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Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help

theguardian.com

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Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help

#51

Post by monort »

naeem wrote: post #26
estebancastano wrote: post #11

For the past year, I've been working on the social isolation problem. Here's the idea we're currently developing. Would love to hear folks' feedback. Would you be excited about using this? "A social app, like Tinder but for hangouts with friends. See what your friends want to do, and swipe right to show you’re interested. You can also join hangouts in the global feed to instantly expand your social circle. Hangouts a…

I've heard some variant of this idea a thousand times and it doesn't work. Also, slightly ironic/depressing to react to an article about systemic loneliness in the tech age with "maybe we can make an app for that".

This is exactly the problem, that can be solved with software, we know it from the past (IRC, ICQ random chat, Livejournal).

Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help

#52

Post by paublyrne »

estebancastano wrote: post #11

For the past year, I've been working on the social isolation problem. Here's the idea we're currently developing. Would love to hear folks' feedback. Would you be excited about using this? "A social app, like Tinder but for hangouts with friends. See what your friends want to do, and swipe right to show you’re interested. You can also join hangouts in the global feed to instantly expand your social circle. Hangouts a…

There are already apps like Meetup which help people 'meet up' with others, make new friends etc, but their purpose is not explicitly about making friends.

Ultimately, though, getting yourself to an event with other people is only part of the problem, you still need to be able to connect with the people you meet, introduce yourself, have a conversation, bond.

If you really want to create an app to tackle social isolation, maybe you could look at something that helps people improve their social skills instead, a sort of online tutor. There are definitely a lot of tricks to be learned to thrive in social situations, and while some people seem innately more equipped, I believe almost everyone can learn them to some degree.

Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help

#53

Post by knrz »

grondilu wrote: post #4

Lately I've become more and more convinced that indeed, modern society sucks, or at the very least that I, and people like me, am not well equipped to flourish in it. I'm sure some people are though, but I suspect they are becoming the minority. Few days ago I also read Ted Kaczynski's essay[1], and it's hard for me not to acknowledge how right he is on many points. However, I do believe it is possible to survive all…

I have a theory about stoicism in the past vs. stoicism in the present. Keep in mind that I say this all from a very North American point of view (born in Iran, but grew up in Canada).

In the past, there was no guard against disease. If it came, you were done for. There were some limited options available when it came to medicine, but by and large, if you got a disease, that was it. It was out of your hands, and even if you wanted to, you couldn't do anything.

In the present, there are a lot of solutions that can be solved with enough access to capital. It's possible now, not impossible as it was prior, to cure yourself of certain ailments, if only you live in the right place, have the right amount of money (or social security), etc. To a certain degree, living in a particular place and access to capital can be a matter of personal choice. A lot of the time, not enough to get you the treatment you need, but enough to give you the sense of having some measure of control.

Having a measure of control but being powerless is new to modern life.

That's what I think, at least. What does HN think?

---

Industrial Society and it's Future really hit home for me a month ago when I first came across it. I feel you.

Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help

#54

Post by jsemrau »

estebancastano wrote: post #11

For the past year, I've been working on the social isolation problem. Here's the idea we're currently developing. Would love to hear folks' feedback. Would you be excited about using this? "A social app, like Tinder but for hangouts with friends. See what your friends want to do, and swipe right to show you’re interested. You can also join hangouts in the global feed to instantly expand your social circle. Hangouts a…

I have approached the problem from another angle. My hypothesis is that social groups only form through continued joint experiences. The easiest way is to achieve this is go to regularly go to free events. I have build drop!in [1] for the event discovery and message your friends informally that you will be going.

Interestingly just a couple of day I wrote about the topic of loneliness in the modern age at my medium [2]

[1] http://www.idrop.in

[2] https://medium.com/@thisTenqyuLife/life-after-facebook-is-re...

Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help

#55

Post by jsemrau »

martin_andrino wrote: post #24
sigsergv wrote: post #22

I don't think number of lonely people increases, they just become much more visible. Social networks and other changes in modern society make loneliness acceptable and people stop hiding it.

At the same time, social networks create an illusion for lonely people so they feel accompanied. It’s not all that bad.

We are currently using technology to tear people apart with the illusion of social contacts. Instead of building communities we are supporting the development of hikikomoris. Already now, you don't need to leave your apartment for work, food, non-food supermarket items, payments, etc.

Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help

#56

Post by gaius »

wklauss wrote: post #33
grondilu wrote: post #4

Lately I've become more and more convinced that indeed, modern society sucks, or at the very least that I, and people like me, am not well equipped to flourish in it. I'm sure some people are though, but I suspect they are becoming the minority. Few days ago I also read Ted Kaczynski's essay[1], and it's hard for me not to acknowledge how right he is on many points. However, I do believe it is possible to survive all…

> Is it not possible for the modern man to accept the drawbacks of modern life, including loneliness, just as stoically as the primitive man was accepting adversity and death? Primitive men weren't stoic. We attribute that quality to them because we now understand how common diseases work and why they were so prominent in that time. That understanding -part of the advantages of modern life- has forever changed our pe…

For primitive men, life was probably terrifying and a constant struggle

Yes, but the Stoics weren't "primitive" really. I may be getting the timeline mixed up slightly but they were part of a civilisation that invented steam engines but never bothered to develop them because they had slavery to provide manual labour! They are far closer to us than they were to cavemen in every meaningful way.

Update: Epictetus died in 135 AD. Vitruvius died in 15 AD and was writing about steam engines... So the Stoics were a century into what could have been the Age of Steam, which would be 1870 in our timeline!

Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help

#57

Post by mattmanser »

RandomInteger4 wrote: post #49
mattmanser wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ouch. Hope it gets better. Have you tried subreddits like https://www.reddit.com/r/Anxiety/ , /r/offmychest/, or something like 7 cups of tea? As the story relates, we're more like to offer practical advice here on HN rather than the emotional support you probably need right now. It does, honestly, get better. You're making the right moves, even if it does all look desperate right now.

Danke. I'm cool for the most part right now. I've come to embrace my anxiety to an extent. If I'm able to type, then that means it's mostly not affecting me at the moment. Late night just has me feeling a lack of inhibition and dis-concern for my privacy on these matters. As far as caffeine goes, I don't know what I'd do without it. Up until recently I was on 2 doses of 3 cups (measurement unit) of espresso per day,…

Caffeine can cause anxiety, I gave it up for a while when I started suffering from panic attacks and it helped. I was lucky that I had no withdrawl headaches.

Also, sleep. Good sleep, a bit of regular exercise and a bit of a routine are a great deal of help to stablizing your mood and anxieties.

OAuth and OpenID are completely, ridiculously, utterly, pathetically over-complicated. It's one of the worst specs ever released. You do not need to know it to be a professional developer. Most professional developers will have no clue how it works. Trust me, I have over a decade of experience. If you can get a plug and play library, I really would just do that. Especially while learning development.

I mean, if you're enjoying it, go ahead, but OAuth is basically stupid. A cruel joke inflicted on developers and a lesson in how not to make a spec.

Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help

#58

Post by theoh »

grondilu wrote: post #4

Lately I've become more and more convinced that indeed, modern society sucks, or at the very least that I, and people like me, am not well equipped to flourish in it. I'm sure some people are though, but I suspect they are becoming the minority. Few days ago I also read Ted Kaczynski's essay[1], and it's hard for me not to acknowledge how right he is on many points. However, I do believe it is possible to survive all…

Radicals would say that it's politically problematic to expect individuals to take up any slack with their own resilience/fortitude.

Telling people that they must learn to bear their suffering, rather than receive substantial support from (a possibly reorganized) system, is, of course, a very inexpensive form of wellbeing intervention.

Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help

#60

Post by brango »

estebancastano wrote: post #11

For the past year, I've been working on the social isolation problem. Here's the idea we're currently developing. Would love to hear folks' feedback. Would you be excited about using this? "A social app, like Tinder but for hangouts with friends. See what your friends want to do, and swipe right to show you’re interested. You can also join hangouts in the global feed to instantly expand your social circle. Hangouts a…

You might like to read "The Anatomy of Friendship". People are basically hardwired to like people they're physically close to and come into contact with regularly, so try to tick those two boxes.

The trouble with an app like this is that if it works and people become friends they'll probably just switch to the lowest common denominator/free platform, e.g. facebook/whatsapp to coordinate, so monetisation could be tricky. I.e. if your app is 100% efficient, people may use it once then not return.

You also have the added challenge of seeding this "two-sided" marketplace (people suggesting activities and those saying they'll attend) in every locality you want to operate in, so you'll need a compelling growth strategy. It also sinks or swims on people actually turn up for events.

Good luck - I do think Meetup sucks and could be far better, but I think you'd need a lucky break/very interesting twist to really gain traction.

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