Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?
609 points by publicdebates 19 hours ago
609 points by publicdebates 19 hours ago
Countless voiceless people sit alone every day and have no one to talk to, people of all ages, who don't feel that they can join any local groups. So they sit on social media all day when they're not at work or school. How can we solve this?
You have to be the one who creates things to do. Really, that’s it. You want to play D&D together, you host and DM. You want to just hang out, you reach out and propose what you’re doing. You want more purposeful and meaningful time, join a volunteer group you vibe with. Even if it’s meeting for coffee. You have to be the one who reaches out. You have to do it on a regular cadence. If, like me, you don’t have little alarms in your head that go off when you haven’t seen someone in a while, you can use automated reminders. I have observed my spouse (who is not on social media) do this and she maintains friendships for decades this way. Nowadays she has regular zoom check ins, book clubs, and more, even with people who moved to the other coast. You do now have the tools for this. I have adopted it into my own life with good results. Note: you are going to get well under a 50% success rate here. Accept that most people flake. It may always feel painful (and nerds like us often are rejection-sensitive). You have to feel your feelings, accept it, and move on. You are struggling against many aspects of the way we in the developed world/nerd world live. We have a wealth of passive entertainment, often we have all consuming jobs or have more time-consuming relationship with our families than our parents ever did. We move to different cities for jobs, and even as suburban sprawl has grown, you’re on average probably further away from people who even live in the same city! You get from place to place in a private box on wheels, or alternatively in a really big box on wheels with a random assortment of people. You don’t see people at church, or market day, or whatever other rituals our ancestors had. On the positive side, you have more tools and leisure than ever before to arrange more voluntary meetings. I love this but I think you'll be surprised at your success rate. Everyone is struggling with this, not just you. Right on the heels of covid we were debating whether to have a NYE party or just go to a friend's house for a low key thing. We were paralyzed a bit feeling like, why we weren't invited to other parties ourselves? Won't everyone already be busy doing other stuff? In the end my wife took the leap and invited a ton of neighbors and friends. Guess what?? Almost everyone showed up! Which means all those people were going to be sitting at home feeling bad and wondering the same thing. You just need to believe and get over it, people want to hang out. We've all just gotten out of the habit. In my experience, the problem is not a low success rate, but the burnout from being the only person that invites people to do things. At a certain point you want to see some reciprocation to create community. It can definitely happen, but a lot of folks still fall back on the habits. You have to invite and then also start asking people who's gonna host the next one and get them on the hook, and then not burnout from being a constant organizer :) There's a few problems, at least in the US: 1. Hyper-perfect social media / television setting "the best" expectations for an event. 2. Decreased knowledge of how to host a gathering. It's not rocket science, but throwing one the first time can seem daunting. And throwing one well does take skill. E.g. icebreakers, identifying and facilitating the right introductions by highlighting mutual interests, making sure wallflowers have a good time, defusing tensions, food, etc. 3. Decreased American tolerance for and ability to handle awkwardness, and there's always going to be some awkwardness in social interactions. 4. Decreased public/accessible American meeting places. There used to (< 2000) be a plethora of low-cost, broadly-accessible spaces that could serve as training wheels for events (handling food, furnishings, cleaning, etc). They've essentially all been privatized, commercialized, and optimized to turn seats -- think real coffee shops disappearing in favor of Starbucks. I believe this. My recipe for not burning out is: - lower expectations (my own and everyone else's). I work out the bare minimum that would work for the event and do that. People need food. They don't need music. - tell people how to contribute: "bring snacks and drinks", ask one specific person to bring ice. when people arrive I often give specific tasks: "can you find someone to help move the table and chairs into the other room", "can you sort out music" - do it the same way every time so it's less mentally taxing - get a friend to help with setup Ah, success through lowered expectations! This has been my mantra for the last 40 years, and it has worked surprisingly well. I started out with a New Year’s resolution to not intentionally consume significant quantities of human flesh, and have worked my way up from there. It may seem ridiculous, but it’s a form of stoicism adjacent philosophy that presumes nominally more control over one’s circumstances, and it has had excellent outcomes for me. Ratchet forward but expect modest clicks and be delighted when something goes right or someone comes through. Lower expectations is a great tip. I find that the more a group does things, the more everyone chills out. It's like the expectations come from a fear of being judged and from uncertainty. When everyone has information from the last ten events then you don't need to stress anymore, because everyone knows how this one will go and they've all judged one another already. It helps to remember that you are competing with: no event. If there are other parties happening and you're trying to make a better one, by all means, go all out. But mostly people in their 40s aren't going to many house events, so they're just happy to be somewhere with people. They don't care that you didn't decorate or sweep the floor or prepare an elaborate meal. You made soup and they're thrilled. I'd also add that first-event nerves (on host and attendee sides) can be an uncertainty problem. No one wants to misunderstand the dress code, social code, etc. Once people have been together, there are now group norms that assuage that (aka "I know what's acceptable to wear and talk about"). Absolutely. I throw “open houses” with open hours. There will be some food and company and some booze. Probably music. But in the end everyone brings what they can and it rules. Granted it’s still a lot of effort but it’s low key and I find people prefer that unless it gets enough momentum to become a “thing” haha > 3. Decreased American tolerance for and ability to handle awkwardness, and there's always going to be some awkwardness in social interactions. I wonder how much of this is due to our ever increasing sense of obligation to be "performing" all the time. Maybe increased by the perpetual presence of social media and the habits and mindset that both creating and consuming for it creates. I thought that originally, but I actually think it's more experiential/exposure-side. Hypothesis: modern society (especially apps) has decreased the amount of realtime, face-to-face social interactions at all stages of life, which has eventually manifested into a decreased average (there are still some social people!) capability to deal with social awkwardness. And consequently less comfort/appetite for putting oneself in situations where it might happen. I don’t think it’s this. I’ve lived in NYC recently and people there don’t have tolerance for shit behaviors either and you’re surrounded by people all the time. It’s due to people having higher standards than before and being bifurcated on every issue. There is deep polarization and tribalism within American culture. Everyone consumes different content and there’s very little homogeneity within our culture. Like… Americans are more diverse than ever in terms of their thoughts and behaviors. They genuinely have little in common compared to many other cultures. I'll buy that, especially in NYC-like urban environments where frequency of exposure is definitely not the issue. Suburbs and rural may be different. Part of the increased diversity is unavoidable due to technological changes eroding previous touchpoints. E.g. limited broadcast TV becoming cable becoming streaming. But there does seem to be an increasing dearth of the logical tonic: discussion-facilitating diverse spaces. Places where people of different opinions can mingle, there are strong social norms around mutually productive conversation (and enforcement to discourage / weed out poison apples?), and that are open to new people. > Hyper-perfect social media / television setting "the best" expectations for an event. My approach around this is suggesting the idea to people up front and then throwing everyone into a WhatsApp chat and laying down the plan. Anyone who can't join gets removed/leaves. No one expects a whatsapp group to be a refined VIP experience. It's just people getting together and sharing an experience. Having moved countries and needing to start up a new friend group, things like Meetup or Facebook groups help a lot. There are _many_ people out there who are looking to meet people. For throwing a party, my general rule of thumb is expect 50% of people to turn up. I’m going to add a strange note here: I recently moved into a very upper class neighborhood (pacific heights) and enrolled my child in the neighborhood private school. The social hosting skill I’ve observed and and able to do as well is extraordinarily high. People throw parties, know how to act, are cordial and polite and seem to reasonably enjoy each others company while also teaching their children the same. This is how I remember mere middle class parents acting in the late 90s and early 2000s but my fellow millennials and z seem to be completely incapable of. One huge aspect I’ve noticed is that it’s wildly expensive in time and money to host. An open cocktail night cost me nearly 3000 dollars to host. I can imagine this would not be common for Gen Z these days. That seems to be a very narrow definition of a party. I have friends over for pizza and board games. We've had ice cream making parties. Cheese dinners. I am a millennial and my parents did no events, since they both worked and had long commutes. I wonder when the middle class entertainment slowed down—I want to guess it’s when you have more two income households, that don’t earn enough to hire home help. Minimum wages have not increased in decades. Cost of living has increased a lot meanwhile, and the rich vs poor divide has increased. So lower class and middle class are suffering, while upper class have become richer from their labors. In earlier generations, the middle class could work for some years and afford to buy a house (on mortgage). But these days, middle class cannot afford a house, they live in rented apartments. Hosting parties is the least of their priorities, when they are struggling with the monthly bills. Housing availability and leisure time (afforded by excess income) are probably the biggest components. And in answer to "When that changed?" from parent, my guess would be mid-90s. In that generations coming of party-hosting age after that were increasingly less likely to host. How the heck do you manage to host a $3K cocktail party? You can run an open bar with two bartenders for 50 people for that price? (Unless everybody is a complete lush, I guess ;) I can easily imagine a high end catered party costing that much. I don't think there is an upper limit on how much hosting a party costs. You can always go fancier if you have money to burn. Well 50 people attended. So. Yea? Two parents for 21 students or so plus a few extras. >> I recently moved into a very upper class neighborhood (pacific heights) A neighborhood which is sometimes referred to as "Specific Whites" (but only tongue-in-cheek, right?) It used to be predominantly women who did it. It was part of being a housewife. Joy of Cooking even has an entire chapter dedicated to hosting a dinner party. But now women work for billionaires too. Nobody has time to work for themselves. 1000%, but I didn't want to make my post too long. If you want a kick, read through the 1957 edition of Air Force Social Customs [0]. It makes you realize how the art of entertaining has atrophied over the decades. [0] https://archive.org/details/answerbookonairf00wier/mode/1up This. My wife and I built our social life when we moved countries, and we had a group of friends that we'd meet every week or two. But only when we invited them. No-one else in the group ever organised anything. It got really tiring. We could not get anyone else to organise a meet, they always had reasons why they couldn't organise one (but could turn up to it fine). We tried a bunch of things, but nothing worked - if we didn't organise it, it didn't happen. We ended up moving away and the whole social group collapsed and stopped meeting. I think some people are just the center of gravity, and that particular friend circle revolves around them. Before COVID, we had a friend group that would hang out fairly regularly. Once I left (for a job, not fleeing the city), none of them hung out without me. Everyone was friendly with each other, but everyone also had their own lives going on with their own friends and other circles. While I was the glue for that circle, it wasn't like everyone just stayed at home having pity parties when I wasn't around. My anecdote might have limited relevance here, but I think it's something worth considering. Do any of those friends organise anything for any of their other friend groups? I get the feeling that some people organise, while most people don't. I haven't seen the situation where a person organises stuff for one group, but not for another group. It always tends to be the same people doing the organising for all their friends. At least that's what I've observed, I'd welcome any other observations. edit: poor choice of words "Most people have less than the average number of friends", or The Friendship Paradox: That attitude, the some people are leeches, to me is part of the problem. If you go in with the expectation that others owe you something or they're bad people, you're only going to be going down the path of not doing it. >In my experience, the problem is not a low success rate, but the burnout from being the only person that invites people to do things. This is what mostly happened with me, I just got burned out from always having to be the one to organise everything or nothing would happen, which is what ended up happening after I stopped, we just stopped meeting up and eventually grew completely apart. Now, I'm in a completely different country and I don't even have anyone's contacts anymore. But that's been life for me, people come and people go, never to stay. I've accepted it by now, it can still hurt from time to time, but it is what it is, one should not force their will onto others, I believe. The lack of reciprocation is a tough one. I think it also helps sometimes to understand that not everyone is good at being the mother goose or the facilitator, especially if someone else is already good at doing it, and it's not because they lack interest or don't care. I have some friends who very easily lose themselves in their work and the stress around it and if I wasn't the one checking in and basically pulling them away, I'd miss out on what are easily my favourite days out and it has no impact on how much we enjoy each other's company. Maybe one day it changes but until then I'm there for them. That said, there are of course times where it's better to just let go. But those people were probably never that important to you in the first place. I sometimes wonder about this, I have a friend who does most of the organizing for parties or whatever. My sense is that there are a few different kinds of people, among those are people who, if they didn't organize parties, there wouldn't really be much of a platform for hanging out for them and others like them, while others are completely isolated, don't organize and don't have any other third space, and others yet have many smaller interactions from many other parts of life that don't necessitate a larger meetup necessarily. If you're an "organizer" type, my guess is that the people you'd hope reciprocate fall into the latter camp; they're happy to show up and have a good time, but they probably have a bunch of other things to explore that for some reason they haven't felt you'd be into... or a bunch of other possible reasons. Asking them to host a party is asking them to fabricate a social setting from thin air, but maybe they just organically don't find that to be something they need to do. For me, I'll host something for a small group if I get some inspiration, but on a week to week basis I'm often in extremely social third-spaces, supplemented by larger parties (probably bi-weekly). My effort is often best spent meeting people for deliberate, intimate, outdoor sports adventures or coffee hangouts, but the same person I know who tends to organize larger parties doesn't really feel like someone who'd be into these; they can't really hold a conversation 1 on 1 for very long, and they're not super curious or vulnerable or athletic in the way that's necessary to engage in those as much. He's a regimented, scheduled, impatient, person. They often need a sort of fabricated social vehicle (also likes to decorate and host), whereas I get nearly all of my socializing from incidentally being in social space. I think it's fine to be either of course. It's ok that my organizer friend doesn't like heights, and so I won't invite him to climb mountains, he likes hosting parties, so I try to attend as many as I can. Note that I don't mean the non-organizer (me) is just passively socializing, it's just that they have different catalysts built into the things they do that extend into socializing easily. I'm DMing 1 or 2 friends, multiple times a week, to do something we both enjoy or just chat while walking around the city. While parties and hosted things are neat, they're just not very good platforms for depth. Just as well, I do try and be inviting to everyone who'd like to come out and do other things, in general it's important to reciprocate, but I'm not hosting a party just because someone else did. Exactly why my parents stopped hosting dinner and cocktail parties. Nobody ever reciprocated, it was a lot of work, and eventually they just stopped. As somebody who does host and doesn’t get a ton of reciprocity, the problem isn’t burn out (because I love doing it). The problem is second guessing whether this is something the group enjoys and whether they are just humoring me. I also love hosting - but what I’m really trying to do is have particles collide and form bonds outside the larger events. Even smaller scale gatherings, game nights, or hell even a couples dinner invite would be a nice change of pace. We've noticed this in our neighborhood. Once a year we host a few families before going out trick or treating with our kids. We buy a bunch of pizza so everyone can eat and don't ask for the other families to kick in. We were hoping the other families would reciprocate, and maybe invite us to some of their gatherings (especially two families who hang out together quite a bit.) So far it hasn't happened at all, they just receive our graciousness and move on immediately. Potluck parties help. Then they, generally, at least partly participated. Some people will just bring soda or chips or beer but that's still better than 0. It’s easy to find reasons to talk yourself out of action. Maybe you’ll get burned out, maybe you won’t. But if you never try you’ll never know. And you’ll definitely miss out on something special You'll need to get over the idea of this being a shared load. Every community has one or two people that are "the engine" and constantly keep people reconnecting. Has nothing to do with social media, or Covid - it's always been the case as far as I can think back (and that's the early 80's) Yes, you can push and prod people to occasionally host, but that's also a ton of work. > burnout from being the only person that invites people to do things If you get burned out from being the nexus of your social circle, that sounds like a problem stemming from your success Some people thrive at being the center of their social circle. To me it sounds awful. Different strokes... > Everyone is struggling with this, not just you. Eh, I don't think EVERYONE is struggling with this. I am an introvert, and have no desire to go out and do more things with friends. I get enough socialization with my wife and kids, and don't really have the desire to do more things. > socialization with my wife and kids So you aren't one of the people that are lonely, because you have wife and kids I’m also an introvert, I think, but I do feel I would be better off with more socialization than I’m getting. Though, I’m also single, so, maybe I wouldn’t feel such a need if I were married? Idk. Unfortunately a lot of these require either an existing network or high stakes interaction (sending invites, accepting invites etc). They're good advise, but can be hard to execute on for most people. If we want to solve this at the society or community level, there needs to be more opportunities for low stakes interaction. Places that people can passively gather around a communal activity. I'm reminded of the ladies dancing together in public squares / parks in China. They're usually a group, but mostly anyone can join in. You can just follow along and interact as much as you'd like. If you want to leave, leave. If you want to stay and chat, stay and chat. Downtown San Mateo for example has the potential for this. It's already a closed off street where people go. But today there aren't group activities there that encourages passive interaction, people are still in silos. Perhaps if there were some games / puzzles, chalk boards, townhall type of table setup, that'll encourage passive interaction. "Be the organizer" assumes a certain baseline of energy, confidence, and emotional resilience. For people who are already lonely, depressed, neurodivergent, burned out, or socially anxious, that constant reaching out + rejection tax can be genuinely exhausting, not just uncomfortable Sure, but this only works as advice for people who you can talk to, such as me. I'm not trying to solve my loneliness, my own personal goal is to find ways to reach out to people who sit alone all day, and are dying from loneliness, and the only way to reach them is to catch them as they walk on the way to the grocery store, and hold up a sign that they can read. The question in my mind is, what next? So far, I've only been doing surveys[1], but I'm looking for the next step. Piggybacking off your suggestion, I like the idea of holding up a sign advertising a free activity that anyone can join, located in a very public space, with zero committment, so they can both show up and walk away at the drop of a hat. Whether it's an ad hoc organized chess tournament, or D&D game, or "one word story" or literally anything. That will have to wait until nicer weather, though, to avoid having to rent a place. You can reach people you otherwise might not have by inviting your neighbours around for coffee and cake one weekend morning? Even if you have nothing in common it starts building a community of people who live in proximity to one another. I think what you're doing is really cool. Your instructions to comment on your blog are incredible, come talk to you face to face. If I didn't live on the other side of the country it would be meaningful to tell you what it meant to me in person. > You have to be the one who creates things to do. > You have to do it on a regular cadence. I've posted about this before, but my wife and I sort of accidentally started a trivia team that's been going strong for like four years. Nearly every single week for four years, we get together with some subset of about 15 people. Most the regulars are there most days. I also started cold plunging and have been doing it with the same regularity as trivia -- nearly every single week. It's a much smaller group, but it is absolutely part of our routine. Rain or shine. Both these things have given several of us some really great friend time that makes that loneliness fade away. > I've posted about this before, but my wife and I sort of accidentally started a trivia team that's been going strong for like four years. I looked through your history and can't find it. (And you say "trivial" and "trivially" disproportionately often.) Can you link to it? Agree but the flaking culture is too normalized right now, at least in the west. Nothing is more demotivating than majority of people just not coming and doing it in such a non-chalant manner. It's really not fun to put all that work and people don't take the invitation seriously to the point where they jusut ghost the event. This annoys me: at least say you're not going to make it. I don't expect you always to be free or even want to attend, but how hard is it to say 'Thanks but I can't come.'? So what you're saying is you basically have to give. This is what I find real life is like. Unless I'm giving something, like a ride to some interesting place, people are not interested in me at all. They just want to get something from me, that's it. It helps to not look at this as zero sum. A lot of people are more comfortable with a shared experience objective. This provides a means to do something and a reason behind meeting. If you are always in the mindset that you are giving and everyone else is taking that can really impact how you perceive everyone. And 9/10 most people over estimate how much they give and under-estimate how much they take. There is also something powerful with "I _get_ to take my new friend to a place I find cool" rather than "My new friend is using me to go to my cool place". Changing the way you internally frame things drastically helps. I know it sounds absolutely stupid hogwash but it helps. https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/gratitude-bed-every-morning... I hope this helps! Many years ago I read the classic 'How to win friends and influence people' and I was just hit with, according to that book, how little people actually care about other people and how fundamentally lonely our existence is. I don't think that was the message the book was trying to give, but that's what I got out of it. So yes, people will wonder, subconsciously or not, what's in it for them. If you can give status or if you are naturally entertaining, this might all seem a little less obvious. Personal solutions to systemic problems are not solutions. Yours is great advice for the few people able to take it to heart, find the motivation, and succeed, but you cannot solve societal problems at any kind of scale this way. I've been trying to do this. One thing I've observed is trying to arrange people to play board games is quite difficult because you can't predict how many people will show up. People get sick, misread the times, etc. And a lot of games are very sensitive to player count, so having 2 people too few or too many has the ability to make the game somewhat unplayable or risk people sitting out watching. Easier to just host a party or meetup where you can over invite and if some people don't show up it's no issue. A friend of mine has this problem with their D&D campaigns. He makes huge efforts and there’s always one or two people who flake or don’t have the same commitment level. He’s gotten quite angry and sad about it. He is trying something different now, to make a hybrid campaign where there’s a lot of one-shots in a broader story arc. It’s structured like missions in an ongoing struggle. Maybe if you want to do board games,
we need more games that scale up and down easily. I’m not a board game person, IDK. Tell your friend to look up the Western Reaches style of play. One of the core ideas is that you begin and end each session in a safe zone so that you can have a rotating pool of adventurers. You can tuck in some rules for having mercenaries for when you have fewer than the encounters are balanced for and you’re off to the races. It does reduce the possibility of highly on rails campaigns and instead requires more of a sandbox plan with one page dungeons and stuff. Even so, it seems made to solve this exact problem. > Tell your friend to look up the Western Reaches style of play. The playstyle is called West Marches. IMHO, the important bit of this style isn't so much the player pool flexibility (tho it does help that case), but the inversion of who's driving the story. The DM prepares the world, but it's up to the players to organize their excursions outside of the safe zone, for their own reasons. This forces more involvement of the players in the story, instead of the more passive campaign on rails you mentioned. So in the GP's case of flaky low-effort players, West Marches style may not help because it puts more burden on the players in addition to just showing up and having everything presented to them. That said, if the group can manage to do it, player engagement should be higher, and the DM suffers less disappointment because they're only prepping a session of content based on the players' plans for that session, not a long storyline that requires more alignment and adherence. D&D has too many rules. I invented a really light weight set of rules so that we can engage in more "role play" as opposed to RTS. It's more fun for the casual game and you don't waste so much time between turns. 5-room dungeons: https://www.roleplayingtips.com/5-room-dungeons/ I don't do tabletop, but I do write, and making these is helpful for worldbuilding. Our D&D group meets once to twice a month and is about seven or eight people. That's large enough that at most two of us can not show up and we're still enough to play and enjoy ourselves. The DM writes session recaps and posts them the day before the next session. The overhead here is minimized by his taking notes during the session. This has kept our group going for something like three or four years now! The one thing about D&D is that I know almost everyone there exclusively through the campaign, and 90% of my interactions with them have been in character, which means I actually know very little about their personal lives. We're getting better with this with non-D&D hangs though. lol I also have had this experience. I played DnD to get to know people and after two years I realized I only knew their characters. Challenging. Could you be more flexible about what game you are playing depending on how many show up? It is possible I would assume. I just don't have that many games or enough table space to be super flexible. I'm thinking board games work easiest when the people are already in the same space and need something to do, rather than trying to arrange them to come just for the game. Space base works well for this for up to eight people with the expansion. I have a friend with a very tiny apartment we have done that in, and while others are buying cards you can enjoy conversation. I used to host a lot when I was able to keep a dedicated hosting area at the one house, but recently not as much unless it's outdoors mainly. If you have a grill you can let people know to bring what they want to grill, and popcorn and some seasoning makes an affordable snack, and if you project a movie somewhere people can disconnect if needed. But yes, I usually use my social energy with family in the area now. This is the way. You have to have some amount of flexibility in your plans. Yes, but it's frustrating that it's on the organizer to give everyone both something fun to do and the flexibility to flake. It feels like such thankless work to work so hard and get so little commitment back. I have a fairly reliable friend group, but sometimes stuff just happens. One game we had someone get sick, and another person's car broke down. That's just life and it happens, but the game was very disrupted. Would be easier to pick activities that are more flexible to the number of people participating. I host a lot of board game days and...yes. One thing I do that helps is get people to RSVP with a specific arrival time, and do my best to have a game about to start around that time. If you show up unexpectedly, then I'm not going to feel bad about you sitting out for an hour or more. People unexpectedly bringing a partner/friend who is not really that into board games is the absolute worst thoguh. I have a group of people who play boardgames in a turned based fashion over at boardgamearena. This solves the flakiness issue. The lack of direct social interaction is then made slightly better by having a chat channel where we chat about ongoing games. We've been having ongoing games (around 2 going at every one time) since about a year now I think. Still do in person games as well, but this at least keeps that group going through in-perwon drought periods. As someone who has tried to host events for specific board games, I completely agree. Most games I play are best with 3 to 4, and I will flat out refuse to play them with more than 5. Now, I host meetups which typically get 8-15 people and multiple games, so an unpredictable player count is not an issue. That is excellent advice. How do we amplify this advice to more areas?
