave this country and come back (same for many foreign countries). Work life in America sucks, but it's not the same as modern day slavery.

Also, I explained why cleaning (specifically, employing a live-in maids) can be an issue, socially. It's not icky and it's not lesser; however, it can create in the society that encourages it class divisions and abuses, especially since it can only ever become ubiquitous and accessible to anyone but the wealthy if pay is not good. We have concrete examples of this in the regions GP mentions.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#437

Post by zeryx » Sun, Apr 27, 2025, 9:46 PM UTC

graemep wrote: post #257

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…

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.

It is though, in the English speaking world - to to Latin America or southern asia, anti-social behavior is treated like the disease it is

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#438

Post by samsonradu » Sun, Apr 27, 2025, 9:53 PM UTC

fknorangesite wrote: post #404

ryandrake wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> "He is under no obligation to [do nice thing | be social | act friendly]" is a very Reddit attitude It's also a very Hacker News attitude, as you are witnessing in this thread. I don't understand why people HN talk down about Reddit so much when it's really no better here, either.

Right, this reminds me of the threads around here on teleworking vs working in-office.

Once someone points out that they like going to the office because they get to socialize with co-workers, the replies typically sound like ‘don’t care, I’m not paid to socialize but to do my job’

While I understand the context can vary, it always struck me as an anti-social behavior.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#439

Post by derwiki » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 2:32 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #196

swat535 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> human kids are exotic pets for the wealthy or crazy I'm having a hard time parsing that statement. Are you suggesting that only the wealthy can realistically afford to have children today, or that parents increasingly treat their children like status symbols or pets? Both interpretations strike me as pretty dystopian.

> Are you suggesting that only the wealthy can realistically afford to have children today, or that parents increasingly treat their children like status symbols or pets? A little of both. Kids are a luxury good in the current macro. The cost to raise a child from 0-18 in the US in 2023 dollars is ~$330k (Brookings, USDA). This does not include daycare (~$1k/month if you can find a slot) nor college. No sick leave no…

1k/month daycare? That would be amazing!

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#440

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 2:35 AM UTC

alganet wrote: post #409

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow the metaphor. You can use a mirror to cause stress to one betta fish, but it seems like there would need to be more than just one fish and a mirror to capture this. I'm talking about the political machine working to ensure that 50% of voters are not friends with the other 50%.

I am asking what it has to do with friendship, implying that it has nothing to do with it. Unless... (now you complete my sentence either by denial, confirmation or deflection)

Uhh, nothing I guess. You need two fish for friendship (nevermind that bettas are too aggressive for that). With a fish and a mirror you only have one fish.