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I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

wave3.social

521–530 of 728 posts

Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

#521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The demands from the lunatic fringe of a mouvement should be completely ignored. "Positive" racial segregation is still racial segregation and racial segregation is racism; unlike positive discrimination, there are no intellectually honest way to frame it otherwise. And excluding Jews because they are Jewish is antisemitism plain and simple. Excluding those that deny that Israel actions have become genocidal differen…

Trump was the lunatic fringe, and here we are.

Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

#522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure it's common, but I've always hung around in mixed groups, doing whatever, so I'm puzzled and curious what guy time or girl time even is.

You've really never had an attractive member of the opposite sex show up and the girls/guys get all competitive? I'm wondering how that's possible, it happened multiple times a week - a day even - to me in high school and college. I guess always being in mixed groups meant it was always subtly in play. 5 dudes chilling is a different dynamic than 3 guys 2 girls. People who keep insisting it's about some weird need fo…

Maybe this happened when I was 19.

I haven't observed this sort of thing happening in decades.

Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

#523

In my 30s I found myself slipping into the chasm of loneliness. It was particularly difficult for me because I had been in the Army for 10 years and was used to having many male friends I was extremely close with. All I was doing on the weekends was sitting on the couch and I hate sitting on the couch. I decided to fight it by focusing on three aspects of my personality and finding activities that suited them. First…

This is how I am able to make friends in a new city in my 40s. You actually have to seek out in person clubs/get togethers. Run clubs, book clubs, dog clubs, board game clubs, trivia nights, whatever. Put yourself out there at events where socializing is part of the event. You will meet people, you’ll have additional overlapping interests with some of them, those will lead to other interactions and meeting other people.

Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

#524

This 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…

I mean, you do realize you FIRST need to be location-agnostic to find some people, right? Only then can your group start to develop favorite local places to hang around at. > I bring this up because if you look at places that had lively social activities a few decades or a century ago, they were almost always a specific place. Which is basically irrelevant, as you can come up with a similar example of pre-covid, duri…

I'm not sure these places really ever existed with such a stability as you describe outside of _really_ small towns. Like under 5000 pop towns.

These places exist today, in numerous major cities around the world. I live near one.

Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

#525
post #19

My mother, somewhere around 1976, told me that basically when men get married, they lose all their friends. But they get all their wife’s friends. Which seems prescient to me. Including their husbands, obviously.

> My mother, somewhere around 1976, told me that basically when men get married, they lose all their friends.

In my experience, she lied to you.

Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

#526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, generationally we may be correcting a problem that will soon no longer exist, or even invert. Women are attending and graduating college in higher numbers than men in GenZ. Much of the man-o-sphere GenZ rightward turn seems to be resentment at society being sure what the use of men is anymore. That is, from a very young age girls are told they can do/be whatever they want. Often now, boys are described in te…

>You'll hear left wing progressive parents in places like NYC tell stories like "my 8 year old boy came home from school crying because his teacher told hime everything bad that has happened in history was because of men" and stupid stuff that's unthinkable if it was reversed. People are bashing their heads on the wall trying to figure out why young white men are moving towards the right in droves...and the best answ…

You don't think it could be becasue life is just hard and someone is providing an easy scapegoat for their own problems?

Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

#527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As is the case with everything, I'm certain it's more complicated than this, but I believe you've hit on a huge factor. I would encourage anyone who is interested in this (or skeptical of it!) to check out the work of Niobe Way, a psychologist who has been researching the social lives of adolescent boys for a couple decades. I would crudely summarize a key finding of her research as roughly: around 12-14 yrs of age b…

This is a natural response to the culture sexualizing everything and how lifestyles are celebrated.

...because we now are happy that gay people can leave the closet and overcome the threats that would keep them there, straight men can't share emotions?

There are gay women. Why are friendships between women not a threat to the "no homo" need?

There is evidence that the intimacy (especially physical intimacy) of male friendships declined starting in the 90s as more gay people left the closet and slowly worked towards social acceptance. But the "no homo, bro" reaction is entirely self inflicted and has absolutely nothing to do with a sexualized society. I'd actually wager that the straight men who spend the most time around out gay men are the least likely to feel the need to resist male intimacy out of a fear of a threat to their sexuality.

Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

#528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "external pressure" was largely just the pressure of declining membership.

Nah these decisions actually resulted in membership declines because they lost the Mormon population and with them a huge chunk of the patrons

I'm pretty sure you have the order reversed. They were already losing the mormons.

Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

#529
post #38

I like the idea, on principle, any attempt to build community should be supported. I'm may not be the target audience if this is recently post-college, but the thing that strikes me is these activities feel a bit performatively male. I guess my hot-take is there are certain things that people genuinely love (e.g. improv, dnd, video games, rock-climbing) perception be damned, and there are certain things that people d…

I assure you that people really do love these things. The idea that men truly love video games but are actually just experiencing shared psychosis when playing or watching sports is wild to me.

Re: I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic

#530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real estate is too expensive in the USA. To stay profitable you need to turn customers around quickly

But not on a park bench or park area with tables?

In the USA people would graffiti the benches pee on the seats and a homeless person would move in. Almost no protection exists to prevent destruction of public property. I think that’s intentional to discourage people from embracing socialism.
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