I practice that by being intentional about my work: I think about all the opportunities I have to meet people and how I can give back to them. I call that slow multicast.
I have a startup in my incubator that I call .find . I am a looking for a founder. I love how you explained it simply, clearly. I would love to have you in my "combat loneliness" team
My ingredients:
- walk the walk
- Multicast
- Seed
- Tie to your bucket lists as growth engine (virtuous cycle) I would love to further the combat, please reach out to me Joseph de Castelnau on IG and X. > You have to be the one who reaches out. But that's the whole issue. Who am I supposed to reach out to? The 2 people at work I occasionally talk to because they happen to sit in the same office as me? Those two people might be a start, and it's a low barrier to their participation to say you want to try a nearby cafe for lunch tomorrow if they're interested. Longer term: make opportunities to occasionally talk to other people. Join a club, join a fitness group of some kind, take a class at your local library. It's got be something in person with enough repetition with the same people that everyone involved can overcome inertia enough to talk. Try to say 'yes' should an occasional contact invite you to something, because it's pretty common that you won't get asked a second time if you pass on the first - I assume that's because we're all scared stiff that no-one likes us. I need to take a heaping spoonful of my own advice here, but: yeah, kind of yes. You don't have to think of them as the people you've been searching all your life for, but to meet people, you need a source of people to draw from. Those two people you talk to on a semi-regular basis are entry nodes into the social network. >Accept that most people flake This is a thing that's always surprised me when I've been in the US. How common it is to enthusiastically arrange to do some activity together, get a meal, play a game, have a drink, whatever, and then for people to just call it off at the last minute. It seems much more socially acceptable to do so than either the UK (where I live) or France (where I have lived and still visit regularly). The loneliness thing seems common across Europe too though so I'm not suggesting this is the root of the problem. But I do think that whilst this is a global problem the solutions are likely to be local, working with and leveraging different cultural norms. I think your comment about social acceptance in the UK is slightly off. It's person dependent. I would say my experience aligns closer with the 50% mark. It's a massive variant from person to person. I have friends that will turn up to anything, rain or shine, sickness or in health. Equally, I know people that would flake on a wedding because they stubbed their toe or the latest season of [insert meaningless reality show] came out. Wow. This is so true. My social life has improved hugely in the last couple of years and it's almost all because of this. I host board game days. I organise a pub trivia team. I organise singalong nights. I host occasional parties. Soup nights. Zucchini parties. I set up a lot of group chats and keep them alive. I organise to visit my family. For a lot of events, I get a 5-10% attendance rate compared to the number of people I invite. People are busy. It just means I need to keep expanding the circles of people to invite. If people don't want to come it eventually becomes clear and I quietly remove them from the lists. But mostly I hear the opposite - they really want to keep being invited, even if they don't make it often. Yeah, I realized recently you have to be more intentional for things you want. You don’t necessarily have to host it but you need to reach out and find things going on where there are people. > You have to be the one who creates things to do. Problem is it gets fucking exhausting to organize and reach out after a while. Especially with DnD. You can minimize that though - just give the event a regular schedule or have some way to easily inform all participants of the next date. If people stop showing up without individual nagging then maybe they weren't all that interested in that activity and that's OK too. You don't have to do it all yourself. Join an organization. For example every city has Toastmasters, most have several. Easy to find, and it is an excellent place to meet people. And you'll learn how to convert social anxiety into social adrenaline. Do you have a faith? Actually go to church instead of just believing. Are you non-religious? Several strands of Buddhism can be followed as philosophy and practice without adopting any mystical beliefs. Vipassanā (also called Insight) and Zen are a couple of examples. And how do you turn random people that you met into life-long friends? You can reduce the time investment by a lot. If you call someone on a spaced repetition schedule, you can make them internalize that the door is always open. Without requiring a large commitment on either side. And a spaced repetition schedule is easy to achieve - just think Fibonacci. I'll call you back in 3 days. Then 5. Then 8 (round down to a week). And so on. It feels like a lot of calls at the start. But it slows down fast. Over a lifetime, it is only around 20 calls. Play around with it. If it was someone you met and hung out with on a cruise, maybe start at a week for that first call. Either way, you're reinforcing the idea that we like to talk, and the door is always open. You can use a similar idea to keep people who move on from your workplace in your life. People always mean to stay in contact. Then don't. But with structured reinforcement, you can actually make it work. A spaced repetition schedule for speedrunning the friend-making process? If it works, it works, I guess. And in a thread about loneliness, that’s all that matters. But it seems a bit calculated rather than organic, which is what we think of as the platonic ideal of friendmaking. Think of it as an intentional way to turn a spark of connection into long-lasting coals. It can't work without that initial desire on both sides to make it work. But if you really want calculated...try https://amorebeautifulquestion.com/36-questions/ on for size. On the other hand, you also can't have an attachment to what you want the outcomes to be. You can't expect the same in return from everyone else. Until you let go of this transactional mindset, you will grow resentful when a lot of them start canceling on you, and believe me, at your 30s and above, with all these things that compete for our time, they will. While you are not wrong, I think in many cases this advice is as effective as telling someone to "just stop being depressed". I agree with this so much! I've found that going to people and initiating is the only thing you can do. How people respond varies a lot and you have to be resilient to rejection. There was a post[1] sometime back about just having coffee in the afternoon outisdes and how that brought in more people. I also write about it here [2]. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46453114 I would like to mention this link from HN I think I saw this quote somewhere else on HN about a post lamenting how difficult it can be to make new friends after age 30 or so: Finding new friends as an adult can be exceedingly difficult, but becoming a friend to someone is surprisingly easy. Lots of people (and if I'm being honest I'm one of them, so no judgement) just sort of expect friendships to come to them. But if you actually do the hard (and somewhat socially risky) work of inviting people to do things, offering to help unsolicited, organizing gatherings, etc. new friendships are much easier to come by. > you are going to get well under a 50% success rate here. Accept that most people flake This is true, but as long as the success rate is >= 1 other person, it's okay. I started a running club for my apartment block (about 200 flats with maybe 300 residents). I posted flyers out once advertising it as a friendly social running club. Of the 300, the group has about 15 people, of which 5 are regulars (every other week at least), and just 2 of us are super regulars (multiple times per week). It's a terrible success rate, but those are 4/5 good friends. At first it bothered me how flaky people were. Some people joined the group but have yet to show up in person. And some joined the group and are yet to even converse in the group chat, but hey, they'll come along when they're ready. Great point and many of the responses are very interesting too. I wonder whether part of this is a habitualization of intolerance for just being with oneself - to be ok with feeling bored, for instance. Most suggestions are about "doing". Just being with oneself without a doing is painful for many from what I've seen. I think it's what that intolerance leads to which is a big part of the problem. It's natural that we don't like being bored, but these days we have infinite means to keep boredom away that don't involve connecting with others. Why go through the risks and awkwardness of opening yourself up to others when you have a device of infinite rabbit holes and time sinks in your pocket at all times? 40 years ago it was very possible to run out of entertainment, which is quite different today. I'm just going to be a "me too" but I think you nailed it. It's just hard for some people to do. It's sort of like losing weight: the formula is easy, but the doing is hard. people are so fucked up by consumerism that they expect to be just consumers also in their sociality... like they expect that social relations to be like commodities. in consumer societies people flee real freedom's anxiety by conforming to market ways, treating connections as consumption not production. lasting bonds need effort patience vulnerability, all anti-consumer virtues. Fromm said that in market societies love and relations follow the commodity and labor market exchange pattern. they want low-effort replaceable humans. So they became low-effort replaceable humans. Not only do you need to create the things to do, but you need to pick up the phone and CALL them (on the telephone! not voicemail, not whatsapp/facetime) and have a conversation with them. Sometime in 2006-2008 we started sending people online invites to parties and the habit of calling people died out. If you call 12 people, on the telephone, and invite them for a dinner party next weekend, and 12 people say yes, I give 90% odds that 12 people show up to your party I see young people facetiming each other all the time, maybe a little too much. It definitely fills the same role as audio calls used to. But I just text. I remember when texting started to become a thing, and I was very much looking forward to the absolute convenience of being able to read and respond whatever I had time, and not have to deal with a phone call. I wonder if that was common in my generation (millenials), and I wonder if we call/facetime significantly less and text more than other generations. Texting is for sure more convenient but you lose the "watercooler" effect, you're not going to text them "how's your mom doing?" when inviting them over for D&D via text Saying yes to a text invite seems less of a commitment to me. Maybe that's generational. huh, as a 50something saying yes to a text message is absolutely a firm commitment. if anything, is firmer than doing it over voice, because now you have both put something in writing. Peer to peer networks' rules apply to real life - give more than take and be happy. > Note: you are going to get well under a 50% success rate here. Accept that most people flake. It may always feel painful (and nerds like us often are rejection-sensitive). You have to feel your feelings, accept it, and move on. Most importantly, you have to hear “I can’t” and be really cool about it or folks will half commit out of guilt and bail. They probably have a good reason, especially if they have kids. Or maybe they’re just exhausted! That is valid - you will sometimes feel that way too, and you should clearly (but politely) communicate it when you need. If you consistently say yes/no and adhere to it, people will return the favor and you’ll all be better for it. My social life vastly improved post COVID when I adhered to that. My friends and I are incredibly honest so now folks rarely bail (always for good reason) and we all can reliably plan to hang out without guessing if someone actually means “no” when they say maybe and all that nonsense. The advice “create things to do” is a huge leap for someone with atrophied social skills. Even just attending an event is a terrifying prospect to someone with debilitating social anxiety or low self-esteem. Instead, a better goal is to become comfortable talking to strangers. If you could do that confidently, anything is possible socially. Here’s a framework to do that: 1. Adopt a useful attitude. Before any social situation, consciously choose an attitude that serves you socially: calm, relaxed, enthusiastic, curious, friendly, or simply open. This replaces the useless defaults that keep you stuck: reticent, scared, angry, confused. Assume people will like you. 2. Set an intention for the interaction. Decide on one small goal for the interaction. Not “be charming” or “make friends,” rather something achievable. Example intentions, ranked from easier to more difficult:
- To appear friendly (smile, make eye contact)
- To greet people
- To find out what’s going on around town
- To enjoy talking with people
- To meet people
- To make someone smile
- To enjoy getting to know someone
- To make someone laugh
- To get someone’s contact info
- To flirt
- To talk to the most attractive person in the room 3. Find comfort in your body. When you arrive at a social space, take a deep breath. Know that you’re safe inhabiting your body, no matter what anyone thinks of you or says. 4. Set your expectations. Paralyzed about what to say? Set the bar low. Say your words and expect nothing in return. Confidence in delivering your words will grow. Confidence in social acceptance will follow as you see people respond neutrally and positively. You might be talking to a grumpy person. It’s okay if you don’t get the response you’d hoped for. 5. Start impossibly small. If you’re severely out of practice (nervous, anxious, uncertain), set out to initiate an interaction with someone where you accomplish just one objective. Then stop and celebrate that win. Don’t try to combine all of these into one interaction—you will get overwhelmed. Then initiate another interaction on another day and accomplish another objective. Objective: Say “hello.” If you tend to be quiet, focus on being heard. Find confidence in your voice. Objective: Say the first thing that comes to mind and see what happens. Objective: Notice something about a person and comment on it. “Nice shoes!” Objective: Notice something about the environment and comment on it to someone nearby. Objective: Ask someone a question for information. Objective: Ask someone their opinion. Objective: Ask a question that invites an emotional response rather than a factual one. “What do you love about living here?” Objective: Join a circle of people in conversation. 6. Make it a habit. Start today: say one thing to one person. Repeat tomorrow. Then the next day. Within about a week, it becomes second nature. The scariness diminishes. Soon, you’ll actually want to talk to people. When you learn to talk to strangers, you’re more than halfway to making a friend. Friends will help keep you out of loneliness. I'm terrible at this because I just can't handle extended lulls in conversations with anyone who isn't a close friend. As a result, I talk too much and that's the end of building a friendship. Sigh... It's weird that no one else plans things? I always feel like I organize things to much. It's one sided D&D is extraordinarily difficult to bootstrap. You ened 4-8 people to commit to being at a certain place at a certain time. If you play online instead, just the coordinated time alone is a monumental effort. There are a ton of reasons for this. Work, school, coordinating plans with their partner, other commitments , other friends and family and honestly people just being flaky. For D&D this can be particularly bad if you're missing a couple of people who just flaked. Other activities don't have that problem and it can still be an issue. There was a time when going out and doing things was necessary for social interaction. That's not true anymore. Online is sorta social. It's kinda close enough to scratch that itch for many, particularly because it has none of the coordination and/or travel issues. But also people just have less free time. Because we have to work so much. Hobbies in general have becom ea luxury. By that I mean you're spending your time doing something that doesn't earn an income. That's good but an increasingly large number of people don't have that as an option, hence "luxury". Put another way, the ultimate goal of capitalism is to have all the worker bees constantly creating wealth so Bezos can have $210 billion instead of $215 billion. > and nerds like us often are rejection-sensitive
As opposed to non-nerds of course, who are famously fine with rejection. In all seriousness, there is no evidence to suggest that being a nerd (read: having nerdy interests) is related to being more emotionally stunted than the average person. You're just perpetuating a bad stereotype. You might be working with a different definition of "nerd" compared to OP. From wikipedia: > A nerd is a person seen as over-intellectual, obsessive, introverted, or lacking social skills. It's not a stereotype that nerds are socially awkward but rather "nerd" is the name for the stereotype. I‘m a cofounder of a German loneliness startup. My core insight is that loneliness often stems from a badly adjusted internal social threat function ( f(social event)=perceived threat ). This function runs subconsciously all day long. From talking to strangers to reaching out to a friend, the lonely mind is much more aware of negative outcomes, so your mind protects you by telling you things like „I don’t talk to strangers because I would annoy them“ or „I don’t reach out to that friend because he’s probably busy“. And that makes it much much harder for lonely people to maintain a healthy social life. As for the fix, you can try to set the social event up in a way that has less room for perceived threat. Think of third places, regularly scheduled meetings, etc. Or you can work on the function itself (=your thinking patterns). If you look at research on loneliness interventions, working on this function is the most effective way to help individuals overcome persistent loneliness. Now the sad thing is that people don’t like to hear that the most effective way to combat loneliness is to work on their own perceptions, which makes the sales pitch rather challenging. It's excellent that you're working on loneliness! Somehow. What is it your startup actually does? > So they sit on social media all day when they're not at work or school. How can we solve this? The naive solution is to place blame on the people who are influenced by the most advanced behavior modification schemes ever devised by humans. Kinda like how the plastic producers will push recycling, knowing they can shift blame for the pollution away from their production of the pollution, because people love blaming. You'll see commenters here telling us that the answer is for people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, get out, get involved in their communities under their own willpower. These ideas are doomed from the outset. The real solution is already being enacted in a number of US states and countries[1]: legally restricting access to the poison, rather than blaming the people who are at the mercy of finely honed instruments of behavior modification when they're unable to stop drinking it under their own willpower. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_age_verification_... I don't see how the control and enforcement of "social media age verification" solves for the "people who are unable to stop... under their own willpower." My grandparents are more addicted to the phone than I am. Taking the superlative stance of social media being the "most advanced behavior modification schemes ever devised by humans" wouldn't the correct regulation be some sort of threshold of consumption (screen time limits per application), or rehabilitation for those that have crossed a line into psychological addiction? I imagine the easiest, assuming you see "the algorithm" as the problem, would be to ban selective algorithms and force timeline-based feeds or the like. Laws and regulations are also ”advanced behaviour modification”. That is how they work. Tobacco is clear example of this, almost everybody used to smoke back in the 90’s and 00’s (including me) whereas after years of laws regulatios, taxation, public education, and providing healthcare for addiction, we are at the point where smokin makes you a loser rather than some cool Marlboro dude/dudette. There is very little society can do for grandparents addicted to fb, but we can prevent the same happening to the future elderly. Limiting at which age you can use the product is just one part of the puzzle. You could also hit a big tax on ad revenue gained via social media to veer people off from ruining their brains. There is a host of others tools as well and I think we will see them implemented more and more. The tech billionaires fight back and rather fund a fascist dictator to power than lose a single cent, but there you go. But I think the Musk’s and the like have constantly stepped over boundaries to the extent that the tide has changed. The problems occurred when online interaction got mediated by corporations with profit motives that use dark patterns, automated systems and algorithms to extract more revenue from its users. Most of my real-life friends are people I've first met online, or as a consequence of having met someone online. Those online sites have mostly been run by enthusiasts, driven by some hobby, fandom or other interest. A couple of them have risen highly in popularity and attracted many thousands of users, and also served news and allowed vendors to use their site for interactions with customers. Those communities that have thrived have made sure that discourse does not get poisoned. They have had active, strong but fair moderators. Many have strict rules against discussing politics or religion, but people have a need to discuss that too sometimes — and being identifiable e.g. between subreddits could put people off from doing that. Also, where do you draw the line to what is an online community and what is "social media"?
