Indeed, the situation you describe illustrates a lot of things this post misses. That friends and acquaintances are the cure for loneliness, not roommates (back in the forgotten days when people had friends and could easily rent apartments, "never choose friends for roommates" was a common saying - you spend too much time around roommates and have too many petty disagreements with them). That extra time and seemingly random spaces are best places to "hang out", meet people, and enjoy their presence. That different and contrasting interests can sometimes bring people together.
The problem is that the rich complex of relationships involved in friendship tempts the entrepreneurial minded to exploit that richness and destroy those relationships through monetization. And indeed, the last fifty or hundred and fifty years of history is that. So there's really nothing left (at least for the monetizers) and the opportunities for roommate monetization are absurd fantasies of trying to light ashes on fire again ... and so-forth.