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

wave3.social

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

#541

Post by mock-possum »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #41
Multicomp wrote: post #2

The lack of deep friendships feel like a 3-fold problem. 1. You can't ever be real, if you are real, you are likely to be recorded doing something someone somewhere on the largest stage in the world (the public web) that someone will disapprove of, and someone else will raise their own profile by mining your impiety to prove their own concern and moral superiority. 2. Everyone is so mobile and connected online, they…

> You can't ever be real, if you are real, you are likely to be recorded doing something… I'm real all the time. What am I missing here?

You’re missing that you’re probably not the kind of person who has the problem being outlined in the comment you’re replying to.

For what it’s worth, I remember being a closeted teenager, I remember feeling like I “couldn’t” be real - but that feeling was wrong. I just hadn’t figured that out yet at the time. It seemed too scary, too risky to be real. That’s probably one of the only pieces of advice I would have given my younger self if I could go back in time - come out sooner, come out before you’re ready, come out as bi before you know you’re gay, come out as curious/questioning before that even.

Force other people to deal with you as you are, instead of constantly working to make yourself into something that you think will be more acceptable to them. Take the risk of being real.

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

#542

Post by mock-possum »

Animats wrote: post #80
nswizzle31 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appreciate the thoughts - totally agree on those issues, but I don't think the problem is insurmountable. There is a real - albeit latent, maybe - demand for deep friendship and male-only spaces. Everyone recognizes it's an issue, at the very least, and is being more vocal about it in the face of the dramatic enshittification of the internet over the last few years. It just takes too much self-discipline to break out…

> deep friendship and male-only spaces. Gun ranges?

> male-only spaces

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

#543

Post by sfmz »

undisclosedUser wrote: post #63

Generally, I'm a fan of the idea of creating social groups that meet in person and are accessible to people who are a little more offline. I will say that you've run into a rather awkward name collision. The Third Wave (when not referencing feminist theory, or surfer lingo) usually refers to a specific social experiment where a teacher created mini-fascism (okay, that's a tldr, but it was an interesting educational t…

I associate 3rd wave with coffee, fwiw

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

#544

Post by c22 »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #414
christophilus wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not complicated. Men need women. But men need men, too. The needs are distinct and not interchangeable.

Fine, but why do you list two needs with enormous female gendered baggage in that case?

Perhaps the baggage is a projection based on your own experiences?

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

#545

Post by jaredklewis »

Multicomp wrote: post #2

The lack of deep friendships feel like a 3-fold problem. 1. You can't ever be real, if you are real, you are likely to be recorded doing something someone somewhere on the largest stage in the world (the public web) that someone will disapprove of, and someone else will raise their own profile by mining your impiety to prove their own concern and moral superiority. 2. Everyone is so mobile and connected online, they…

IME, none of those things are issues that prevent deep friendships in my own life.

1. I've never worried about this.

2. I regularly chat with strangers and acquaintances IRL, though I don't feel it does much to relieve loneliness or cultivate deep friendships.

3. I'm an atheist, but I don't think I've ever worried about being "religious" about something nor judged someone for being so.

I would analyze my own life as follows: friendship requires time spent together. I'm a parent with a full time job in a car centric city, which keeps me pretty busy. I may get one day or night a week to go be social or do hobbies or go to a rotary club or whatever. That's a limited amount of time, so there's a corresponding limit on how many friendships I can realistically maintain. Let alone start new friendships.

So I feel like "having it all" is not realistic. Everything takes time: working out, eating healthy, having friends, having a family, having a job, having a community, writing hacker news comments, and on and on. Most data shows that Dads now spend significantly more time with their kids than those of previous generations. So I think for people of my cohort (millennial dads) its just a case where we traded time with friends for time with family.

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

#547

Post by idiotsecant »

JimDabell wrote: post #181
keiferski wrote: post #173

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…

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…

Yes, unfortunately sometimes social events are wildly successful and even more people want to join, and the existing members let them, and everyone has a great time together.

It's unfortunate, but it happens.

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

#548

Post by idiotsecant »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #397
wvh wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't disagree, but some hard things don't get said when the other gender is around, especially with men of a certain age. It takes a lot for many men to even out loud say the word "lonely" or "sad" or "worthless". A lot of male conversation is silent. The whole spiel is to project and feel capable of dealing with the world, to feel useful, to be a Man. To feel otherwise is not "masculine". To admit this to mixed com…

Funny, because the traditional role of a women is exactly to be the one who hears all these hard things and helps the man overcome them. Extra funny hat women should be excluded so men can talk about feeling lonely and how they wish they had a woman.

Phew, I have very rarely heard something so wrong. Women are absolutely not traditionally an emotional support for men. In fact, being vulnerable in that way as a man is just about the surest way to make most women suddenly quite uninterested. Every woman has a story where some important man cries in front of her for the only time. In his entire life.

Women want men to be emotionally open as it applies to supporting them. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but let's call a spade a spade.

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

#549

Post by idiotsecant »

maxerickson wrote: post #511
lupusreal wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find a bit remarkable is how they lost control of their club dynamics so severely. I've been a regular attendee of a few hacker spaces that were open to the public but never had the problem they describe. I think maybe a key aspect is ensuring that all men, particular the ones that are classically unattractive (even repulsive) feel welcome as valued equals. Many women cannot countenance this and will try to sh…

This is a hilarious take. Men must be welcome as an absolute, women must conform to your expectations or be excluded.

In a men's club?

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

#550

Post by bagful »

phrotoma wrote: post #373
bagful wrote: post #355

[flagged]

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…

I should rather have said, “we will solve it no sooner than …”, because certainly there are countless other ways society constrains desire to the detriment of the subject’s capacity to relate to others. I’m sure our musical culture would do well to cast off twelve-tone equal temperament, which trades a dimension of artistic expression for a certain fungibility; pitch classes have no particular identities because their internal relations a have been flattened, every perfect fifth is as perfect as it will be, every major third sounds equally inflamed, and so on.

But as for matters of mental health; I assert that every man exhibits desires which we have decided fates him to be a homosexual. Any suppression of true desire (as opposed to that which society grafts upon us) introduces a schizm in the personality. Consequently, there is not a man alive who is spared from this issue; all men are divided against themselves, and so they are divided against each other and against really anyone they ought to be vulnerable with.

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