I've avoided Facebook and X-twitter, but I know genuine communities exist there too. the “real solution” wouldn’t involve isolating children in already marginalised minorities, making them lose one of the only sources of community they feel safe in. Shouldn't we rather just regulate social media instead of forcefully de-anonymizing online communication and restricting access to online community? Taking something away by force is not the way to encourage someone to do something else. This is carrot or stick mentality. The city added benches and chairs in all the parks to improve the quality of our third spaces, as an example of social infrastructure. Social infrastructure is great! However, if you have a crack epidemic adding some benches isn't going to change anything. I am in North Seattle, and I have a flock of nerds under me that would like to see real demonstrations of penetration testing via radio (Wifi and more). I have been proposing doing monthly meetups where we go up on a the rooftop of various buildings, bust out the tools, the antennas, and every other toy we have to scan and show how it's done. There are stories about others and me that the younger generation would love to see in action and then we teach what is going on, how we are doing it, and more importantly, when we find a vulnerable target, offer help to fix the hole. Kind of like white hat pen testing. So many of the younger generation wants to exploit things, but do not understand the ethics as to why and why not, and how to do good with having those sort of skills. I know this might be slightly off topic, but I think the real answer to the question here is who is willing to take the lead and step out of the normal club, party, con, meetup crap and get back to the old school groups like we had back in the 90s? It seems a lot of you are in Seattle and I'm willing to try and host an event like this if any of you might be interested. I see this is still front-page news. There’s really two main ingredients to loneliness: 1) We don’t meet others in a way that sparks relationships. 2) We have personal issues that interfere with our ability to have relationships. #1 is fairly straightforward. We need to “get out more.” If we can meet and interact with others, we’ll make friends, and mitigate our isolation. We have the ability to make friends; but lack the opportunity. We can join organizations, go places, right-swipe on apps, and we’ll eventually break our isolation. I’ve found that a key is to get together with others, over shared interests or goals. #2 is a different beast. We need to work on ourselves, first and foremost. We may often need help, like therapy or guided self-help. Usually, there’s a lot of pretty humbling work involved. If we don’t treat the root cause (our own issues), then we can meet as many people as possible, and we’ll still be lonely. Lots of potential reasons for our problems. Could be trauma, neurodivergence, addiction, mental health problems, or simply lack of experience. Often, a combination of these. The good news is, is that if we get serious about treating our own issues, we will absolutely end the isolation. Almost every treatment involves a lot of interaction with others, and relationship-building. For myself, I was definitely in the #2 category. I’m “on the spectrum,” and I had an addiction problem. Intervention was required, and I needed to stop running, turn around, and face my demons. I needed to learn to ask for, and, even more importantly, accept, help. I had to develop a taste for crow and humble pie. Doing this, changed everything. That was 45 years ago, when I was 18. The road has been anything but smooth, but it’s always been onward and upward. Today, I have close relationships all over the world, and have done work that affects thousands of lives in a positive manner. I’ve also found that helping others to deal with their own issues has been effective. I don't have a full answer, but a couple thoughts: 1. Volunteer. Somewhere, anywhere, for a good cause, for a selfish cause. Somebody will be happy to see you. 2. Stop trolling ourselves. As far as I can tell, all of the mass social media is trending sharply towards being a 100% troll mill. The things people say on social media do not reflect genuine beliefs of any significant percentage of the population, but if we continue to use social media this way, it will. Disengage from all of the trolls, including and especially the ones on your "own side". > the mass social media is trending sharply towards being a 100% troll mill I agree. It's one reason I still come to HN and it's one of the few places I bother to comment (and the only place with more than a few dozen users). The moderation and community culture against trolling makes it a generally positive experience. I do still need breaks sometimes, though, for a few months at a time. I'd love an online community where everyone was having discussions only in good faith. Zero trolling. I can dream. > I'd love an online community where everyone was having discussions only in good faith. That's already readily available outside. The whole appeal of online 'communities' is that it is not that. The appeal of an online community is having members who participate in bad faith? That's an angle I hadn't expected. Sure. Outside already satisfies good faith discussion. There is nothing gained in duplicating the exact same thing online. Use the right tool for the job, as they say. Online discussion is a compelling in its own right because you can stop being you and take on someone else's persona to try and discuss from their vantage point. This gives opportunity to understand another side of the story in an environment that provides the necessary feedback to validate that you actually understand another side. Too often people think they understand other angles, but one will also want validation, which online discussion provides. More often than not you'll realize that you actually didn't understand it at all, so it is a valuable exercise. Thank you for explaining your position. I don't know if I would have described that as bad faith, more like good-faith-in-disguise, but I understand what you are getting at. And volunteering works not just because it's "good", but because it gives you a role where your presence matters immediately I would also argue that even people who I like a lot and have known for many years can be very different "people" online than in person. It's sometimes shocking the dichotomy. I try to remind myself and others to ignore some of the online weirdness and focus on the in person interaction. As far as the troll mills go everyone forgot the adage from the olden days "don't feed the trolls". Now everyone feeds the trolls. > Stop trolling ourselves This is so tough, though, because the things happening in the world really, genuinely, do matter and its very hard to realize that our passive emotional reaction to them is not meaningful, probably actively bad for us. If I could snap my fingers and do one thing, I'd obliterate social media from the face of the earth. Whatever else you think of Bluesky, it's a place where trolling and doomerism are rejected. The nuclear block (and a culture of block, don't engage) does wonders for denying actual trolls an audience, and secondarily for permitting people to do the virtual equivalent of walking away from someone who's behaving badly. In particular, doomerism about Trump is minimized there the same way. There's a fine line between "rejecting doomerism" and "putting your fingers in your ears and going 'lalala'" though, and it's important not to cross it. Sometimes I can't help but wonder if we're just shooting the messenger in placing the blame on social media. Bluesky is full of people angry and screaming about Trump. In my feed, at least, though, the "it's all fascism, we're doomed" posters are getting blocked. It's an angry call to action that survives. They're consciously recognizing the pessimism is counterproductive and blocking. Solitude is not the same as loneliness. A person can feel lonely surrounded by others. Like being the only non-drinker in a family Christmas celebration. Loneliness is when there is a gap between desire for companionship/connection and reality. I've done both extended periods of home office and a period of co-working in an open plan space. I didn't feel lonely in the home office. I guess because I did it by choice and had the agency to opt into joining a co-working. I think that loneliness could be a symptom of lack of connection. And this need for connection can in some cases be fulfilled online or even through reading books. Participating in forums like hackernews or effect-ts satisfies some of the handful facets of connection that I need. It gives me a feeling of not being totally alone with some of my ideas. I think this is quite an interesting question. Especially for the developer audience. If you're an engineer, then you likely have similar tendencies to a lot of other engineers. You want to spend time alone, but you also feel the need to combat this loneliness, isolation and depression that it leads to. You want to connect, but struggle to do so. The internet, software, reddit and other places became a safe haven, but then they perpetuated what was hindering you in the first place. I say these things because I'm that person. I lost decades to this sort of escapism that comes from an online world. Unfortunately the answers rarely work for us at the time we're going through this. It's rare for someone to just break out of the cycle. Something has to change, but it's a change that comes from deep within yourself. Sometimes you have to reflect on the why. Why am I here, why am I in this situation. And often it's that deeper internal reflection that starts to motivate something, change something. Listen, I lost decades. And I still struggle. But no one else can solve this for you. In terms of the loneliness epidemic itself. You have to split it into many separate categories. Isolation comes in many forms. For the online generation, who grew up with the internet, we are specific category. But I'll tell you, the path to fixing it has more to do with understanding why we are here than filling the time with arbitrary activities or socialising. Yes we need human connnection and yes we should explore, learn and grow. But fundamentally the first question we should be asking, why am I here, what is my purpose, now what should I do with that. In my case, I did find talking to someone helped, but only after coming to the realisation that I needed to talk to someone and then proactively seeking it out. As much as we want to solve the problem for many people, they have to walk a path before they can see the truth. We can offer alternatives, but people will only find what they're looking for when they're ready. I once shard a flat/apartment with a female social butterfly. She once gave me some great advice, which is to NEVER turn down an invitation. Going out and trying to be comfortable in non-ideal situations (i.e. you know hardly anyone there) is a skill you can learn. I often think it's probably like sales cold calling. After a while you develop calluses. I will separate this into expensive, still has a cost, and "free" Expensive: Car meetups and car modding Horse based activities (learning to ride etc is group based) learning a craft (ie blacksmithing, knitting circles, ceramics) Swordfighting of various styles (east/west/modern/renaissance/polish drunk people in armour) Warhammer Cost, but not as much: local hackspace local cycle club Local running club Local team sports (real football, basketball, baseball, tennis, 5-a-side) local choir (secular) Amateur dramatics (highly recommended, darling.) Free, but with connotations Scouting adult leader Local environmental people (ie park maintenance ) Animal shelter charity shop local choir (religious) local organised religion local political party organisation Not for everyone but if you can, get a dog. Dogs are icebreakers. People like to meet a cute dog. They won't know your name at first but you will be "Fido's Dad" or "Dave's Mom". Other dog owners will greet you and so long as your dogs don't hate each other you already have something in common. A dog gives you a reason to be wherever you want to be - take a walk around the neighborhood or to the park. You're not a rando taking a walk for mysterious and possible nefarious purposes, you're walking the dog. But for for goodness sake, pick up after the pooch. If you can wipe your own arse you can pick up a dog turd with a plastic bag. Anecdotally, I've had a lot of people in my life recede after getting pets. They're an excellent excuse to say no to things that you might otherwise do, because you need to get home and take care of the pet or you can't find a sitter to go on a trip etc. Not generalizing to all people, but I think for some a pet can reinforce anti-social tendencies. Dogs are a bit like having kids, if you embrace it. They make it tougher to do extended trips (e.g. foreign countries), but you can develop an entire social network through them. Doing dog-related trips is a new world of opportunities. I did a three night stay across the state with a bunch of my dog park friends a few years ago. Hikes with the dogs during the day, beer and board games every evening. I have an older neighbor who just absolutely loves dogs. He sits by his window all day long and runs outside every time a dog comes by to give them a treat. On hot days he has bowls filled with ice water and a kiddy pool for them to splash in. I lived here almost 6 years before doing much more than a smile and nod to him, but my next door neighbors with a dog befriended him almost as soon as they moved in. It wasn't until our son started walking and would stop and try and play in the dog water that we ever really talked to him. But that's like befriending others through the kids. Those usually are very shallow relationships. If they suddenly stop seeing you they wouldn't even check if you are OK or what happened. I guess it's better than nothing but that's not for me. Having many shallow relationships is the first (well, second) step towards having a few deeper ones. You can't befriend people you never meet, and people find it extremely offputting for someone they don't know to immediately try to be their best friend. I've never, ever seen a shallow friendship turn into a deep friendship. OTOH you might meet someone to date. Plenty of my former coworkers have evolved into lifelong substantial friendships. What started with smalltalk evolved into conversations over lunch which then afforded after work socializing which then led to actively scheduling time for shared interests. All of those provided ample opportunity to learn almost everything about that person and open the door to a deep friendship when mutually desired. Have you never made a deep friendship? How else would anybody make deep friendships? First you do things that let you meet people, then you make acquaintances, then you make setting-specific friends (work friends, gym buddies, etc), then you start inviting/being invited to do things that aren't based around that shared setting, and then you have friendships. Either that or your definition of deep friendship is substantially off. Most of my deep friendships were through friends and family. A handful at work/school. And it is the same way for most people I know. But I'm not American, so that's that. Making friends through work and school are pretty much exactly what I described. You go to a place with people, you meet a lot of people, and some of the shallow acquaintances end up becoming long term friends. >>>>>>> "Not for everyone but if you can, get a dog." Your original comment. The key is: have a conversation starter. It can be any other activity that requires more than one person. For example I started going to dance classes with my partner in november and what was just awkward "hello there" interactions before the holidays when we had to swap dance partners is now a bit more comfortable and we exchange a bit much and even have a chit chat after class at the door. It is waaaaaay too early to know if it will create new long term friends but the dynamic is here and after just a few weeks I can already spot the people I have absolutely no wish to know more about and those that I feel natural chatting with. Really? Growing up almost all of my parents best friends were the parents of my best friends. This is a common story among my current group of friends. You seem extremely judgemental and narrow in your view of the world. This is probably why you have difficulty forming deep friendships without the social proof of family. As a counter example, I've made some of the best friends of my life through walking my dog at the local dog park over the last decade. Seeing how people are dedicated to and treat their dogs gives me a great insight into their personalities. > You're not a rando taking a walk for mysterious and possible nefarious purposes It's a little counterintuitive, but I find walking around with a camera has this effect too (depending on where you're pointing it of course). > You're not a rando taking a walk for mysterious and possible nefarious purposes Good god, where do you live where people think like that? I take it you’ve never been on the NextDoor app or any neighborhood Facebook Groups… I usually do night walks, talking to strangers, outcasts such as homeless people, street children, store or restaurant sales persons. I treat them food and talk with them and learn from their stories, I do this consistently that they know me. I genuinely love helping people, I also do ministries which I can say is very effective on helping people with depressions, they will learn to have a purpose in life or at least they will learn that some people are living life with much difficulty. I organize people I do not know and play sports I do not know how to play, and ask people to join. We do monthly activities which is optional for others to join our not. Nothing is forced but every one is welcome. I do think it's worth separating two things, though. Helping others and building community can be deeply meaningful, but not everyone who's lonely has the capacity A social circle is like a garden, inasmuch as you have to put in work to tend and maintain it. You have to put yourself in a position of potential awkwardness or rejection, which isn't easy. Interacting with people (especially strangers) also takes practice - small talk is a skill like any other. If you already have a friendship circle, start being the one to propose meetups (cafe, pub, picnic, hike, etc.) If you don't, it's harder - join a social sporting league, group fitness class, dance class, DnD group, anything where people have to talk with each other. When you arrive, turn your phone off for the interval. It might take a couple of goes to find something that sticks or the right environment. I think that the real trick of "solving" the loneliness epidemic is that it isn't spread evenly. Everyone has their own individual level of opportunity for social interaction, so the solution is hyper-local and individualised. There's no one size fits all solution. There is one, maybe two levers in society and that is monetary policy and taxes. Make them favor doers, not the rent-seekers and 1) regular people won't have to fight their way to survival 2) they will actually have time to do what they enjoy with people whose companionship they enjoy. I built an art practice after volunteering on Burning Man projects for a few years. I’m now a competent art fabricator and engineer in carpentry, lighting, electronics, and power systems. It’s fun, and it keeps me connected to lots of different communities. You meet a lot of people who like to get together and nerd out, host parties, and make cool things. When people talk about the loneliness epidemic, I realize how lucky I am to be in community with people who want to get together to do cool things just for fun. I know these kinds of art communities also exist in places outside the Bay Area, and it seems like a good model for creating excuses for people to gather anywhere. “Get a hobby and find the others” seems like its too simple to be the answer here, but that’s what it is for me. Where "get a hobby" often falls flat is that many modern hobbies are solo, screen-based, or optimized to be efficient rather than social I think there's a lot of good advice in these comments already, at least for individuals to think about for themselves. I happen to have discovered a fantastic contra dancing community[1] in Chicago that could be great for some who are lonely. You have to chalk up the courage to go (if you aren't used to trying new things, or dancing), but everyone is extremely welcoming, the dancing is easy even for people "with two left feet", and the happiness going around is truly contagious. I think it's a terrific place to find community. It's a social dance where you'll basically dance with everyone by the end of the evening. There's time before, in the middle (snack intermission), and at the end for striking some conversation. The dancing is every Monday so it's routine. The crowd (100-150 people on average) is diverse in many ways (at least in age, gender, income, interests) so you're bound to find people with commonalities that, using some of the other advice in these comments, you could try to hang out with outside of the dancing. As far as getting people to feel like they can join, I'm not the expert, but I've had such a great experience that I'm happy to at least bring it up and "spread the good word". For outside of Chicago: contra dancing is a bit niche, but a surprising amount of large-ish US cities have it. I think it's more popular (relatively) on the East coast. Can't speak for outside of the US. I was addicted to weed from ages 15-23. I have clinical depression and anxiety/OCD (now medicated and stable). I basically isolated and got stuck in a loop of believing I was broken and a bad person. When I committed to quitting I joined addiction recovery groups and asked for help instead of trying to do it alone. I still rely on the wisdom I gained in AA/MA. Trust God, clean house, help others, go do something when you are in danger of wallowing in self pity.
4 years later, I have a few real friends and many acquaintances. I swing dance and volunteer. I work in a semi-social office. Life is good. I still get paranoid thoughts, but they don't own or define me. I wish the best to all the lonely programmers and alienated people out there. I've had a great time at board game meetups. I highly recommend finding a group of people who play modern board games once a week. There should be at least one in most towns or cities. It can take a while to find the right group, but once you do, you can make some lifelong friends just by turning up every week. I've had some great experiences and a few not as great ones around the world and at various times. My favorites ones always involve food and alcohol in a nice bar or pub, usually starting with some casual or social deduction games. I now have a pretty huge collection of board games. I just moved to a new town though and it's pretty small so I need to be a bit more proactive. Haven't played a lot recently. Confession... I don't actually like board games all that much, and I don't really care if I win. Some of the games are really cool but I just love hanging out and having fun with a group of people. phone screen time < 2 hr/day no one hitting that target has a shortage of friends everyone missing that target does Many answers address the question of "how to build community." I like those responses! I also want to contribute to the discussion with an emotional intelligence response. The theory is that "loneliness" can be a symptom of underlying internal factors. While it is true that loneliness can arise from a lack of community, people, and related factors, for some people, the problem stems from not knowing how to be alone. At its core, the question becomes, "Am I externalizing my world, or internalizing my world?" When you externalize your world, you require something external. We are social creatures, and I do believe we need other people. I'm only suggesting that sometimes people need to look internally first. Personal anecdote: No amount of community would have helped me feel like I wasn't alone, because I needed the world around me to provide some sense of my self-worth. It felt counterintuitive, but for me, I had to learn to be alone. Only then could I feel like I wasn't alone. It all came down to attachment theory and self-worth. I’m loving the comments here. But I confess I exoected a ‘social technology’ solution to the problem!! Like “casserole” in the UK, which connects people in a neighbourhood with others who need food and a visit. You make a casserole and take it round. I’ve not seen this in person but it seems like a great application of tech to help ward off loneliness… You could easily extend this to “dog friends” or “cat friends”, where you’re connected with someone who’d like you to visit them and bring your dog or cat for an introduction and a pat All of the replies so far are suggesting ideas for an individual but seem to be missing the real crux of the matter... Yes, you'll be less lonely if you join a group, get out of your house, etc... But how do we actively incentivize that? Social media and whatnot have hundreds of thousands of people working around the clock to find ways to suck you in and monopolize your time. While "everyone should recognize the problem and then take steps to solve it for themselves" is the obvious solution, it's also not practical to just have everyone collectively decide they need to get out more without SOME sort of fundamental change in our society/incentives/etc I agree with this, and I think we're partly conditioned to think this way. We (think we) can change ourselves, but we (believe we) can't change the world. I think it's OK to think bigger. To make friends, people need a place to meet, to have time and means to be there, and a reason to go there semi-regularly. A lot of the design of society completely ignores these needs. These are solvable problems. Yeah, lots of "change your habits" type responses that won't change the reason we're here. We invented Soma from Brave New World. No amount of individual action will overcome the primary cause. Getting rid of Soma is the only effective solution. Even if you avoid Soma yourself, you will still face the negative effects of a society plagued by Soma. That’s kind of the conclusion I came to. I can make changes in my life, but when everybody else is sucked in by social media and doesn’t even see the issue trying to build bridges is futile. The only person you can rely on is yourself, the sooner you can accept being alone the better.
I lived in Japan for a while which is a much more solitary place than the UK. I think things in the West are going the same direction. More normalisation of solitary activities, increasing social distance, and fewer new families being started. Grim future. The end of this assumes the snowball fallacy. Just because people appear to be doing more isolated things doesn’t mean it’s a ratchet that only moves in 1 direction. People adjust. When enough people feel too lonely, they will adapt and many of them will come up with a solution, likely swinging the pendulum in the other direction. I believe it's more likely to lead to political extremism and a positive (rather than negative) feedback loop. It is a ratchet though. South Korea's birth rate has been at an existential level for at least a decade and shows no sign of improving. Things won't improve while technology and tech companies are warping what it means to be human. Now there's chatter about AI companions. If they take off and substitute real relationships it's game over. Swathes of the population will bed rot because they have no incentive to go outside for anything other than work. > But how do we actively incentivize that? Is immediately and completely solving the problem not a good enough incentive? If you go outside and interact, you will be much less lonely. There is no barrier! You don't need to overthink this. Walkable cities third spaces etc., all great — but literally just go out and interact with people you can do it today many people do it to great success! You're completely missing the point. The problem is people aren't collectively incentivized to do so. Individually someone can decide "oh wow, I'm lonely, I should get out more", but collectively there's nothing incentivizing everyone to do it, or even notice it's an issue. If there were, we wouldn't be in this situation. --- "How do we solve the obesity problem?"
"Well people should just work out." Obviously, that would solve it, but they're distinctly not doing that, which is why we're talking about a broader solution to actually get people to work out. > The problem is people aren't collectively incentivized to do so. Yes, we are — please believe me that a LOT of people go out into the world and interact with each other. Doing so is extremely heavily incentivized by all of the wonderful and beautiful things that happen in the world all the time, both quotidian and sublime. There is critical mass! So then I guess it seems like you're rejecting the premise then that there's a loneliness epidemic? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loneliness_epidemic I get what you're saying -- I leave my house more than most. But I think it's pretty clear we're trending away from that being the default. This is pretty spot on. It is like telling deug addicts to stop buying legal and unregulated drugs. Never gonna work. Real change will require enforced regulation on the methods and tactics social media is allowed to use. Things like notification limits, rules on gamification, feed transparency, and more. In the states this will never happen. The corporations own the rules. >> But how do we actively incentivize that? Pre-schedule it. Ideally recurring. Can be monthly. Possibly even bi-weekly. Agree on a time and do it on schedule. Pre-scheduling removes all the mental load of finding a time together. Todays https://ripplegame.app/ had an interesting connection to this topic... It seems that once again striving for efficiency in society is bad in some way for the social part of humans... i like loneliness. in my teens i could not encourage my friends to travel so i went on my own and was happy. in my twenties i would comfortably break up my relationships if i knew i could be happier alone. i have worked overseas for extended periods alone. i am old now but i am happy alone. i enjoy my huge garden alone. i avoid crowds. I online shop instead of travelling to a store if i can. I just have no connection to people around me anymore and i have been able to recognise this need in me and encourage myself to follow my own understanding of a happy life. I have no real regrets. I am in a good position financially and have nobody to really bother me. I can look ahead to the next month or two and feel happy knowing there is nothing on the horizon to displace my solitude. People need to purposefully and intentionally do things. Sitting home on an app, watching TV is easy. There is no fear or rejection, there is no work to get out of the house, there is no risk. But there is also no reward. My thoughts on this are you need to have multiple roots into your community. This is something that you go to often and talk to people, become a regular, say hi. Think back to how your parents or grandparents did it: They went to church/temple/synagogue, they went to PTA meetings, they talked to their neighbors, they were in clubs, they went to the same bar. So I think doing things that get you out of the house, consistently the most important part: 1. People need to make a point to talk to their neighbors, invite them over for dinner or bbqs, make small talk. How towns are constructed now is a hindrance to this (unwalkable towns where all of the houses are big garages in the front and no porches). 2. Join a religious organization. Go to church, but also join the mens/womens group, join a bible studies class. Attend every week. 3. Join social clubs / ethnic organization. The polish or ukrainian clubs, knights of columbus, elks, freemasons. Go every week. 4. Join a club / league. Chess club, bowling league, softball league, golf league. Tech meetups, DnD Night etc. But you have to talk with people and try to elevate things to friendships. 5. Have lunch, happy hour, etc with coworkers. I think the trick is getting off social media. When I was a computer nerd in the 2000s, I noticed people used to like to hang around and chat, but I mostly didn't. Now, everyone is an internet addict, and I was just ahead of the curve. No one hangs around and chats anymore. When you get off social media, real life becomes far more interesting. The problem with addiction is that it's so stimulating that everything else is boring. You have to let your mind reset. I agree but if your goal is to socialize more, it's not enough to get off social media. You need to be in a place where enough other people do too. Think of a city as both a spatial and a temporal grouping of people that are in the same place at the same time. Every hour a person spends at home on social media is an hour that they aren't really in the city and are not available for you to socialize with. The cumulative hours that people spend staring at their phones are effectively a massive loss of population density. That lost density makes it harder to find people even if you yourself are getting off a screen and looking for them. I thought of this the other day. I was on the train ride back from Chicago, and there was a family of four adults, sitting across from me, all just staring at their phones. I was effectively alone at that point in time. None of them were present. But you explained it in a new way I had not thought of before. They're quite literally not there in that moment, for however long that moment lasts. I took the train from Seattle to Portland last fall. Half of the people in the observation car were on Nintendo Switches the entire time. In the observation car. I heard the unofficial motto for BlackBerry from friends, something along the lines of "make distant friends be nearby, and nearby friends distant" just find a hobby that involves other people. any kind of team sport, r/c airplanes, shooting, bird watching, the options are pretty endless. You'll meet other people, make friends, and not be so lonely. > You'll meet other people, make friends 'Making friends' doesn't occur by just being in proximity to people. Quite likely at the end of the night they'll return to their lives and you won't be invited to interact with them again until the next meeting. That's if you're not excluded from existing club cliques - I've gone to many different meetings and come away at the end feeling more alone. I think "meetings" are a poor (or at least, very inconsistent) way of making friends. Doing activities together is the best way of making friends. Bonus points if it's for multiple hours, or there's an element of risk where you have to look after / trust each other, or stay overnight somewhere. Examples include clubs for walking / running / cycling / scuba clubs etc. It doesn't have to be physical activity, but since you need exercise anyway, then you might as well get those endorphins whilst socialising. You're right, you have to take a risk and go introduce yourself and talk. The thing with joining hobby clubs or groups is that you immediately have something in common to talk about. If you're lucky, some groups will have a person in the group who will see someone sitting alone, and go introduce them and drag them in. But not everybody picks up on that stuff or wants to make the effort on your behalf. And yes, it's normal that people don't just immediately become best friends and want to hang out with one person they just met for an hour at a meeting. Especially if that person doesn't even say hello. Sometimes it happens though! It helps a lot if you just go back a couple of times. The thing I love about car meets is that I can just go up to someone, ask them about their car, and tell them that I like it. You can do the same with any hobby, just go to meets where people are doing things, and not just showing up with nothing. Bring things to share, and a lot of times that brings people to you. Another thing you can do is ask for help with something. People love to help! Ham nerds are the same way. Electronics nerds are the same way. Computer geeks do the same thing too. I'm sure every hobby is the same way. Find something you like doing and it makes it a lot easier. But the point is if you don't put in any effort, nothing will happen. > 'Making friends' doesn't occur by just being in proximity to people. [...] Quite likely at the end of the night they'll return to their lives and you won't be invited to interact with them again until the next meeting. Yes because sharing an activity involves greetings, interactions, group laughs which break the glass before more conversations starts and making friends becomes naturally a possibility. Friendship is something that grow, not something that gets created in all its deepness from nowhere. I think the real cause of the loneliness epidemic is that the older generation never taught us how to socialise and make friends. I make an effort to talk to people and now we have "come over to dinner" friendships with people we met at a public park. > I think the real cause of the loneliness epidemic is that the older generation never taught us how to socialise and make friends. That is false. First because most of the social learning is done by mimicking what others do and we certainly all saw our parents invite and get invited to stuff. Plus there is school which is the #1 place where your learn to socialize and make friends. > just find a hobby that involves other people... shooting, Ok that one made me chuckle just from the initial reading of the wording. I don't disagree though, I do competitive bullseye, and it is definitely a communal thing. Many old guys at the range in particular seem to be there for 99% talking at you, and 1% actual shooting related stuff. If I'm going to the range for a set of three position, a 120-shot session by myself takes like 2.5 hours including setup and teardown. If there's talkative-old-guy at the range, then I'm there for 4 hours, and I don't even make it through 60 shots lol. Which is fine for someone like me who is a competitive shooter but not like really trying to be the absolute best, I don't mind spending 60 minutes doing bullseye and 180 minutes chatting about whatever. The actual competitive shooters at the range though, they'll either have someone screen talkative-old-guy for them, or just otherwise make it clear that they are Serious and not to be bothered. I tried to list things that are very different to just illustrate the range of options that are out there:) "Activity partners" are pretty easy to find. What's harder is getting them to make the transition to deeper friendship where you spend time together outside of the activity. This problem is not going to be solved by individual action. Sure there is some things you can and should do, but for it to be solved at a population scale it has to involve changing the actual structure of society that caused the problem in the first place. Tackling phone addiction and lack of public spaces is going to be critical. A big problem for me personally is that, well, frankly, there really aren't many options around me. I live in a small farming town of 6000 people, and most things are 25-45 min away *by car*. > I was just ahead of the curve. I can relate to this. I was always moderately extroverted and sociable, but the irony has never ceased to flabbergast me that the very behaviours and interests for which nerds like me would have been stuffed into lockers and garbage cans (if I had dared to tell anyone in school that I was into computers) became, only a decade later, de rigueur for every young person. I remember sitting in a coffee shop in 2003 (senior year of HS) trying to get kernel drivers for a PCMCIA 802.11b card to work on an ancient Compaq laptop, and being pointed, laughed at, and called -- by modern standards -- unconscienable names by a table of high schoolers nearby. It must have seemed so strange to them to see someone's head so deeply in a laptop. And my goodness, I wouldn't have dared to confess that I talk to strangers in faraway places _online_. To be known to have substantive computer-based interactions would have branded one so profoundly socially unsuccessful, that one's very family name would be cursed with this prejudice for two generations. AIMing one's classmates on the family PC was one thing, but chatting online to likeminded peers in other countries? Why, that was radiantly gay! But literally a few years later, I can't get anyone to make eye contact and they frequently plough into me because their heads are buried in their phones, texting people they never see. A'ight. Trust me I am in 2025 and I am in senior high school and whenever I try to talk about open source or linux or anything others. Friends have point blank said that they aren't interested in it. (only one friend showed interest/shows interests at times) the most ironical part is that they want to become software engineers for just the money aspect but fundamentally they really don't know anything about the field or are even interested to talk about. So in a sense this still happens :) This happened so much that I had to cut off my friends because the only thing that they were interested in talking about were woman or insta shorts and very few intellectual discussion could happen (atleast with that friend group and I would consider that friend group to be more intellectual among other peers but for some reason they just never wanted to discuss intellectual topics other than some very few occasions, mostly just shitposting being honest and I didn't enjoy the shit posting aspect that much if I am being honest as well) Hah! I had a very similar thought enter mind recently. I used to get shamed for being on screens too much, now the situation seems to have flipped. Who's the nerd now?? Also just an aside - I love your writing style. Let me tell you about real life. I’m a caregiver and leaving the home is simply not an option. Short trips to the store, a walk around the block, maybe, if it’s before sundown, provided the person I’m caring for is in the right mental state to be left alone for 45 minutes. If there were neighborhood pubs that might be a thing to do if I drank. Getting off social media is great for those lucky enough to have the option, but with an increasing number of people getting into their dementia years, many with no savings to afford respite or other forms of care, social media is going to be the only option for a lot of people like myself. It’s better than nothing. First, sorry for what you're going through. Also, your situation is definitely an outlier that I can't focus my main efforts on. Maybe someone else is meant for that. But I'm curious, why not have friends over? Is anything like this possible? Tip of the hat there, it’s a very selfless thing to commit to caregiving. From a 50kft view, we have an aging demographic globally, and the bet seems to be robotics- hopefully they will get good enough to help meaningfully in this capacity. What happens to an economic system predicated around having more kids (GDP growth) is another concern. We already have the ability to take care of people now. All it needs is is for someone in power to give a fuck and set up a system and fund it. The suggestion that we do nothing for 30 years so we can leave our loved ones home with a robot care taker is kind of fucking angering. The robotics thing to replace caregivers misses the point that elder people also want connection. Yeah, it might free caregivers but still we will have a loneliness epidemic. I think this is more related to the desire for progress which is the backbone of modern life (you see it politics, school, your family, etcetera). This, I believe, has been slowly replacing the social glue of societies like religion, public space, play, chatting, etcetera. It's like China during the opium epidemic. Maybe we'll see Europe try and ban social media, leading to a kind of "Opium War" to keep it going on the pretext of "freedom" and so on. My friend, don't scare quote freedom. Sure, it may not have infinite value, but there are plenty of far less valuable things we endure significant harm to be able to enjoy. And I say this as someone who absolutely hates social media. Usually countries don't go to war over actual principles such as these but for self-interest. That's what I was getting at. Scare quotes indicate the position of the concept within public-facing rhetoric for an Opium War style operation (which would presumably be about profit, control and so on, the usual). > Now, everyone is an internet addict, and I was just ahead of the curve. No one hangs around and chats anymore. A lot of the events and spaces I go to have people who hang around and chat. I agree that internet use has had an impact, but I think it's easy to underestimate how much situations change as you grow up. Now that I have kids, it seems like we're always ending up in spaces where people are hanging out and chatting. As far as my kids know, that's just the way the world works. I thought the same up through college, then I graduated and suddenly spontaneous socialization ended. I had to change my habits to go find other people. >how much situations change as you grow up And yet this looks very different from what 40+ years back looked like for adults so it's not just about growing up, there was other massive changes in our society. For example the number of kids we had in the past dramatically affected 'forced' socialization. The post war suburbanization that forced us to spend huge amounts of time on the road. Things like TV that took entertainment from a group activity to a single person event. All these things added up. >Things like TV that took entertainment from a group activity to a single person event. TV was the visual replacement of radios, and both used to bring families together for tv events… I remember lots of instances of that as a child. It also brought people together at work. Everyone used to watch nearly the same things, and even up to 15 years ago, there’d at least be groups you could find in your office who was watching the same things you did, and could engage in water cooler talk. Now theres so many shows on streaming networks, and you can watch whenever, so its all fractured. Thankfully social media is getting so much worse so fast it's making this easier and easier. HN is the last social media platform I still participate in... and I suspect that might not be for too much longer. I recently logged onto Facebook and Instagram to update my 2-factor auth settings after having too many notifications of malicious login attempts. It was incredible to see what a transformation has happened there, it's like going to a decaying suburban shopping mall with only a few stores left open (and sort of sad to see the remaining users so continually desperate for a drop of approval from some imagined community). Reddit is mostly bots, astro-turfers and people so brainwashed it's hard to tell the difference. I remember disagreeing with people on there (this in the pre-Digg migration era) you would get interesting divergent points of view. Now it's like people are reading from a script. Twitter used to be my strongest addiction, but it's almost unbelievable how big a transformation has occurred since it became X. It's almost a parody of everyone's dystopian social media fears. HN has obviously held up a bit better, but the AI driven mass hallucination impacting this community, combined with the increasingly aggressive manipulation of the home page, is continually making logging out for good seem like the best option. > Reddit is mostly bots, astro-turfers and people so brainwashed it's hard to tell the difference. I remember disagreeing with people on there (this in the pre-Digg migration era) you would get interesting divergent points of view. Now it's like people are reading from a script. It's hard to classify Reddit as one thing, the communities are all so different. The subreddit for my town has led to several new friends that I meet with in person. Most of that came from coming together to advocate for something at a city council meeting or similar, where there was a directed meat space purpose. Getting together for hobbies like hiking or other things happens once in a while too. On other, technical subreddits dedicated to digging deep into details, there are few bots. It's all real people with shared interests. Reddit is far better than most forums that I frequent for finding those communities. The few times I have been swarmed by bots on Reddit was when I touched on a topic where, say, Russia had a strategic interest, then the subreddit would get tons of new commentators from other subreddits, which was the indication of bots. Fortunately the mods took swift action when this happened, becuase my god the discourse is awful when bots flood the zone with their babble. > The few times I have been swarmed by bots on Reddit was when I touched on a topic where, say, Russia had a strategic interest The thing is, bot operators know they can’t just post on Russia-related topics - they need a smokescreen of other ‘normal human’ activity, to avoid getting detected and banned. If the bots that swarmed you want to appear as only 5% pro-russian, for every response you got they had to make 19 other posts. Predictable advice in advice subs, lukewarm takes in entertainment subs, reposts in image subs, repetitive worn out jokes everywhere. Totally agree. When people say "Reddit is mostly bots" I find they're really talking about political subs. Niche/hobby subs are mostly bot-free. Yes I feel the same way too. This exactly captures what I am feeling right now. I wish there was a way to upvote this twice, thank you so much for writing this! The only place I am usually active is on Hackernews and on bluesky as wel > HN has obviously held up a bit better, but the AI driven mass hallucination impacting this community, combined with the increasingly aggressive manipulation of the home page, is continually making logging out for good seem like the best option. I am not kidding, this is so true. I don't know if I can get flagged again but oh well, The amount of manipulation happening in HN is insane and flagging and just about everything People called me bots twice on Hackernews for no apparent reason which really hurt and then I created a post about it which got flagged again as well and the responses were.. well not so sympathetic I feel like I would be better off being an robot than a human in hackernews at this point smh. You get called bots for simply existing and showing your viewpoint or having a viewpoint (different?) or just no apparent reason and I genuinely don't know. Bluesky has some faults as well but It's (I must admit) more focused on politics. i like the weeds of things in coding. I found some coding spaces in bluesky but they are just not there yet. I ended up spending 2 hours or something trying to build an extension which can automatically create threads for large posts because (you can see) i love writing large posts and bluesky has 300 characters limit and that annoyed me I don't know what to do as well. I am thinking of still using Hackernews and bluesky but to an degree of moderation. I have tried discord and that doesn't work as well. Honestly I just don't know as well but right now I atleast feel that I am not alone in this. I am not feeling lonely about feeling like this so once again massive thank you man, these are the comments which lure me into entering hackernews. Not people accusing me of being bots for no apparent reason and this happened on both bluesky and hackernews where pople called me bot and I actually try to be respectful and uh in bluesky someone went on 10 thread comment saying silence AI or silence bot when I was trying to be reasonable for the most part until I trolled them back And in all of this questioning myself what did I do wrong, did I have a stance and they wanted to deny it and said something, the HN instance just mentioned my name as the reason I am a clanker. All of these things genuinely made me feel like people just wont trust me in being part of this community if someone (even after being a year in) trying to respond nicely and following the rules mostly can call me clanker Like I just don't know what to do with either bots or people who accuse (you) of being bots. Both just feel the worst in social media and are actively rotting both HN and many other communties to the point that I dont even know what are some good alternatives I think the biggest negative impact of AI is the fact that we aren't able to trust each other online in my opinion or trust art and other issues as well. Once again thank you man for writing this. Your comment gets what I am talking about as well and I didn't know how to summarize what I wanted to say! People are seeking multiple things on social media. One common one is connection. I am in Mexico dealing with family business. I am in a rural area. My Spanish skills are developing but are still weak. I can have light conversation here, but I can't deeply connect. My desire to use social media has drastically increased. But I only want to engage with my friends. Every platform feeds me various flavors of rage bait mixed in with my friends' content. Some of my friends groups have moved to chats on other less public platforms like Discord, Signal, or Whatsapp. But that's not the same experience. And a lot of the people I like to engage with aren't moving over to those platforms. We all thought maybe social media would evolve into something good... but it was enshitified. So maybe part of the solution here is to develop a tool that offers that connection without the whole being exploited aspect? I know the feeling but my impression is that interacting with people that are strictly internet friends is a proxy to the real thing, the same way watching porn is a proxy for the real thing. When you spend X hours talking to people on the Internet you're spending at least less X hours talking to people IRL and building the sense of community that we now feel thinning away. I know people that are internet famous and are terminally online all the time. I'm pretty sure it must feel like they're accomplishing something but for somebody IRL not familiar with the game they're playing their life looks very weird socially. My current mindset for this is that social media should only work augmenting my real world social life, not take what's left of it away from me. > My current mindset for this is that social media should only work augmenting my real world social life, not take what's left of it away from me. 110% I feel like the idea social media prevents socializing in real life is a bit of a straw man. I've made many friends over the years through platforms like Instagram, some in countries I don't even live in, and we've met many times in person. Of course that won't necessarily work for everyone but the point I'm trying to make is that social media isn't some one way street that won't return value. There's social media, and then theres "social" media. Someone veged out to tiktok or instagram reels is not socialising. They are trapped in an endless state of scrolling slop. We probably need some laws or regulation that strip out the random algorithm selected junk from feeds and return it to just posts from your friends and family. Maybe it’s ironic that I’m saying this because right now I’m scrolling HN while waiting for my flight to board rather than trying to strike up conversations with people … but when I was riding the bus home a few days ago, I got fed up with the algorithmic feed (too many “you’re single because you don’t follow a dating coach that will tell you to gaslight people” ads in a row). I put my phone away and just decided to take in the scene around me. Every other person was on their phone. Started wondering what these people did with their day, what new restaurants they discovered, what quirky thing they may have seen in the city. Conversations that might have been had if people weren’t afraid to strike up conversations with strangers. (something I definitely struggle with myself too) Anyways, random thoughts as usual. It's honestly very scary, and if people aren't on their phone, they have something masking the outside world and blasting noise into their ear. > (unwalkable towns where all of the houses are big garages in the front and no porches) You can turn the garage into a hangout spot. A neighbor has a full bar with communal table plus TV for sports and he opens up the garage door once a week on a schedule (Sunday game day or whatever depending on the season) and whenever he feels like it on work week evenings. As people pass by we invite them over and after a few months everyone knows that when the garage is open, they can come over for a drink and to shoot the shit. Low pressure social interactions that often turn into weekend outings, regular poker games, etc. Now years later we get impromptu block parties when he brings out the grill onto the driveway. It’s done wonders for our community in an otherwise unwalkable SoCal suburb. This works wonders. I did it accidentally. In March 2020 when my gym closed, I started working out every night in the garage. After a couple of weeks a neighbor who I only ever said "hi" to wondered by and asked if he could join since his gym was closed. After a while more showed up, and now I have like 12 people every day show up. One Friday someone brought a bottle of whiskey and we hung out after the workout and now weekly happy hours are a regular occurrence. The neighbors who don't workout stop by after the workout for happy hour. It's almost become expected and folks schedule their weeks around it so that they can be there for drinks in the evening. As a super introvert nerd, I never thought I'd be the center of community in my neighborhood. This is something I absolutely would not feel comfortable doing unless I was warmly encouraged to join in, that's how I've been turned into a social outcast in my youth. I know some people who for a fact feel the same way. Maybe one solution is therapy, to help massage them out of their shell, to help them learn to be vulnerable and unafraid and friendly. But many of them refuse to go to therapy for whatever reason also. These are things I will be running into as I try to resolve this. I have already encountered a young man named Daniel who remembered me, and told me that he was hospitalized, and that the thought of me and my sign helped him get through it. I'm dealing with people on all spectrums of mental health. In fact, maybe that's kind of the point. I'm trying to reach out to people who refuse to go to therapy, who have internal thoughts berating them all day long, and I have the unique opportunity of helping them through the darkness and into the light of the truth, that they are valuable and lovable, if only people saw the true them, and trusted them to become that. I am affected by extreme conscientiousness and would be described as a social outcast in my current state I'm sure. I've always had a decent social network through proximity alone (neighborhood, education, etc.) and in this comfort, built a harsh prejudice against outgoing behavior. I'm not even sure why I held this perspective so deeply for so long, but I reviled the thought of intruding on others and only warranted intrusion on those I judged willful intruders. Most of my relationships are sufficiently available, but not very deep given my refusal to assert vulnerably (including against others vulnerabilities). I was lucky to find Dostoevsky, Camus, and Hesse notably, which helped break some of my absurd dispositions. However, my entire social network was still rotten on a basis of inauthentic connection and intellectualizing this can only go so far. You must live the perspective and it is hard and vulnerable. Thank you for these words, I find your mission deeply humane and I strive to live through a similar spirit. Yep. I grew up in the era of ‘stranger danger’. We were explicitly taught as kids to fear strangers and socialising. We were taught “don’t be rude and butt in to conversations uninvited”, etc. Still, something else is off. In the 90s, the Internet was a way to expand your social circle. So many friends made on IRC groups that moved into real life. Nowadays yeah, commenting on Reddit and chatting to friends in message groups does feel like socialising, even though you might go two weeks without seeing anyone other than coworkers, cashiers (maybe) and Uber Eats delivery drivers. > This is something I absolutely would not feel comfortable doing Part of it I think is to endure the uncomfortable for a bit. I felt really uncomfortable in social settings, and still do sometimes. But I forced myself to ignore those feelings. Now I'm at a point that if people think I'm weird or whatever then that's their problem. I try not to be rude, be considerate and such thing, I'm not totally unhinged. But I am much more relaxed about just being me. Sometimes it doesn't work, but often it's all good. on my son's bday i drug our firepit out to the front yard and setup some chairs for my wife and I to welcome his friends as they arrived. Maybe a dozen people in our neighborhood walking their dog or out for a run just dropped by to say hello and talk. I guess the fire looked very inviting (it was a chilly evening). I'm going to start doing it regularly, it's an easy way to meet people in your community. In some neighborhoods the neighbors would call the police about your illegal open fire. It's nice that your neighbors are cool with it. This is totally badass. Makes me want to clean out my garage for just such a thing. The common retort is that these don't exist any more, but in my experience they're all over. If you have kids you start seeing them everywhere, too. They're not as classically romantic as an ancient Greek agora, but there are plenty of spaces. During the summer I'm probably at a different space 5 days a week with the kids after school. I think the real problem is that some people forget how to go places. It's so easy to do the routine of work -> dinner -> screen time -> sleep -> repeat that time vanishes from people. Whenever I hear people, usually young and single, complain that their 8 hour job leaves 0 hours in the day to do anything and they're too tired on the weekends to go out, it's always this: Their time is disappearing into their screens, which makes it feel like their only waking hours go to work. I try to give gentle nudges to help give people ideas, but none of them really want to hear that it's something they can change. It's just so easy to believe that life has thrust this situation upon us and there's nothing we can do about it. > The common retort is that these don't exist any more Usually when I see the retort, its also with the understanding that 3rd places need to be free, or essentially free. If theres a significant expectation of money being spent in order to spend time there, its not really a “3rd place” by the intended definition. (Thats the argument I’ve seen) That has never really been part of the definition. If you look at that Wikipedia article a couple comments up, I only see two examples (i.e. stoops and parks) that are free, and I think parks are a stretch because conversation is not a primary reason for most people going there. I wrote on my white board, "There goes today's hour." So if I'm walking by and I read it again, and I just spent some time on some mindless phone thing, I remember that I could find a better use of my free time tomorrow. Also, people forgot how to find places. If you're driving a car, places speed by too fast to see or remember (and it's dangerous to spend too much time looking at them). On Google, places are actively hidden from you for the sake of making the map look "cleaner". Every time I go downtown (on transit, not by car) I notice new shit that just doesn't exist on the map unless you specifically type in the name to get Google to admit that it exists. I noticed this the first time I took a walk by myself to the town center rather than letting my parents drive me there. You know the routine: drive to the mall parking lot, go and get the thing you're looking for, drive home. Well, I didn't have my own car and figured I could walk there (about an hour, so probably 2-3km, in a country that uses sidewalks). It's basically magical how much stuff you notice that you would just ignore when in the car, even as a passenger. What happens when they try to go to that place, they go there, they are there alone and bored. There is no one to talk with. So they end up being on the phone and more depressed. Yes. Our lopsided emphasis on individualism, our definition of economic efficiency that does not include the mental health value, these have been detrimental to our connections, roots, community, family etc. We said, let the mom and pop stores die, their replacements provide the same value but more efficiently. Let community bonds die they intrude upon our individual destiny. But we did not correctly account for the value provided by those that we chose to replace. So it is not surprising that we find ourselves here. Could it have played out any other way ? I doubt it. Our world is an underdamped system, so we will keep swinging towards the extremes, till we figure out how to get a critically damped system. The other serious problem is that the feedback system is so laggy, that's a biggy in feedback control loops. The world has become a much bigger place. You used to know who to avoid, the default was someone was acceptable. Now the ones to avoid move around and it's all too likely that a newcomer is such a person. > Now the ones to avoid move around and it's all too likely that a newcomer is such a person. This seems a wild generalization to make, though I guess "be suspicious of newcomers" is a little biologically hardwired. What's your epistemology for believing "newcomers" are "the ones to avoid"? I think it's still likely that most new people you'll encounter aren't malicious. I have to wonder what your mental image of a 'newcomer' looks like. > Our lopsided emphasis on individualism This reads like that pattern where people assign blame for all issues to whatever thing they happen to not like. The US is the least individualistic it has ever been, but there was much more community and less loneliness in the past. That make it pretty obvious that the issue here isn't "individualism". I am not from the US but your observation, if correct, would offer a counterexample worth thinking about. You are saying that in the past, more resources were spent supporting individuals than the resources spent supporting communities and yet communities were stronger. That sure would be an interesting thing to understand if true. My interest is certainly piqued, seems too good to be true though. Exactly this. Vote for representatives that want to build walkable cities, support small businesses, and want to build parks. Suburban sprawl sucks. No it doesn't. I live in a planned neighborhood in the suburbs. I can walk to a branch of my local library, a few restaurants, a bar, a bookstore, I even get my haircut in my neighborhood. And even if none of that existed, nothing has stopped me from being friends with my neighbors, or the parents of my kid's friends. The suburbs are a different model with tradeoffs, but they're also useful for periods and phases of life different from the ones served by urban settings. A planned neighborhood is technically by definition not suburban sprawl, as sprawl requires a lack of planning. On the other hand, I'd argue if you can do all of that (and said walking distance is under a mile[0]) you're not even in a suburb, you're in a dense enough location to be a town or small city. Unfortunately thanks to American zoning and planning it can be very difficult to know what your home area is actually considered and it makes this type of anecdotal evidence not particularly useful[1]. [0] A mile is essentially the farthest the average person will comfortable walk versus driving a car for travel that does not require carrying anything back. Once you add in carrying things (e.g. groceries) it drops to half a mile. Anything less dense than that and people won't want to walk, anything more dense than that and you're into standard city planning. [1] Assuming you're American of course and obviously I'm not about to ask you to dox yourself, considering this type of thing can vary right down to the neighbourhood level. Sounds like you like in a “streetcar suburb”, not urban sprawl. I’ve been in real urban sprawl and you can’t walk to anything. Not that you’d want to, since there are no sidewalks. Drop a Google Maps pin anywhere in Texas not in the direct center of a major city to see what it’s really like. >I can walk to a branch of my local library, a few restaurants, a bar, a bookstore, I even get my haircut in my neighborhood. If you can walk to these things, you don't live in the areas the parent comment is talking about. "Suburban sprawl" doesn't mean all suburbs, it's specifically the ones which don't have facilities and community. Urban environments blunt people's connection to other people too, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese If you pack people in too tight they just tune each other out. I mean, the very first paragraph of your own link says: "However, subsequent investigations revealed that the extent of public apathy was exaggerated." and the second paragraph says, "Researchers have since uncovered major inaccuracies in the Times article, and police interviews revealed that some witnesses had attempted to contact authorities." I live in probably the most walkable city in the world, but there are millions of lonely people here as well. From any of my observations, I can’t pinpoint to one single problem. It might be a composite effect of different things contributing to the easiness of being alone. Cultural skill that overtime gets eroded, and as less time people spend among others, it becomes even harder to go back. Voting isn't going to fix this problem in our lifetimes. We need to do things ourselves. Suburban sprawl is not going to be "fixed" in anyones lifetime. But it doesn't have to be limiting. I grew up in a very typical suburban style neighborhood in the 1970s. Tract homes, lots of cul-de-sac streets. But neighbors talked to one another, kids played together, there were summer gatherings in those cul-de-sacs on the 4th of July or Labor Day. Don't think you have to live in some idealized fantasy land to go talk to your neighbors. I live in a suburban neighborhood with a couple bag ends, our neighborhood is pretty social. couple of neighborhood bbqs a year, kids all playing together every day, dinners, etc. It is quiet and not a lot of traffic with long term residents. I am not 100% on what exactly the key is for a town is, I think style matters, but Ive been in walkable neighborhoods without a good community, and non-walkable neighborhoods with one. I'll say that when I was a kid, the neighborhood was still as it was originally built, no sidewalks. Didn't stop anyone from socializing, didn't stop kids from biking around. The city added sidewalks there in the '00s or so, but when I go back there I almost never see anyone using them. I think the trend of isolation and loneliness is not really related to infrastructure or stuff like "walkability." Those things are pretty minor obstacles. How big were the lots? How far of a walk was the closest bar, grocery store, cafe? Do you have to walk onto someone's property to talk to them if they are sitting on the porch? I lived in a car dependent burb for 20+ years and would rarely, if ever, run into my neighbors out on the town. Living in a walkable neighborhood in a medium-low density city for under a year and I regularly run into my neighbors. Standard 0.25 acre suburban lots. No markets, cafes, or anything like that it was a bog-standard subdivision. There was a small park sort of centrally located but that was really the only ammenity. Supermarket was a few miles away. Nobody walked there, cars to go anywhere. Neighbors still knew one another, at least on the same streets. Kids met at school, figured out where each other lived. > bag ends Never seen "cul de sac" in English before... I knew cul de sac was french for bag end, or end of sack or whatever the translation was. One time reading lord of the rings after learning Tolkien explicitly avoided french loan words, I realized Bilbo living at Bag End is kind of a joke. Its just saying Bilbo lives in the cul de sac. > idealized fantasy land For what it's worth, many (most?) countries have most of their people living in places that are not sprawling suburbs. It's worst in the "Anglosphere" countries (US/Canada/Australia) within the last 50-70 years, but it's absolutely not a fantasy land. It's the way things were everywhere before 1940, and most places still are today. I say that because it is fixable, if we let ourselves fix it... Your point stands though, even in a fairly antisocial layout of a suburb, you can still usually make friends with a decent number of people nearby. Most countries pack a large chunk of their population like sardines instead. Not really any better. This. I also like the idea of libraries having a cafe, internet access, a place to meet, all non profit and owned by the community. Community is a function of distance, broadly speaking. I also like the idea of libraries having a cafe, internet access, a place to meet, all non profit and owned by the community. There are lots of libraries with cafes, maker spaces, and more. Seattle is one. If yours doesn't, this is your wake-up call to get involved with your local library. Stop waiting for someone else to do things. Which Seattle library (am assuming you're referring to SPL/Seattle Public Library system) has a maker space? There is no maker space listed at https://www.spl.org/programs-and-services/a-z-programs-and-s.... Within KCLS, there are two public libraries that have maker spaces (AFAIK): Bellevue, Federal Way. PS this is not meant to be confrontational, would love it if there were more maker spaces in libraries (when have asked in the past, the usual answer is that they do not have enough space for it). I'm willing to bet that the libraries near the person you're talking to have all but maybe a cafe. I mean, I've never seen a library in the US that didn't have internet access and a place to meet and that weren't nonprofit. This is answering the wrong question. You're answering the question, "In a loneliness epidemic, what can I do to be less lonely?" Your answer is to use self discipline (which is hard) to get out of your house consistently, a decent answer to that question. To actually fix the loneliness epidemic, you'd have to get everyone else to do that. In the 20th century, getting out of the house consistently was the easiest way to interact with other people. Now, you can interact with lots of other people (in a less satisfying way) without leaving your house. What's going to fix that? How do we get everyone to eat better? How do we get everyone to get enough sleep? How do we get everyone to exercise more? "Just tell them to do it" won't work. "Why don't we all just put our phones away?" won't work. We'd need a policy. (My best guess: in the US, mandate that health insurers pay for therapy, and provide therapy at low/no cost in countries with national health care.) I was with you up until you said policy was the solution. No, action must come first. Policy needs people to agree on it, and can take a long time to enact. Action can be done now, and allows experimentation and disagreement. I am looking for actionable solutions that I can experiment with as one lone individual with time to spare on Sundays. If you're looking for individual advice, instead of "solving" the whole epidemic, then here's mine. To solve loneliness for yourself, you've got to get out of the house more. But, deep down, you already knew that, right? Just like we all know we should exercise more, eat better, etc. Self discipline is hard. So, my advice for that is to work with a therapist. A therapist can help you do the thing that you know you need to do but can't make yourself do. People often think therapy is only for "serious" problems, but it's great for just helping you to stop sabotaging yourself (and we all sabotage ourselves, in big ways and small). Therapists have regularly scheduled appointments, which also helps in its own right. (You'll get better workout results if you exercise weekly with a trainer.) Scheduled recurring appointments make it easier to attend other social gatherings, too. The chess club means every Tuesday night. People will be watching Monday night football at the bar. Church is on Sunday. (Temple is on Saturday, Jumu'ah is on Friday, etc.) But you knew all that, already, too. To do what you already knew you need to do, try therapy. Sorry no, I think you misunderstood. For the whole thread, it's open-ended. People can brainstorm whatever they want to based on the title. It's good that it's ambiguous. The more conversations, the better. But for me, I'm looking for ways that I can help solve other people's loneliness, both on an individual basis, and eventually en masse, but still me doing something as one individual. This is what all my replies have been about, and why I posted one top-level comment asking that very specific question. I want to know what individuals can do that's actionable to help other people. Policy could make a huge difference. Investing in free places where people can do cool things in public like libraries can help. Investing in public transportation so that more people can get around easier can help. Making sure that people have enough money that they don't need to work 2 jobs to get by and they aren't under constant worry of not being able to pay rent would help. Making sure people are able to get the healthcare they need so that they are feeling well enough to go out places would help. It's hard to act when you're sick and exhausted and physically isolated and broke and there's nowhere in public filled with people worth visiting. Policy can help improve that situation so that action can happen. > I am looking for actionable solutions that I can experiment with as one lone individual with time to spare on Sundays. Since you've probably already got the time, energy, and money to invest this should be pretty easy. The easiest answer? Go find a protest group. There are people out pretty much every week all over the place. You'll meet tons of very friendly people and you'll already have something to discuss with the strangers you meet. You can spend your weekends with new passionate people outdoors holding signs and marching around. Doesn't get more actionable than that. Comes with a low risk of getting shot or teargassed and a high risk of being profiled by the feds (although these days who isn't on a list right?) Not political? Volunteer helping people. Soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and food banks are a great place to start. You'll be doing something good for others in your community and get a chance to meet and speak with other volunteers and the people you're helping. (Fair warning: repeated exposure to good people who are struggling may cause you to become more political) Are you active? Join a sports team for a sport you enjoy or have always wanted to try. There are usually local groups looking for members and again you'll be starting with something to talk about and a shared interest. Pay for classes in something you're interested in. Meet your teachers and classmates. Learn something cool in the process! Works best if you're learning something that requires you to create or do something. Not in a relationship? Try dating. Be open about the fact that you're just looking to meet more interesting people. (this tip works infinitely better if you're a woman, but if you're comfortable with rejection, patient, and able to pay for multiple dating apps for indefinite periods of time where you don't get any takers it can work for almost anyone). Pick a local bar and become a regular. Pay attention and if after a month or two you haven't clocked who the other regulars are pick a different bar and repeat. Once you've found some other regulars introduce yourself. As a bonus you'll both be socially lubricated when you meet and if it goes badly you can drown your sorrows in more drinks. Like to drink but want to meet fewer alcoholics? Do the same thing but go to bars during karaoke and/or trivia nights. Nerdy? Check gaming stores or the internet for a D&D group looking for members or even better look up where your local Society for Creative Anachronism meets and go there. You can meet people while you learn blacksmithing, or calligraphy, or archery. Religious? Tour churches. This can be pretty fun even if you aren't religious. Most people will be very friendly and welcoming (results may vary depending on the church and your color/sexual orientation). 100%. Telling people they just need to work harder and do better feel like good advice but it isn't going to solve a population scale problem. Sure _you_ should do it because it's the only thing you can directly control, but also understand it isn't going to solve the problem an entire society is facing. In the 20th century you left the house because otherwise you were bored. I love being alone but I am not "lonely" and I am never bored. When I go for a walk on a beautiful summer night in America, always alone, there is rarely anyone outside. They are in the house, mostly alone unless they have a partner/kids. I think we have a loneliness epidemic because we have a culture that makes it fun to be alone. Some people don't like this level of being alone but many do. Those that do aren't really going to pitch in to help so I am not sure what the solution is. You can throw a party but I am not going to show up. I would rather be alone. This is enough interaction. There is also a culture of narcissism, hyper stimulation or both involved I imagine. I can't just close the browser window in person if the conversation seems boring or jump to something more interesting instantly.
I would even say that being alone is more fun now than hanging out at someone's house in the 20th century. There is just so much more to do. The group was less bored together but it was still pretty boring then. That is why going to the bar was so popular. Not much else to do then besides get drunk and smoke cigarettes in groups to get rid of the boredom. I do this. Even to the point where I go to church yet am openly agnostic. Takes the right church, I enjoy a good pastor and message even if I don’t technically believe it can be rooted in morality or philosophy and I can filter out the religious aspects. I could do without the singing but that’s my wife’s favorite part. The thing is, church works for this because it’s an agreed upon and set time of the week. It’s also a broad group of people. Having friends of all ages is beneficial. I prefer it to a hobby group or our parent groups where we are all very similar in many aspects, although I do those too I just feel like their impact is less on building my own character. It’s hard to lose what has been lost in the macro sense and then go from 0 to 1. A social movement like “screen free Saturday” or something would be ideal. Kids had to prearrange where to meet, where the teens will party (they don’t party anymore yall!), arrange logistics, and deal with being bored during some part of the day (underrated life skill, as a busy adult I love being bored, but hated it when young). I just recently explained to my kid how TV worked in the 80s. You couldn’t pick what to watch and there were very few times when cartoons were on. You either watched the news or MASH with the adults or found something else to do out of boredom. > People need to purposefully and intentionally do things. Sitting home on an app, watching TV is easy. There is no fear or rejection, there is no work to get out of the house, there is no risk. But there is also no reward. This is the wrong model: Sitting (alone) at home and working on program code or reading scientific textbooks does have a reward. Many things for which you go outside of the house or where you interact with other people have a much lower reward. So you rather loose a rather decent local optimum, and if you don't know very well where to look outside for something really good, you get much worse results than if you simply stayed at home and do there what you love. I think by "reward" in the context of this discussion on loneliness, OP may have meant the opportunity to meet people, make friends, perhaps hit it off with someone and land a date, if you're single. Not that it's entirely useless/detrimental to spend time at home reading or pursuing whatever solo hobbies you happen to have. To be sure, there certainly are many introverts who are perfectly happy on their own with no need to get out and meet people. More power to them! But there are many that crave human connection, even if they happen to have many intellectual interests and for these types of individuals, they would be well served at least carving out some portion of their time to get out of the house with the explicit aim of meeting people. And yes, not every such outing will lead to lifelong friends or meeting your next soulmate, but it's a numbers game. "Opportunity" is not reward. Actually making friends is reward. And that actually making friends requires a lot more then just "go outside somewhere we cant tell you where". If you just go to a cafe or club, you will sit alone in cafe or club. And if you walk to someone randomly, they wont appreciate it because it is weird. > you get much worse results than if you simply stayed at home and do there what you love. That's a sense of risk and caution that gets too comfortable for some people to compete with over time. If you don't build yourself better options, all you want to do is sit at home and do the thing that guarantees a reward. Then you get in your car and move about the world in a way that you feel is guaranteed to protect you from conditions, other people, but really is dangerous. You bet only on certainty, and outcomes are predictable, but they're not compatible with not being lonely My son is comparing every alternative to what he can accomplish by staying home and practicing guitar. However, we are trying to start an anime theme song cover band (e.g. "Upstate NY's most energetic opening act") for which he's going to play Bass, Rhythm or Lead as needed and I'm going to be the Kitsune/Band Manager/Mascot. I have been meaning to (get LLM) to read this and others of his https://www.amazon.com/Yourself-First-Chinese-Nishimura-Hiro... apparently a lie-flat manual for Chinese and Japanese Gen-Z Founder of 2chan who reverse took over 4chan in a pattern which should be familiar to you :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroyuki_Nishimura I've heard it said that Swedish and Japanese cultures are more aligned than is usually appreciated https://archive.ph/2020.05.30-154951/https://hbr.org/2013/09... Especially this >Balance explicit and implicit communication. Too much explicitness can lead to mistrust; too much implicitness can result in misunderstanding. We are optimising for reducing loneliness, remember. I am of course aware of that. But reducing loneliness is just a means to an end. My point is that there exist a lot of rewarding things that you can do alone at home, which may give you a hapiness malus because of the loneliness, but also a happiness bonus because you like the activity. If a solution to reducing loneliness shall be sustainable, it better increases the happiness or rewardingness overall, too. Otherwise you see loneliness as a problem, but see the alternatives as being the worse options, i.e. by rational choice, the loneliness will not be reduced. You can be happy, well maybe content, but still lonely. It sounds like you're just trying to optimise your happiness, which is fine for you. It's also possible to write code or read scientific textbooks for the goal of promoting social connection. What a stupid take, but it showcases the underlying problem: there is no loneliness issue, there is a "me me me" issue. Friendship is a two way contract: you add something to someone's life and they will consider you their friend, they add something to your life, making them your friend. If you "optimize" for your own and only your own benefit, nobody is going to be your friend. > Attend every week. In my experience, this is the key. “90% of life is showing up.” If you are around the same people every week, for whatever reason, with even a minimal amount of openness and friendliness, you will get community. I'm open and friendly to everyone I meet but get treated like a weirdo and ostracized (I am also a weirdo). You don't only have to be "open and friendly", you have to say the correct things in the correct way in the correct order in order for people to accept you. Exactly. It can take a month or more but the secret for me is to “become a regular” at places I like. This is good advice for your friends and family, but a bad answer to the question. "How can we solve the obesity epidemic? Stop eating so much and get some exercise." Well sure, but this misses the big picture. We built a social infrastructure that encourages a sedentary, solitary life. We shouldn't be confused by physical and emotional health implications. We can expect some people to be proactive about it, but we can't expect that of everyone. I guess we need to delete the internet and tv from existence. I think that the more people getting out and putting effort in the better, it helps create a knock on effect. > I guess we need to delete the internet and tv from existence. If only. My preferred solution is a 4 year national service. College is a key place to form a friend network, but not everyone gets to go. National Service means largely: * Giving people guns and teaching them to kill * Teaching people to blindly follow orders barked at them by an authority figure * Enormous potential for mental health problems, including bullying, abuse and suicide * Wasting 4 productive years of someones life I'm pretty certain national service is a Bad Idea™ > We built a social infrastructure that encourages a sedentary, solitary life. No. Pro-exercise propaganda has been extremely strong for longer than you've been alive. Large parts of the economy is focused on exercise and health, and it is accessible to everyone. But it sure feels better to think that every problem is "society's fault". That's the easiest and cheapest cop-out. Just takes a few seconds to type on the keyboard, instead of doing something. Sure, but what about the people who don't do this? Those who sit at home all day, scrolling away, drinking themselves to death, wondering why life is so lonely. The only time you ever see such people is when they're walking to the grocery store. How do you reach out to them to let them know about these ideas or encourage them to try it? Especially when they're filled with discouraging thoughts? What if all they need is one single person to say hi? How can I find them, reach them? This is what I'm asking. I've reviewed this and your other comments on the thread, and I think you're making a mistake, believing that to solve the loneliness epidemic, you primarily need to "reach people." As long as leaving the house and making real contact is harder (requires more self discipline) than staying in and scrolling, all you can do is project a message to folks at home, like "hi, you're not alone in feeling lonely," but you haven't solved the fundamental problem: it's harder to do the right thing than it is to do the wrong thing. To solve the loneliness epidemic, you have to make the right thing easier than the wrong thing. "Reaching out" to more people will not accomplish that. Elsewhere in this thread, you've rejected the idea of pursuing a public policy, but policy is the only answer anyone's provided in this thread that could make that happen. (Now, it turns out that you'll have to do a lot of outreach to make a public policy happen, but you'll be asking for their vote, not a regular commitment to show up weekly at a club; outreach is the right approach to that problem.) We need the Tiktoks of the world to realize their responsibility: users get addicted to the apps in order to numb their feelings of loneliness. So we'd need an intervention within these apps that makes them unbearable for the lonely, combined with a healthier way to engage with loneliness. Imagine TikTok asking you "you've scrolled for 30 minutes. You might be in a loneliness spiral. Write down the name of someone you would like to be closer to." TikTok does in fact remind you, quite often, that you've been scrolling for a while, and suggests taking a break. Last year, for most of each day, I would just ignore this and keep scrolling. I'd see it so many times each day. That wouldn't change if they added a suggestion like writing a name down. I'd still ignore it, and I think most people in the same situation would too. But when I was at the store, or walking to the store, that's when someone could have found a way in, and been able to get me to make a connection and open up. Sure, in the same way gambling companies tell you to "Gamble responsibly" at the end of their advert to get you to gamble more. Imo short form video with infinite scrolling is straight up poison and it's impossible to resolve without just completely destroying it. Or hear me out, puts you in video call with someone watching the same short as you. Involuntary friend If you're willing to put in the legwork, set up a event on your events platform of choice, take out an ad targeted locally and emphasize that it's free, and someone like me would sign up. I occasionally get ads for things happening locally but it's usually has some prepay component and feels like they are "dropshipping" an event. There are also [city] events pages on IG/fb > What if all they need is one single person to say hi? Then say 'hi'. By definition they're not going to seek you out nor are they going to be findable so you're only option is to say hi to everyone and hope one sticks. edit: heh i hope you're not talking about me, i walk to the grocery store regularly by myself. It's how a take a break from work and get some exercise. i'm fine :) That's my point. How can I tell the difference? One of my ideas was legitimately to just hold a giant sign that just says "hi" I had this idea a few months ago, but never wanted to waste a whole Sunday on it. Maybe I should. To me that seems like not saying hi, rather a device to shift the risk of engaging off of you. Don't be scared. Just say a few banal words to people you don't know every day and gauge their reaction, start a conversation if you like and they seem to be up for it. You just have to become the most friendly ultimate host in the world. Start up random conversations with those people at the grocery store or on the street and invite them to your bbq you are having this weekend. But ultimately, if a man is sitting in his kitchen and its on fire. Its up to him to run out. No amount of reaching out will help until he decides to make the change. this is one reason, while i personally work from home, i actually lament that many 20-somethings will never be in an office i'm nearing 40, have a wife and kid, house in the mountains, etc... but, damn, those office days were foundational to the person I am today While this is true, it's worth mentioning that a regular coffee machine small talk in the office is not building any relationships. At least that's how I experience it. It can start one, but won't automatically make one. I can go for a coffee and routinely get dragged into 30 min conversation about politics, or cars, or weather, or any other subject I literally don't care about. All the good relationships begin with finding a niche topic between 2 people. YMMV I guess. I've got tons of friends I've made walking around the office and just dropping in and asking people what they're working on and introducing myself, or sitting at a table with people I didn't. Some are no more than acquaintances, but some are close friends now. Do you put any effort in steering the discussion towards something you care about? A discussion that started about the newest model of some car, ended up with that person fixing my boat's outboard motor. It doesn't have to be an office - young people just need to get out and engage with the world in whatever way works for them. I tell this to my teenagers all the time. They are used to our nice house in the woods, 10 minutes outside of town, where their old parents work remotely and relax at home. But I remind them that this is a good place for our old age, not their youth. I spent my 20s exploring the world, climbing mountains, meeting new people, making mistakes, learning, and growing. They would be happier if they likewise got out and explored... hopefully with fewer mistakes. But there is far more to the world than offices, so while I agree 100% with the sentiment, I'd broaden those horizons. Oh absolutely... I just look at the office as a "forced" version of what you said. Totally agree it's way more than just the office For sure. I would have been in real trouble if covid had happened when I was 20. The few times I tried to work remotely it took a matter of just a few days to go stir crazy. The office was a good environment for me (it helped that it was legitimately a good environment with good coworkers, not everyone has that). As a family man with a wife, two kids, two cats, and a dog ... working from home is no big deal for me now. I prefer it. I got lucky that we did not get forced into this until I was in a position to handle it well. Ha, I could have written this comment word for word myself. Sometimes when I think back to the good times at the office, I wonder if I miss being in the office, or if I just miss being young and full of energy. Either way, I agree it's a shame for any young people today that won't get that experience. They were among my fondest times. I agree with this take. I'm definitely not friends with everyone I've worked with in person, but some of the most meaningful post-college friendships were formed by socializing with the people in the office (or people I met through socializing with office friends). Yep, I met my wife at an office party - she didn't work for the company, just stopped by with someone who did And not just the office friends that come from it -- I spent an hour a day on the bus, grabbed lunch around town, was downtown when work wrapped up and ended up at a nearby bar/restaurant, went to shows because I was downtown, etc. Just being forced out of the house led to SO MUCH MORE. Now I work from home and while we do travel a lot, we barely ever leave the house when we're home. We didn't make a single new friend for like 5 years (and we are a VERY social couple, generally the center of most of our friend groups). We've only just now started making new friends again now that our daughter is a toddler and getting us out of the house -- and it is incredibly refreshing Seems like someone else (your employer, or your daughter) is controlling your willingness to socialize. It doesn't have to be this way. It's not just willingness, as the OP mentions, being forced out of the house lots of things happen, some of them social. Having everything in the house, from work to shopping to entertainment is a convenience that could even save you some money, but it has a cost down the line. Yeah I'm very willing to socialize and actually do far more than pretty much anyone I know, even those without kids (but maybe not as much as a 25 year old just getting started in the world and living in SF like I once was). I'm lucky in that regard I guess. I'm not friends with anyone but still it's better to spend some of the day around people versus all of the day alone. This as well. You need to learn to talk to people, socialize, handle adversity, etc. Sitting at home and your only real connection to the outside world being an echo chamber like facebook or whatever cannot be good for us Absolutely, I agree. Some of the people I had the sharpest debates with and didn't always agree with had way more impact on who I am today than the softer acquaintances. Most of them definitely made me a better person in the end, even if we weren't really "friends". And yeah, even just having the basic daily connections can be a dopamine hit. This movie based on the work of Robert Putnam is an essential backgrounder on the topic. Yet, if you're concerned about Gen Z, 2-4 are aspirational at best. Churches, clubs, live music events, and every other group my son attends have a lot of people who are 35+ and children that tag along but the 18-30 demo is almost absolutely absent at events away from the local colleges and universities. [1] It's quite depressing for someone his age who is looking to connect with his cohort in person. Leaders of groups are somewhere between outright hostile, completely indifferent, or well-meaning but unable to do anything about the "cold start" problem. I'm sympathetic to the argument of Ancient Wisdom Tradition (AWT) practitioners that secularism is to blame, but my consistent advice to anyone is you can control what you can control and that secularism would not have encroached as much as it has if AWT organizations weren't asleep at the switch if not doing the devil's work for him. Personally in the last year I've found a lot of meaning being an event photographer for this group https://fingerlakesrunners.org/ where I know you can find some people in the 18-30 hole because I read their age off their bibs. My son is doing all the ordinary things and I am supporting him in all the ordinary ways but I do believe extraordinary times require extraordinary methods. I can't advise that anyone follow my path but I felt a calling to shamanism two years ago which recently became real, I "go out" as https://mastodon.social/@UP8/115901190470904729 who is a "kidult" and who embodies [2] the wisdom, calm and presence of a 1000-year old fox who's earned his nine tails. In one of the worlds I inhabit I'd call this a "platform" for gathering information and making interventions as it builds rapport and bypasses barriers and the social isolation of Gen Z is my top priority for activism in my circle of influence. [1] ... and our data there seems to indicates that Asian students seem to be OK and white kids, if they do anything at all, drink. [2] ... at least aspires to While I have no doubt that this is a liberating practice for you, for anyone else reading, you can also actually become a real shaman in pretty much any shamanic tradition, and I know many people who who have done that. This is, in fact, an excellent way to fill your life with meaning and connection if it's something you're called to. >I felt a calling to shamanism ... I "go out" as ... a "kidult" who embodies the wisdom, calm and presence of a 1000-year old fox What the fuck, Paul? Are you doing this ironically to mess with people? Somebody check this guy's hdd. A somewhat cynical response given the frequency of this topic/question being posted here and on other social media platforms. Add a weak "/s but not really" if you want: People sitting at home living on apps and watching TV who decide to go to a new group social event to change things up will struggle to make a connection with someone else who was at home on an app and watching TV deciding to get out and meet someone else. The people who have friends.. already have friends. Those who don't are numerous social cycle iterations in on that. And how long before those people just end up talking about TV shows anyway? > who decide to go to a new group social event to change things up will struggle to make a connection with someone else I can't imagine going to a general "group social event" like a party and making a connection. I'd end up just sitting there being bored until I left. I don't have the personality to just strike up a conversation about nothing with some one I don't know. But I do somewhat often go to events that revolve around my hobbies. There, I already have a connection with the strangers, through the hobby, and I have something to talk about or listen to. I've met plenty of new friends that way. Nonsense. It's fine to be boring, and to have boring friends. This expectation that you need to be travel influencer or a deep philosopher in order to have anything to talk about is an artifact of social media. I'm old enough to remember what socialization was like pre-Internet. And by curated social media standards, it was really boring. It was also great. My post wasn't about socializing, it was in the context of the "loneliness epidemic" as a social topic construct. I mean, if you've already convinced yourself that you'll have a bad time and no one will like you...that's what they call a self-fulfilling prophesy. It's fine to feel intimidated or shy, but then find something else that does feel manageable. It's something you can get better with by practicing. And I say that as an introvert who went semi-feral after Covid lol. Join a religious organization to fight loneliness is like start smoking to loose weight. Yeah I thought that was weird, along with joining ethnic organizations. I don't really need to explain the religion thing, but ethnic organizations are weird since you are forming an identity based on your unchoosable parent's DNA. I've seen both used by leaders to weaponize their members at their members detriment. Although, if you are doing politics, I can see this being pragmatically useful. It's weird to think that ethnic organisations are weird when it's the most natural social group you can form. You are literally genetically similar to these people. You have a shared history, culture, etc. In a biological sense, you have an innate interest in each other's prosperity (at least, moreso than you would an ethnically-distant stranger). You're taking your "anti-racism" to the point where it is unnatural, absurd, and alienating. People inherently want community with their kin but you are telling them that they are wrong for pursuing it. Telling people to bond over traits they can't choose seems like an excellent way to isolate people with rare traits they can't choose. I have more in common with a factory worker in China than I do with the president of my own country, even if we happen to share the same skin tone. I am defined by my experiences, after all, not things like genetics, culture or history. it also doesn't even fight loneliness. Loneliness isn't solved by merely not being physically alone. I grew up in a Catholic environment but because I bought exactly none of it the religious environments were exactly where I felt most isolated. You're not solving loneliness by joining a cult or a gang. You can only deal with it by making authentic connections to people you actually want to be with. Countless of people are lonely and miserable within families. I agree, unless faith actually means something to you, forcing yourself to go to church won’t help. Sitting through Mass miserable, disbelieving, and avoiding everyone defeats the whole purpose. Churches get brought up a lot because they regularly gather people (weekly or even daily) and offer events, volunteer opportunities, and so on. The point is to find an activity you like, with a specific group of people and consistently attend. P.S As a fellow Catholic, I’m really sorry you went through such an isolating experience. I hope things feel much better for you now I think what makes this good advice especially difficult is that it cannot be one-sided. When everyone is letting doom-scrolling replace their social interaction, then one person won't easily solve their own problem by going out to socialize. We need a broader solution, probably a cultural shift away from using technology as a crutch to avoid other people. Maybe the current younger generations will evolve a balance. Yes, for years now I’ve had this creeping feeling that it’s a social version of the prisoners dilemma: if you’re the only one that puts down the phone (or gets off social media, etc) then you’re just left behind. It’s a coordination problem. I think that there are a lot of people that are kind of waiting for other people to pitch something to do. Maybe you want to call them type A and B, leader and follower, I think of it as the Host and Attendees. The more of the Hosts the more things that will be happening, so trying to become a Host is just creates more opportunities. Agreed. I'm not sure how it happened, but it feels like we've experienced a societal shift where a large number of people now expect and wait for other people to create nicely packaged solutions to their (real or imagined) problems. From social apps to medicine to play dates to curated vacations, too many people are unwilling to face "the great unknown" that is just going out and seeing what happens, warts and all. Somehow the ability of boomers to make conversation with strangers has become a meme instead of a norm - they're good at it because they practice it. I want to do this "grow at least 2 roots into your community" idea but a huge challenge for me is simply that I'm 2nd shift. That naturally leads to a lot more isolation than 1st shift. (3rd shifties, my heart goes out to you. I've done that job. Not a fun time personally.) I always tell people to find a meetup group and then you will run into people with similar interests. I’ve made some good friends that way. > 1. People need to make a point to talk to their neighbors There are people who find this satisfying. However, you don't typically choose your neighbors. Don't be afraid to eschew spending time on this in favor of groups you deliberately choose based on common interests. You might not choose your neighbors but, like your family, they're a part of your life anyway. You can choose to build bonds with them (rely on them to water plants, pick up packages, borrow spices) or create your own little world. You can also find these things elsewhere—I know someone whose dry cleaner cat sits for her—but your relationship with your neighbors can still really affect your life. The world could use a lot more of learning to like, or even love, the people you didn't choose. That's how it was forever. Now it's not, and we're talking about a loneliness epidemic. I don't think those things are unrelated. The people who enjoy doing that should absolutely feel free to do so. My comment was addressed at people who don't, to remind people that it's okay to not, and to choose to spend your time in other ways instead. You missed the point of my comment. My comment was saying that the people who _don't_ should learn how to do so. It's a skill like any others, and what you're proposing contributes to people being lonely. Instead of making connections with people around them, who they didn't choose, they hold out for some platonic ideal of a friend who they have the right amount of things in common with. You see it in this comment section where you've got people shooting down every idea that people put out there. Oh, I can't go to the gym, I don't like working out. Oh, I don't want to join clubs because they don't have my interests. But I also don't want to be lonely, so I guess I'm just stuck. No, I understood the point perfectly, I just think it's completely wrong. It's always possible to find people. If someone is shooting down every idea for doing so, they may have issues with motivation, or being defeatist, or any number of things. Those need solving. That doesn't mean finding perfection. It does mean actively doing something to find people you enjoy spending time with. Life gets immensely happier when you spend time primarily with people you find fulfilling. You can absolutely make a conversation work with anyone, it's absolutely a skill, and it can be useful. But you will in your life have a certain amount of time and energy to interact with people. Spend it well. 1. fair
2. did this but they are all 80+
3. ok
4. not that good at anything, too old for most groups. gym no one talks with anyone. bjj was the best for this, since its more older and mostly men
5. remote work ruined my mental health As far as 2 goes: As far as churches go. The type of church matters a lot. If you go to a Universalist Unitarian, or progressive Lutheran Church, yeah itll probably be 80+. Evangelical/Baptist, Latter Day Saints, Orthodox, Catholic (more traditional parishes) all are significantly younger. The more conservative the denomination the younger the congregation. The more liberal, the older they are. With conservative/liberal being adherence to scripture. This also tracks to Judaism, with Reformed Synagogues being much older than Orthodox. I am not sure and haven't seen numbers of Islam, Buddhism, etc. i the US. For 4: You don't really have to be good for like a rec league kickball, or beer league golf. Gyms are better if youre doing classes though I think, like BJJ or wrestling. > The more liberal, the older they are. With conservative/liberal being adherence to scripture... The more liberal, the older they are. With conservative/liberal being adherence to scripture. And yet many young Evangelicals have deconstructed and dropped out of those conservative congregations over the last 20 years or so. They couldn't bridge the cognitive gap between the conservative political stance of their church and what they read in the bible. > "Oh yeah, I have a bunch of friends at the gym." Their definition of "a friend" can wildly vary from yours. Especially if such relationship is cultivated only at the gym. I'd hardly call it "friendship". on the other hand, having people you see regularly and exchange pleasantries with can change gymming from a lonely to a sociable experience. Remote work has allowed me to build the structure I need to function and perform at a high level. I have severe ADHD and do not fit well into conventional office environments, not because I lack capability, but because my work is most effective when done on my own terms and schedule. I've worked remotely on and off for most of my life (I grew up on a farm, so "working from home" was already quite natural to me.) This is also colored a little by the fact that remote work is no longer really just an optional for me. Due to a spinal cord injury, I need flexibility to manage just ongoing existence, rehabilitation, and frequent medical appointments. An in-office role simply isn’t compatible with those realities, though the most recent surgeries do make it more viable than it was even twelve months ago. I’m fortunate to work for a remote organisation that recognises this arrangement as mutually beneficial: I’m able to do my best work, and they get the full value of my expertise. With all of that being said, I know people whom are far more aligned with you. Remote work is not particuarly beneficial for them, they indeed need an externally inforced structure and so would be best (and happiest) in office. I would never tell them otherwise and nor would they do the same to me. I am thankful for the most part that many (though not all) of us somewhat have the ability to work in the way in which is best for us (and those employing us.) > Sitting home on an app, watching TV is easy. ...there is also no reward. Like hell there isn't. Speak for yourself. > 2. Join a religious organization. Go to church, but also join the mens/womens group, join a bible studies class. Attend every week. So no atheists then? The great thing about the comment you're replying to is that it has a list of suggestions. So you've got two options: you can get angry that one of them doesn't cater to you, or you could skip that one and look at the others that do. I'd say particularly if you're an atheist. I've always been atheist, but fascinated by churches and religions regardless, because no matter what you believe, it's hard to refuse the proof that the ideas themselves are powerful and helps people a lot of the times. Why is that? Best way to find out is to talk and engage with those who have these different ideas, probably where they are the most comfortable. Doesn't mean you need to forget all the horrible impact it has had too, and how much better humanity would probably be without it, or even continue thinking about ideas how we could finally get rid of it once and for all, without violence. Also, probably different in different parts of the world, but in many places churches are just purely architecturally/visually beautiful and historically interesting buildings. Some of them have really interesting acoustics too, and organs. Many interesting stuff at churches :) Surprised to see this comment strike a nerve with the HN crowd. That was my first thought as well. Religious organizations? No thanks. If you agree with the entire comment, except just that line, do you upvote or not? I think maybe that's why :) If that line was the only thing in the comment, the reaction would probably have been different. Well that’s part of the problem. secularism didn’t make an alternative. It's not even just an atheist issue. You have to have spiritual beliefs that value the specific repetitive church rituals so as not to be bored out of your mind. Join a hackerspace I suppose. Technology is a religion anyway. I always said science is kind of like a religion in a way. Wonder if that's closer or further from some truth than "technology". Interesting perspective nonetheless. Sounds like a lot of work. Isn't there an app where I can just order a temporary friend for a few hours. Uber Friend. > Isn't there an app where I can just order a temporary friend for a few hours there's two. Only Fans and making an appointment with a therapist (basically a professional listener/friend educated in helping you help yourself). It was just a couple of months ago where I found myself complaining that we shouldn't have to pay exorbitant amounts of money for friendship. Last time I went to a bar a pretty woman and her friends decided to sit next to me only after I closed my tab and was getting an Uber to go back home. She seemed super nervous just sitting next to me and I assumed that if I butted into their conversation I'd get ignored like last time. I'm working on a decentralized open source Meetup alternative where people can find social events and meet new friends. https://codeberg.org/createthirdplaces I see this as quite a problem in the US. The default place a lonely person has to go is usually a church - where you can expect a modicum, possibly even a seeming profusion, of welcome. This is their hook. They provide automatic acceptance - of sorts. This is also how the right wing fascist regime convinced people to let Trump take over the country - propaganda through the churches. The only other options people hear about are 'join a club.' Interesting clubs aren't that easy to find. Hanging out at the local pub has obvious downsides, though I guess it sorta works in some countries. We need more ways for people to casually meet others that aren't trying to manipulate you or program you with religious doctrine... > where you can expect a modicum, possibly even a seeming profusion, of welcome. This is their hook. Do you think that, possibly, they're really just happy to see you? It's called "Love Bombing" and it's almost always a precursor to abuse and/or exploitation. Love Bombing can be a real thing. Being kind and welcoming to others is not it. We don't need to pathologize completely normal, and healthy, behaviours. Sure, the way cult members are happy to greet new recruits. It's very insincere. If you have a real issue and you want to talk to someone - you are very likely to hear something like: "Well, pray to Jesus dear, only he can help you." In other words, if you actually need any support - go home and pray about it - don't expect real connection with people. The only connection comes through the imaginary friends they encourage you to divert all your attention and problems to... I think part of the problem is the stuff you’re suggesting. I think everyday life needs to happen organically and if everything is scheduled and regimented and needs to be planned for, it’s very hard for the vast majority of people to actually accomplish. In the past the way, this worked was you went to church which was societally and peer enforced. People need to have marriages that last a lifetime. It’s my opinion that marriages that are a partnership without any sort of hierarchy like we had in the past are essentially doomed to fail except in a small percentage of cases. You need to have kids with stable homes that can go out on the street and be outside all day without fear of crime. Extended families need to live close to each other so there are a lot of folks raising kids and approaching life’s every day problems together. You need to shut off indoor sources of entertainment like social media and video gaming. You need to have a solid education system that is factual and science based, and only lets kids get through on the basis of meritocracy so they can be good informed citizens, and not vote for populist nonsense like we currently have. In a nutshell, what I’m trying to say is people cannot act on what’s best for them but society can put enough peer pressure on everyone for everyone’s good. This might be very hard to listen to in an individualistic society like ours and I don’t even know if I would want to live in this society, but I believe that if that’s the only option, everyone is better off. The causes are deeply structural. It won't be solved any time soon. We're talking about the fundamental organization of modern society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loneliness_epidemic#Causes_of_... In the past, whenever I felt lonely and hopeless, I jumped into helping others: volunteering, helping an old neighbor garden, help someone move, etc. Helping people gave me a short-term purpose, which eventually let me ride out the low phase of life. YMMV, of course. I have noticed that doing the sign leads to some good conversations in which I've helped someone in a small way, and that gave me a nice little dopamine boost. It's also led to about half a dozen genuine friendships over the past few months. I wonder if that's the answer, a sort of meta-solution: organizing this thing I'm doing into something that other people in the same situation can do, as a way of meeting people and getting outside their comfort zone. Like setting up a chess table in public if chess is your thing. But no, there are already public chess tables, and they'd have already done that. I don't know, just thinking out loud. One key is to keep doing it for awhile - the first day with your sign, you were someone on the road. The eighth time someone sees you? You're the guy with the sign. Routine and familiarity is important, and it's very easy to fall into situations where we don't see anyone in our routine so we can't become familiar. This is my go-to strategy as well. When I feel irrepressible bits of loneliness or depression, I just make some food and go out and start handing out to the needy. Or go for a walk and find people that need a hand. People moving, lifting things, carrying things. Small little acts of being useful and helpful for a moment help. The feeling will creep back in eventually, but at least for that time I was out and about, it's not. I felt lonely most of my life. Social anxiety didn't help. Therapy did. Now I build a life focused on that very much. I go to work at wework, talk to people *everywhere*, joined a bunch of run clubs and just prioritize social stuff. If I don't ask people, walk up to them and say hi, nothing's gonna happen. Reach out to people, say hi, do stuff. Loneliness correlates with low agency I think. Say yes to stuff. Ask people to join for coworking, for going to the gym, a run. Whatever. Go out of your way to increase your social circle. That simple. And get off your fucking screen and go outside, touch some grass. The internet doesn't help. Something I've noticed with me and other gen-Zers is that meeting with friends or strangers over Discord VoIP is a great way to socialize. It's missing some of the social benefits of in-person meetups, but it's very low-commitment (just hope on a call) and it's much easier to find others who share your interests. I don't think there's a single fix, but small design changes matter: more third places that don't revolve around consumption, work schedules that allow for regular community life, activities where showing up quietly is acceptable. Loneliness isn't just about lack of friends, it's about lack of belonging The first place to look is suburban development. I wrote an article[0] on Tiny Neighborhoods (aka “Cohousing”) that starts with: > “I often wonder if the standard approach to housing is the best we can do. About 70% of Americans live in a suburb, which means that this design pattern affects our lives – where we shop, how we eat, who we know – more than any other part of modern life.” We have been so uncritical of the set of ideas that make suburbia—single family homes, one car per adult, large private yards—even though these play a big role in how people act. Some people want to address loneliness by making incremental changes. But if the statistics are right and nearly everyone is somewhat lonely, we should expect that the required adjustments feel “drastic” compared to the current norm. People would be less lonely if they could live in a community of 15-20 families with (1) shared space and (2) shared expectations for working together on their shared space. I posted on another subthread but I think this is largely an excuse. If you live in a typical suburb you have 15-20 families on your street. You can easily walk next door and chat or just say hello when you see someone outside. It takes initiative, which is the key thing that's missing. You either hide in your house or you get out and be sociable. > You can easily walk next door and chat or just say hello when you see someone outside. I have no problem with socialization and I have an unusually-active social life for a thirty-eight year old married man with three kids, so I clearly don't lack initiative. With that being said, all of my neighbors are either elderly, shut-ins, or just don't want to be bothered; even the ones with kids. My wife & I helped organize a Block Party last year and I'm fairly certain it resulted in 0 new friendships for any of the attendees. What's the solution here? Friendships need to have mutual interest, no? I think it's a circular problem. Like, my kids don't go outside much because there are no other kids outside to play with. There's no question that there are 15-20 families within 300 yards of my house. But that group of people absolutely does not have a sense of shared anything but the road. And the fact is that this is true of the supermajority of suburban streets in the United States. I don't disagree but 30 years ago the people in those kinds of neighborhoods did get out and talk to each other, did organize cookouts and other gatherings, and in general were sociable neighbors. The people changed. I live in a completely different city, a post-soviet one, with dense streets, 9-storey apartment buildings. But still it's hard to socialize. It's the same both in the center, and on the fringe with large micro-districts, where the density is the same, but people are less in haste, and there are less strangers. Same way, people are avoidant. Like in subway you pretend that others don't exist, and it's hard to get closer with people. It can take months or years to start saying hello to a kiosk salesman you recognize. It's hard to get past by hello with the house neighbors. If you make steps forward, people are unease. Sometimes others are too quick with their steps, you get unease. The most compelling theory I know is that you need to meet people occasionally, without intention, to deepen the relationships. If all your communication with someone is intentional, I guess, this feels awkward for both sides. I can confirm this from experience: living in a 80K town, I'd walk down the main street to the little shopping mall with a local supermarket for groceries, and would meet people I knew, or friends, and sometimes we'd go walking by the streets, with groceries bag in my hand :) or we planned to meet in 15 minutes. Or go to each other's home. This is hard to replicate in a big city, where even if you see a friend, he/she is usually in a hurry. Near apartment blocks, there's no porch or garden or park, and even where there is one, I don't see locals sitting there regularly. People are very cautious, even suspicious of benches, because if there's a busy street nearby, once in a year there'll be a group of noisy young people sitting late at night, or one drunkard in a year, and everyone will get pissed off and want the bench removed. (If they allow to install it at all.) Looking at some places, I theorized that maybe there should be a place where you could sit and let's say play board games _near_ those who come in and out. And of course, it should be indoors, because winters are long and cold. But But I'm not sure of a communal place indoors either. It could become a magnet for homeless, it can be a magnet for just the slacker drinking old men, and repel the rest of people. I've seen too many communities become place repulsive for "normies". Maintenance is a big question too. Since it's a societal problem, but solved on the microlevel of one person at a time, it seems the way to have a broader effect is to show the value of having connection with other people over the value of not. Overcome any addictions (scrolling, gaming, etc.) that stand in the way would be easier if the goal was clear. Overcoming attitudes and defensive beliefs (too many cliques, they won't talk to me...) go away when you can either recall a time when you had friends or know others who do. Convince people it's better (in their own value system) to be social, have friends of all kinds, and let them know their value and meaning increase by being a friend, I think you'd have a hard time stopping people from becoming social. Keep in mind that the answer to this question is likely multifaceted. That is, there isn't going to be one killer policy or app or attitude or event which will solve this problem, but it would require a multi-pronged approach. I’ve always been someone who likes to go to local coffee shops, shops, and walks around the neighborhood. While I’ve met a few friendly employees who learn my name and say hi to me, in general I’ve found customers and people in general aren’t super approachable. They’re usually there as a part of an existing group of friends, or are focused on their work. I’m not saying it’s impossible to meet people in this situation, but it is difficult to break the ice. Especially if your social skills are rusty. On a larger scale, I think most people’s budget for anonymous social interaction is consumed through social media, where they scroll past strangers arguing and let’s be honest, mostly vitriolic comments. So in the real world, they don’t want to deal with anonymous strangers and intently focus on their own friendships. Groups are a good way to bridge this gap, but the groups that are easier to host aren’t always accessible to everyone. And they require a lot of time and ideally strong social skills to run effectively. I’ve thought about starting a campaign to make socializing with people in person more of a common practice again, but I’m honestly not sure how to convince enough people there isn't a loneliness epidemic. There is a diffuse inability to stay truly alone. Acquiring that ability would also teach how to not stay alone when needed. Otherwise, people wouldn't resort to social media. Going to party aimlessly and hanging out isn't necessarily better. It depends on who you hang out with and what you do. This is just my opinion, of course. You need both. My sense is that only a minority of people are hardwired to preferably live as hermits. And whilst it's an important life skill to be happy alone, everyone has their breaking point, it's no coincidence that one of the best predictors of longevity is how rich ones social life is. I'll add another suggestion: be more forgiving. Anecdote: I had a friend in SF. He and I would hang out once in a while, and I always looked forward to these hangouts (we'd meet up for coffee, or go for a walk, hang out at Dolores Park, etc.). He is gay, I'm not. His perspective on things was often quite different than mine and I found that interesting. I got married, he stayed single. Even after marriage we would still hang out (though not as often as before). Then we had a child, which sucked all spare time out of my life; but even then we hung out once in a while. Then one winter there was cold/flu/COVID going around. We planned on hanging out and I unfortunately bailed on him at the last moment. This happened 2 more times. Then that bout of illnesses passed and I reached out to him to hang out again. But this time he seemed cold and distant. So I dropped it. And I didn't see him again for almost 3 years. Then one day I ran into him while walking through Dolores Park. He didn't see me, but I hesitated and still hollered out at him, for old times' sake. He responded and walked over. We chatted a little, I gave him a parting hug and we agreed to hang out again. A couple of weeks later we managed to hang out again. What I gathered from our meeting was that he had been miffed at what he thought was me blowing him off; and I, when I felt he was cold and distant, had misread his grief at losing his cat. We both misread each other and wasted 3 years. Moral of the story that I took away from it was: be more forgiving. Friendships are worth the extra effort. Make a social app whose goal is to get people off their phone as quickly as possible. There used to be a slew of apps where you a press a button to indicate "I'm bored/free, who wants to hang out?" and then you get matched with your contact list and anyone else who pressed the button at the same time. But for whatever reason they all flamed out and died. one issue is that if you leave it to the free market, you will just get more issues. for monopolies, it's more profitable to keep someone unhealthy (and depressed) than it is to make someone healthy once forever. Privacy reasons. You don’t want a VC funded startup to know your contact list and your location (because hanging out in real life requires physical proximity). I think the solution is for the app to advertise public social events where people can make connections and exchange contact information in person. Allowing random people to message each other without meeting in person is a mistake. The nonverbal cues people get from in person interactions are helpful for discovering shared interested and personality compatibility. Personally I’m living with a partner (only 50% of the time for now), have only two social activities per month outside work in average and some small talk at work. I don’t need more and have no intention to volunteer, join church or anything like that just for the social aspect. I guess the big problem is the (growing?) minority having close to no social experiences. A young woman explained to me the other week what you're doing now. She said it's become a meme called Bean Soup. I'm grateful for all the friends I've made since I starting doing my signs. Genuinely fulfilling friendships, for the first time in my life. Sports. CrossFit and similar social sports have been healthy for me and for many others, and I think the community is at least equal to the exercise in improving people's lives. Not saying this is the only way, but it made a big difference for me and my friends. I realize the physical challenges are artificial, but so is an Advent of Code puzzle when you already have a day job. Hard things are worth doing because they're hard, and they're even better when done together with those you love. You can organize things. It's surprisingly easy. You just put up a FB event. When I was younger and moved to a new (foreign) city, The first thing I did was to create a "picnic" for people coming from my country. No agenda, no nothing, let's just hang out and have some wine, cheese and chat while sitting on the grass. You'd be surprised how successful this was, and some of them keep running regularly without me for over a decade now. The common denominator is to have shared spaces where it's expected to be among strangers' presence, and for those strangers to eventually become repeat guests in a person's life. That's the maximally comfortable scenario for inducing social behavior and it's responsible for eons of human social history. Think church. The problem there is that it's the responsibility of groups or society to arrange that. There's not much that a single lonely person can do there. The less common denominator, that an individual may partake in until society concocts a better solution, is to intentionally visit existing shared spaces even where they otherwise wouldn't (hint: bouldering gyms are good for this because there are repeat faces as well as a social okay-ness to congratulating strangers, or asking how certain challenges can be solved). Or break with convention, comfort, and perhaps etiquette, and instead just talk to people. Even outside of those spaces. (This is the advice that will piss a lot of people off if it's presented as their only option.) This advice is horrible until it isn't. It does, with enough practice, 'just work'. --- For an entrepreneur or organizer: it would just go a long way to think about things in terms of allowing conversation to happen unimpeded. Pay attention to where people talk, and about what. Conversations happen a lot in hallways but famously by water coolers, perhaps because it affords people enough time in a shared space to muster the internal capital to start a conversation. In college I ran a forum for people to meet others and some of the most self-reportedly successful participants just asked questions into the void and were surprised by the number of responses. >The common denominator is to have shared spaces where it's expected to be among strangers' presence, and for those strangers to eventually become repeat guests in a person's life. That's the maximally comfortable scenario for inducing social behavior and it's responsible for eons of human social history. This is spot on. It's why you meet so much people during your high school / college years. You're among strangers' presence, while attending to class, which makes a natural topic of interest between the people involved. There are, of course, multiple causes for loneliness. We can't fix them all with one clear action. Here are the main five, in my view: First, social media. It's too easy to temporarily forget about your loneliness by staying home and doomscrolling or watching TV. Second, increased mobility. People move around the whole continent now for work, removing them from their closest and oldest social connections. Third, God is dead. Churches as community centers are dying out. Young people don't trust them anymore, because they don't believe in God, and because churches had many scandals. Secular community centers are very rare and struggle with funding. Fourth, work is more stressful now. There used to be more time to socialize, but in our quest for productivity, work became denser with fewer idle times. Fifth, fewer people want to have kids. Much has been written about this. Now what can we do at societal scale? First of all, study the phenomenon more closely. Who is lonely? Who isn't? Which interventions work? Which cultural factors are important?
At your local scale, you can just call or meet a friend. > Fourth, work is more stressful now. There used to be more time to socialize, but in our quest for productivity, work became denser with fewer idle times The we here is not most people. The quest for higher productivity is not something people really care about. Start a community or join one. I have a friend that started a social community where they host discussion groups, sharing circles, art marking, picnics, field trips, cooking club, etc. The whole focus is on creating connection. I myself run an experimental games meetup where our small niche share what were working on each month. I also have a book club each week with some friends (although we chat more about life than books). I think 2026 is the year of community. Make an intentional effort. Show up in the same space repeatedly. Friendship is hard and requires a lot of energy, and it will not always pay off. You're going to get burned, ghosted, and bailed on. It's far too easy to push the hermit-mode button, and doomscroll your life away. Social capital requires *active* participation. If you're willing to invest, put yourself out there. Be the person that kicks off the things that are interesting to you. You'll find that people are interested in things you thought were niche. As a mentor once told me: life is a body-contact sport; get out there. Spending time in parts of Latin America or western Europe or east Asia and then coming back to the US, you can see a lot of ways in which we've built loneliness into the fabric of US culture. It goes beyond car culture. It's probably illegal to build a cafe within walking distance of your neighborhood or into the first floor of your apartment complex. Americans get an idea of how bad we have it when we go on vacation, but we don't see it as something that can be built at home. > Latin America or western Europe or east Asia I can attest both LatAm and Europe are quickly turning the same way. At least in the bigger cities. Take public transport and 70% are frying their brains with their phones on algorithmic timelines, dumb mobile games, or worse. Women even more. You go to a bar and try to start a conversation and people look at you like you are a creep or a scammer. I've heard this happens to Gen Z, too. > phones on algorithmic timelines Are you suggesting that American tech helped spread this loneliness worldwide? Ultimate triumph of individualism. Public transport was never a place where you start conversation with a stranger. Nor even meant to be that space. I genuinely do not understand why would you pick public transport as a place where you would expect people to socialize. And yes, I was using public transport before cell phones. And yes, women are using public transport more then men, always were, because if the family have only one car, man is typically the one using it. Both latam and western europe report and east Asia report higher loneliness rates than the US or the Nordics. Very consistently. American culture allows you folks to talk to each other, though. Growing up British means that I literally can't talk to a stranger unless I'm in a pub and have two pints inside me. There's a loophole. All dog owners are allowed to strike up conversations with other dog owners about their dogs. That's only if you like dogs, I guess. > or into the first floor of your apartment complex. I wouldn't trust a cafe built into an apartment complex. I'd expect it to be low-quality, over-priced food placed specifically to try and make a quick buck off people who don't know any better or who physically can't get somewhere better. You're right that it goes beyond car culture (and zoning laws are part of car culture), but I think it also goes beyond zoning laws. A lack of a social contract between people (individually) and businesses these days is probably involved, too. All these things are interrelated. I’m literally surrounded by these shops, as is anyone in any town that doesn’t depend on suburbia. It’s *wonderful* and the prices are good. I’m eating a whole dinner for about $10 tonight, out. Easily like 1300 calories of very delicious food. In the PNW. You're "literally surrounded" by cafes built into the first floor of your apartment complex? Because that's what I was very clearly talking about. Not shops within walking distance. (I didn't ask and don't care if you think your cheap meal's "very delicious," by the way. That's not the main indicator of quality. Many Americans would call a Big Mac "very delicious.") Well, let’s see, in this building - an apartment complex, there’s: Where do you live that this is so bizarre? Multi story buildings with retail space on the bottom and residential space at the top are very common in cities. > I didn't ask and don't care if you think your cheap meal's "very delicious," by the way. That's not the main indicator of quality. Many Americans would call a Big Mac "very delicious." What’s the point of this? This is just needlessly rude. Maybe consider that the overpriced part is fine because you are paying for the time you save. There are many ways to look at things -t. not an Absurdist, but sometimes I use the tools. There's a limit to the convenience factor. Fast food used to be cheap because it was faster than real food. Now it's expensive, and less real than it was to start with. A hip no-name cafe owned by a huge conglomerate charging $17 for a microwaved sandwich or something is objectively a bad deal. Ensuring you never have to leave the comfort of your apartment complex is also of questionable relevance to solving loneliness/getting people to meet each other. > -t. not an Absurdist, but sometimes I use the tools. Did you accidentally paste part of a different comment or something? Only if it's a rare novelty. If having a cafe near by is just the norm, it isn't any more expensive. I didn't say "near by," I said "built into an apartment complex," which is one of the things the person I replied to threw out casually as an option. I've lived in places that had restaurants on the ground floor of the building and they were the same prices as anywhere else. I'm actually surprised you find this unrealistic since it's so common in Australian cities. It's pretty much standard to have retail on ground and apartments above. This is common in American cities, too. And European cities I’ve visited. And probably most cities that I haven’t visited. When I visited Tokyo one really jarring thing was to realize that restaurants and cafes and such were often on the 2nd or 3rd floor. It’s so dense and so high-rise, in some areas at least, that these “ground floor” shops are also pushed upwards and inhabit the bottom 2-3 floors instead of just the ground floor. Why is that odd? Lots of apartment buildings in big cities have the first floor (or 2) for retail. Some apartments / condos have a whole mall downstairs. As someone who was a libertarian as a child, I assure you the idea of relaxing regulations is quite unpopular. Lots of factors cause this. Obviously established businesses hate competition. There seems to be a tendency for politicians to make more laws as a bandaid rather than remove old(but this isnt universally true). And finally and probably most importantly, people like the status quo. Change is scary. Also I live in the suburbs and we have a coffee shop within 2 minutes walking. I just have a hard time paying $4 for a coffee to meet people when most people are on their laptops anyway. My friends come from sports clubs, parties, and the parents of my kids via birthday parties. > Americans get an idea of how bad we have it when we go on vacation, but we don't see it as something that can be built at home. It's so strange how this works. They go, sometimes repeatedly, to enjoy these rather basic things, but behave as though they're visiting a quaint Disneyland of sorts and as though there could be no lessons they could take away and apply toward a vision of their own community... americans are too terrified of somebody getting something for free to ever tolerate that. it's okay in other countries, because other countries are deserving of charity, and the americans who travel to them have implicitly passed the wealth test by affording to travel there. but back home in america, any nice thing in a public space might be an un-earned benefit to an american citizen who is slightly less rich. and we can't have that. if an American wants an amenity, they sould pay for it. parks, benches, pathways, any sort of gathering space, it all can't be had because it might attract poor people. I doubt it's the solution, but a silly program I want to build is something like this: - Give users a modern Tamagotchi - Give the digital pet a need to socialize. - Strap a basic LLM to it so users can talk to their pet. - Have the pet imprint on its owner through repeated socialization. - Owner goes to bed, pet still has social needs, goes out into the digital world to find other pets. - Pet talks to other pets while you're asleep, evaluates interactions, befriend those with good interactions. - Owner wakes up the next morning, checks their pet, learns it befriended other pets based on shared interests, and is given an opportunity to connect with their pet's friends' owners. Ideally these connections have a better-than-random chance of succeeding since you're matched via shared interests. I'm sure there's a ton of unsexy technical reasons this is hard to make work well in practice... but dang, I think it would be so cool if it worked well. I realize this exacerbates the issue in some ways - promoting online-first interactions. But, I dunno. I'll take what I can get these days, lol. A thought-provoking vision. There seem many many underexplored opportunities for catalyzing social connections - match making. When I'm doing "broad and shallow" at a meetup, there are invariably "oh, you'll want to talk with X over there, they <overlap on some intent interest>". It can feel tragic to look out at a room of nifty people, in largely desultory conversations, knowing that there are some highly-valued conversations latent there, which won't occur, because our social and cultural and technical collaborative infrastructure still sucks so badly at all this. In lectures augmented by peer-instruction, addressing the "if you think your lectures are working, your assessment also isn't" problem, one version has students clicker-committing to a question answer, then turning to discuss it with a neighbor, then clickering again. One variant (which you now many not be able to use commercially, because of the failed-startup-to-bigco patent pipeline), has the system chose who everyone turns to (your phone tells you "discuss with the person behind left"), attempting to maximize discussion fruitfulness, using its insight into who is confused about what. So perhaps imagine Tamagotchis as part social liaison - "hey, did you know the gal at the optometry shop here also enjoys heavy bluewater sailing?" So on the topic question: Want to incentivize greater social contact...? Increase the payoffs. It kind of sounds like you want to automate small talk. I think we need to have less tech, not more, if we're trying to solve this problem. I could see how it could be interpreted that way! In my mind, it's more like meeting new acquaintances at the dog park. Dogs start playing with each other and getting along and you end up chatting with the other dog's owner while watching the dogs play together. Trying to recreate those vibes with digital pets. It's the phones dude. It's literally just the phones. Get rid of the phones and you fix it. Old geezer take: If you're referring to smart phones - social engagement in the US was already headed down 5 decades before those were invented. I blame TV. Indeed, TV enabled millions of people to laugh at the same joke simultaneously, each sitting alone on their own sofa. No one is asking for this advice, but I'm sharing it anyways. My #1 top priority this year is _social health_. I'm taking it into my own hands. Mostly just continuing things I'm already doing with tremendous payoff. My measurable result is going to be throwing my own birthday party in fall. I've never done that before, I've never had enough friends in my city! No one group or app is going to come save you from loneliness. You have to get up, go outside, and find people. 0. Say yes to everything, at least if you're new in town. Don't care how scared you are of X social situation. "Do it scared" - @jxnl 1. I am part of my community's swing dancing scene. I take classes, go to social dances, I _show up_ even when I don't feel like it. People recognize me now, know my name, etc. I'm also a regular at my gym. Find a place and be a regular face there. (_how did I become a swing dancer? I got invited, and my social policy prevented me from saying no!_) 2. If I have no social plans for a week I do a timeleft dinner (dinner with 5 strangers). Always have something on the books. I call this my "social workout". If I vibe with anyone I ask if they want to grab ramen the following weekend. Leads me to point #3.. 3. Initiate plans. Everyone is waiting for that text "hey, want to go do x with me?". Be that person. I have an almost 100% enthusiastic response rate to asking people to do literally anything. Go on a random walk? Go to costco? Go checkout ramen or pizza spot? You don't have to think of anything special. Whatever you're already doing.. ask someone to come with! Soon they start inviting you to do random stuff. 4. (experimental) I don't drink, which does curtail my social opportunities. I'm considering updating my drinking policy this year. My hypothesis is that the benefits of having a strong community out-weigh the health benefits of abstinence. When you have large, strong, healthy families, these tend to be hubs for others. They can serve as warm hubs for others to gather around. When these are gone, loneliness epidemics follow. It cannot be solved, at least not in the way I think people want it to be. We’re lonely because we are wired to avoid rejection and uncomfortable social situations, and because technology has given us hundreds of alternatives to sitting in the mess of connecting with people. You can only solve it in your own life - by being courageous and spending more of your time in the physical world than in the digital one, willing to gro through the shitty feelings that come with being a human trying to meet other humans. You cannot solve it for other people. There’s no sexy solution here. Meetup.com or whatever dating app or tech platform or not for profit will not fix it, because it takes individuals choosing the hard path and that will never happen en masse. I don't think this will ever be resolved. It's a twofold problem, I believe. People are lonely because of fear of rejection and also actively avoid new people out of caution and high standards. So two people who are otherwise lonely will make no effort to connect. I think social networks have done a tremendous amount of damage to our collective psyche. Because on the web, you can single-click permanently block someone and never see them again. If you are admin of a group this person is in, you can also ban this person and prevent them from interacting with members of the group (in the group, that is, you cannot control private messages, but by banning someone from a community you are effectively isolating them), and I think we haven't considered how much power we are giving to random Reddit mods due to this. I do believe high standards are behind a lot of the dating issues. Dating pools are so large that people hold out for the right combination of the things they find desirable--except they're never going to find that because they don't have exactly the right combination to attract that "perfect" match. I can't help but think that in 1910, both the concept of "fear of rejection" and "high standards" would have made no sense to people at the time. Yet I would agree that they are valid concepts today. We have to explore why these two concepts exist and why they did not exist in 1910. It seems valid to call them side effects of something bigger, what the bigger is I don't know. I don't see how society can address these two issues without addressing the other issues that lead to the existence of these. I'm not sure why you believe that "high standards" and "fear of rejection" didn't exist a hundred years ago. Think Gatsby, from the Great Gatsby (published 1925): dude longed for human connection (hence throwing massive parties), but was terrified of being outed as not belonging to the social strata he found himself in. That's fear of rejection. People being to good for others is basis of the class system, and that predates written history. Is that REALLY a lot of power, though? Reddit is quasi-anonymous, how "isolated" are you when you can create a different account in seconds? When I said "Reddit mods" I didn't mean literally Reddit, but the overzealous nature of full-time Internet moderators with too much free time. Regardless ban evasion is always forbidden so if you slip up or get caught because of the way you type or whatever, you will be banned again. > Regardless ban evasion is always forbidden so if you slip up pr get caught because of the way you type or whatever, you will be banned again. so you create another account? they don't even do IP bans, (er, so I hear) Reddit doesn't do hard IP bans, but they do a lot of fingerprinting to link alt accounts together and will ban them all. You can get around it but you have to be pretty careful, wiping cookies on all your devices, signing up from a new IP, never logging in to the old accounts again, etc. We need weekly activity plans to introduce multi-racial, multi-age, multi-political people to each other in palaces for the people venues. Read the book 'Palaces for the People'... Invest Billions in social infrastructure... and run the country like it was a retirement community. Everyone is welcome, everyone has value and we need to learn (with practice) how to love each other again. I wish there were more of these types of community that's designed to encourage interaction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzKSKqjEmDA The US is structured to promote loneliness. If you want to fix it: - More free public spaces (parks with benches, squares) - More free public events and activities (free concerts, art installations, plays) - Greater physical proximity (it's hard to make eye contact if everyone drives) - Wealth distribution (create a society where one's value is not based on their net worth) - Encourage days off for community service In other words, provide socially-funded incentives for people to be close to one another physically and remove income as a measure of value. Seen some of this happening in Melbourne, Australia, and it's almost suffering from too much success. Recently a free concert had to be canceled because tens of thousands of people showed up and they couldn't handle the numbers safely. Very happy to see at least something is being tried to reverse the damage from covid. Shame, Amyl and the Sniffers would've put on a hell of a show ;) I agree though, Melbourne is absolutely bursting at the seam with events, groups and activities in almost anything you could possibly be interested in. It's particularly noticeable for me coming from Sydney. I saw someone in a local FB group suggest holding a whip-cracking jam meetup in a park and it generated significant interest. The US is not lacking in public spaces, events and activities, or rec centres. The "loneliness epidemic" is a fairly modern phenomenon. Cities weren't structurally much different several decades ago, but now people choose not to leave the house, because they can amuse themselves to death there. Unionize! Unionize! Unionize! So much of the pressure comes from horrendous working conditions from top to bottom. And as a secondary effect unions require meetings and hopefully cross organising with other unions having different people in them. When we get better working conditions, we will have more time to meet other people rather than to sit exhausted with our phones having all the parasocial relationships that drain our social batteries without really connecting with a real person. In my opinion, it's entirely possible to build a social network or social media that doesn't incentivize rage but one that leads to actual friendships. I don't think internet itself is the issue, I think that the existing options just maximize outrage/drama and other negative addictive qualities rather than the slow-burn good things. There is a gap between thinking and action. I think the social media and gaming and online stimulions currently designed to bombard and drain your thinking brain, leaves nothing for the action you and your body needs to take. Your brain only has so much chemistry to trigger neural activation and we are blowing it on mental stress to the point where the body doesn’t have any more mental energy to tackle real world stress or handle real world emotions. Try an A/B test. Do days with zero screen stimuli - no TV, no phones, no online interaction. Go into the world to a cafe, or a common area with people and do stuff. See how you feel and what you feel up to. Vacations might be good and relaxing because you disconnect. Maybe do it without paying for it. Having kids (with the right partner and good intentions as a parent) is a great way to avoid feeling lonely. The kid(s) are tremendous source of connection. You may trade for a feeling of exhaustion, overwhelming responsibility, etc. but a lot less loneliness. Also go a step further and join support groups for parents. Community resources where kids play and parents can hang out and chat. Connection is built through shared experiences, and parenting is an experience you can share with other parents. Between having kids and participating in events with other parents, there will be a lot less opportunities to feel lonely. I think you’ve missed a step here. How are lonely and alone people, who have trouble finding friends, supposed to find a spouse and have kids? That's only a problem for people who want to find a spouse and have kids. You're going one step further down the "how" chain. My point had more to do with the fact that a lot of people are either undecided about kids or have decided not to have kids, and are then struggling with loneliness. Deciding you want to start a family and prioritizing it (the why) can come before the how. I'm no expert in dating, but generally in life I've learned that it's easier to get my wants satisfied if I am clear about them. "I want to start a family and find a partner who also wants to have kids" is a lot less abstract than "I want to feel less lonely". So, no, I don't think I missed a step. I just think that the best way to find a partner in parenting will depend a lot on the specific person, where they are, how old they are, what they do, etc and isn't conducive to general advice, and maybe HN is not the best place to figure it out? It’s all about fostering community again, and that’s more than just shared calendars and town events. It’s “third places” where folks can just hang out and work, play, share, and commiserate without having to pay money to do so. It’s bringing back establishments that promote lingering and loitering, like food halls or coffee shops, rather than chasing out folks. It’s about building community centers inside apartment complexes, more public green space, more venues and forums. Giving people space that doesn’t require a form of payment is the best approach, because humans will take advantage of what’s out there naturally. Sure, structure helps, but space is the issue at present I believe. > but space is the issue at present I believe. Is it? There are a number of third places around here that sit effectively vacant. The few who are passionate about seeing those spaces thrive will tell you that the problem is getting anyone to come, not finding space to host them. Ritual, purpose and community are what's required to build a group. I cured my own loneliness episode by joining a local running group. It provides the same kind of thing as church. Ritual, we meet every week and there's a few different groups. Purpose, it doesn't feel useless to be improving your fitness level. And community comes when you suffer through a run with others. Showing up regularly means you start to integrate people into your lives as you know when they skip a week for a vacation or something. I went from living in my town and not knowing anyone for 17 years to having 20+ friends or people I can say hello to and have a chat. Just find a local running group, or start one. You want the "meet at Starbucks at 6:30 on Tuesday" ones. Show up and keep showing up and you'll make friends. It's impossible to be on your phone when you run and there's always something running related to keep the conversation going. I doubt we can solve this for other people. Each person must solve it for themselves, but for most people the solution will be joining a church and attending weekly. From there, get involved with a ministry, that will lead to appreciation dinners, which will lead to getting invited to the non-religous stuff the people are involved with. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/01/31/are-relig... Make a social network that is centered around people who live in a 1 kilometer radius Make them interact and do things, generally they will be less toxic because it will reduce their online disinhibition effect. Make them have meals, meet, walk at the park, whatever. I have considered a "physical social network". Standing on my usual street corner and holding a sign that directs strangers to join me and whoever else shows up, for a casual chat at the local coffee place at a specific time, with a few topics for conversation listed on the sign up front. If anyone has ideas for those topics, let me know, I'm likely to do it this Sunday. you laugh, but bringing people back to reality might require using screens to do it Actually I am open to the idea of an (minimalistic, non-profit) app helping solve this. What kind of app, I'm not sure, but I'm open to all ideas, including technology based ones. I only said that because you reminded me of an idea I had, for a social experiment that tries to bring some "social media" elements into an in-person setting, to see what happens. (I do wish I could afford a camera and someone to man it, I've been told several times that I'd go viral.) When NextDoor first came around, I recall walking down the street to help a lady move her couch down to the ground floor. She then gave me some cookies she'd baked. Fun! The notifications it sends me these days are less enjoyable so I send them to spam because unsubscribing doesn't seem to reliably work for me. > Make a social network that is centered around people who live in a 1 kilometer radius… Don't know if they still do, but Nextdoor required address verification via a postcard early on. I was pretty shocked at what some people in my area would post under their real names and locations. (And well outside the realm of political nonsense. Someone posted a pic of their toddler's first poop in the potty.) I think the power of shame has reduced significantly in recent years. I think shame is still powerful, but in the context of Nextdoor we just don't see our neighbors very often anymore. In many cases they might as well be random people on the other side of the country. I live in a small town and I'm quite friendly with my neighbors, but I still see and talk to them relatively rarely. Civility and sense of decorum have greatly diminished in the past few decades especially online. When you have a toddler it's very surprising what becomes normal. We're potty-training our son and I sometimes get texts from my spouse with a picture of a poop in a bad spot and then just the word "help." I mean, we did that, too. But there's a bit of a gulf between a text to the spouse and posting it for 20k people you run into regularly to see. Everyone always gets the causality reversed. Social media didn't cause the epidemic, it filled a niche to help cure the epidemic. People were lonely long before the internet arrived, the internet just made it easier for those lonely people to connect to each other. And now many of them prefer the internet over socializing with people they don't care for that much in person. In other words, the problem is structural. Moving to a new city where you don't know anyone, only work with people for a few years, and where there are no longer institutions like the church, how is anybody supposed to meet anyone? Meetups? Half the people can't even afford a car. There is no solution other than meeting a lifelong partner. Yes of course people were lonely before the internet and social media, but that pushed them to go outside and solve the problem. Now they do the digital equivalent of taking drugs to make the problem go away. I think you're oversimplifying and overgeneralizing. Plenty of people remained lonely back in the day, plenty of people socialize now. It's just that now they have the option to socialize through the internet. Prior to the internet people were staying home and watching TV. The dynamic is much longer lived than you think. Check out the book 'Bowling Alone'. > how is anybody supposed to meet anyone? It used to be that you knocked on the door of the residence beside you. > And now many of them prefer the internet over socializing with people they don't care for that much in person. This is the crux of it. Your neighbours weren't ever likely to be your soulmate, but that is who was there to befriend, so you did. But now you don't have to. And since they now feel the same way, they aren't putting in the effort either. There is also the problem of familiarity. It's awkward. Traditionally you'd live around the same people your whole life. Invariably they'd feel like family and it wouldn't feel awkward to get together. But that's not how modernity works. People move to different communities all the time, so it becomes difficult to build familial friendships with others. That's the essential problem. The internet allows us to stay in touch with people who feel like family. That's what we want to do psychologically. If all those people were in the same city there'd be a lot more socializing. > People move to different communities all the time Although now considerably less than in the past. Peak mobility occurred during the mid-1900s. Most, and increasingly more as time marches forward, will stay close to where they were born. > That's the essential problem. It is a problem for individuals in that situation, but does it explain a population-wide epidemic when most never actually leave their familial roots? > If all those people were in the same city there'd be a lot more socializing. I am among those who still live near where I was born and have known a lot of the people my whole life. Color me skeptical. Nobody has the time to. They're at work all day and when that's done it is into the car to drive their kid to who knows where to play in a sporting match thinking they are going to become a professional some day. It was a little different 15-20 years ago. You used to be able to go down to the community centre on a Saturday night and the whole town would be there, ready to mingle. But it turns out the draw was really alcohol, and when police started cracking down on drunk drivers and health concern messaging started to gain attention, it all dwindled pretty quickly. It's all about priorities, and socializing just isn't a priority for most people anymore. There are so many other things also vying for attention. I agree. When I say people lived in close proximity I don't mean 'across the city' or 'the next town over', I mean that traditionally you were actually in the same physical location where socializing required essentially no travel, and you'd often have to exist in communal spaces. These days even people who are nearby are still far. That 30 minute drive both ways along with coordinating a time is a lot of extra work to add onto an already busy life. But if these same people lived on your street you could just pop over for a quick coffee. As is what actually happens. My wife and I have socialized with new friends in our neighborhood more than close family lately because they're right around us. The kicker is we built the friendships through our kids school and repeated proximity rather than artificially. I'll say the same thing that I always do. For some reason, it's not popular, hereabouts, but it's worked for me, for over 45 years. Get involved with volunteer/gratis work. Join an advocacy/charity group. Do stuff for free. HN members have really valuable skills that can make an enormous difference. Joining a volunteer organization brings together passionate, action-minded people that already share a common platform. It can also teach us a lot. My personal career was significantly helped by what I learned, doing volunteer work. Boom. Loneliness problem solved. Maybe dumb question but how does one "join a volunteer organization?" I tried a long time ago but got ghosted. Not a dumb question. Depends on the org. Many large orgs have smaller chapters locally, but there are often regionally-relevant ones. I’d start with personal passions, and work from there. It won’t really work, unless it’s something we care about. Volunteer orgs tend to be fairly disorganized, and there’s usually a lot of lively personalities. If one seems too dysfunctional, try another. Don’t just go for one. Also, it can take some time to get into the “inner circle.” Like any human society, trust takes time to build. We need to be willing to start small. Get to know the place. Figure out where we can make a difference. I’ll bet that ChatGPT would be a great source of information. Phrases like "I’d start with personal passions, and work from there" and "we need to be willing to start small" are NOT actionable, they are meaningless platitudes. Not to mention it assumes everyone has "personal passions," an the majority of people probably don't. I didn't "just go for one." I spent like a month trying to volunteer , for anyone. I was on medical leave from work at time time so I had plenty of time to give. Nobody ever got back to me or picked up the phone. It was worse than applying for a job. I have an anxiety disorder, so even reaching out caused me massive stress and anxiety. So I caused myself distress to feel more worthless than I already felt. My heart is racing and I'm on the verge of tears just typing this up. So I'll ask again, how does one "join a volunteer organization?" I am not the person that "ghosted" you, and don't think that I can give you what you want. The suggestion I gave, was in good faith, but it seems that your "question" was not. I am truly sorry that you had a bad experience, but I wasn't the one that did the nasty. Have a great day! >The suggestion I gave, was in good faith, but it seems that your "question" was not. My question was absolutely asked in good faith, not sure why you think it wasn't? You, yourself, made it sound very easy. I was looking for advice since you've made it sound like you've easily succeeded in volunteering and I wasn't able to. I was hoping, at the very least, for you to share how you got started. And yeah, it's kinda offensive to get "draw the rest of the damn owl[ed]"[1] when you put yourself out there to genuinely ask for help. And I still am asking for advice if you're willing to share. I would still love to volunteer. [1] https://teachreal.wordpress.com/2025/01/25/now-draw-the-owl/ Intentionally choose community and the effort it takes to build and cultivate it [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. People are work, but you cannot live without community [6]. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250212233145/https://www.hhs.g... [1] https://thepeoplescommunity.substack.com/ [3] https://www.tiktok.com/@amandalitman/video/75927501854034854... [4] https://boingboing.net/2015/12/21/a-survivalist-on-why-you-s... [5] https://boingboing.net/2008/07/13/postapocalypse-witho.html [6] How A Decline In Churchgoing Led To A Rise In ‘Deaths Of Despair’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46408406 - December 2025 (2 comments) [flagged] I wish you peace, warmth, and that you find your people. It was, and continues to be, hard work, but I found mine. Why, you ask? Because your comment seemed like you had read only the title and nothing else I wrote here, and wanted to contribute off the cuff links you had stored up. And you barely even bothered to summarize any of what they contain. I've been reading this book by Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy ever since you linked it, and it's definitely got some great insights into it, that mirror my own thoughts and struggles with this. But in your comment, it felt like a mere afterthought. And maybe that's fine, maybe that's fair, you're a busy guy and have your own stuff to do. It's not against the rules or general moral code to write a drive by comment. But it just feels like a low effort comment. Which is why I wanted to downvote it. And now that it's surfaced higher than mine, it just feels like pouring lemon juice on a papercut. Are you serious right now? I don't mean this in an insulting way at all, but I can see why you're dealing with loneliness. Take some time to self reflect and figure out why you lashed out here(seriously, really think about it or show some friends this dialogue without context and ask what they think, in person). Like the commenter, I hope you find you find your community, but you are far from the path. Your attitude is fixable, nobody is playing down the problems here and instead people who were in your shoes empathetically showed you a way out, but you need some serious self reflection. In case it's not clear, original replier's comment here is absolutely correct and it doesn't necessarily have to be in a religious pretext (re: the church article), that's just a palpable example for most people. Neighbors, community centers, hobbies, etc-- these all require work on everybody's end and you must commit to these relationships to create a semblance of something to revolve your life around in lieu of drowning in loneliness. For sure, my church citation wasn't about religion specifically, but that the decline in third spaces in general and a lack of community can be directly connected to early deaths and deaths of despair. That's right. Church does not have to be a church of faith, it can well be a church of reason. What matters is that people with shared values get to spend time together on a regular basis without getting into status games that might eventually show up no matter what the church. I've tried a few types of churches of reason and they are pretty sad, honestly. Hard core, dedicated, non-religious person here, so I'm not saying that people should go to Church, but I've never seen anything approximating a Church of Reason that would have satisfied my (admittedly minimal) social desires. I hear you. For me things that have worked are those that are built around a hobby -- travelling to the wooded hills, astronomy, music recitals, caring for strays / abandoned pets.
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My experience is similar. I think there is a combination of "some gyms are more social" and "some people are good at breaking the ice with strangers". On social media, I frequently hear people say stuff like: "Oh yeah, I have a bunch of friends at the gym." I am not doubting their story, but it doesn't happen to me. > gym no one talks with anyone
I'm sorry to hear it. I'm not here to start a holy war about remote work. Can you share some details? For me, remote work has me very quickly "falling apart" -- showering at 2PM or not at all. Going to the office forces some structure into my life and everything else flows from that. To be clear: I understand that a lot of people love remote work. > remote work ruined my mental health
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Similar 'bible studies' => 'torah studies' or 'quran studies' if you're Jewish or Muslim. Just ask if you're unsure of the details. if [ atheist ] then
's/joins a religious org/join a service org/'
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The apartment building next door has: * a coffee shop (that just closed)
* a desert shop
* a fine dining shop (that is open rarely
The apartment one apartment away has: * a ramen shop
* a high-end burger shop
* a high-end barber shop
So, yes. * a nail salon
* a hawaiian food shop
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This is a very mature, balanced take. If I may advise: Try some experiments on yourself. You already know how you feel and how you socialise without drinking. Try drinking various amounts in different social settings. How does it feel? Do you like yourself and your life more before? Then go back. Else, continue experimenting until you find a sweet spot. > 4. (experimental) I don't drink, which does curtail my social opportunities. I'm considering updating my drinking policy this year. My hypothesis is that the benefits of having a strong community out-weigh the health benefits of abstinence.
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