Secret’s founder returns with anti-loneliness app Ikaria

When will people learn that more technology is not only not always the answer, but often the problem?

The biggest fallacy of the 21st century is the idea that the shortcomings and collateral effects of the advance of technology can be addressed with more technology.

I'm not against technology. I'm not a neo-Luddite. But at the same time, the conception that all of the problems we've created or exacerbated through technology can be resolved by more of it is painfully naive. It's "when all you've got is a hammer..." logic.

New technology won't replace or repair the decline in social centers. New technology won't fix our increasing sense of disconnection with our localities. New technology won't help us engage with local politics (in the sense of trying to do good by collective action).

Building new apps and new technologies isn't a cure-all or necessarily a solution for the problems were facing right now. It's time for us to recognize that we (the tech community) don't have all of the right answers, and it's time for us to reach out and try to learn, and try to participate in fixing the problems we helped create.

I was early investor with Chrys Bader previously on his startup Secret. He was a YC batchmate of mine from 2008. I watched him build an initial prototype that had the chance to be a real social network that had very high long term retention, but in the end the company didn't invest deeply enough into moderation and the long term retention cohorts went down steeply past 6 months of use.

Chrys is a great designer and product manager who caught lightning in a bottle previously, and lost it. Founders often catch lightning in a bottle and then fail to keep it because scaling operations like moderation, or sometimes even just keeping the servers online, through hyper scale, is hard.

Many founders never find lightning in a bottle even once. Even in my experience I felt like we caught lightning in a bottle with Posterous and failed to properly bring it to the scale I wish we could have.

I realize I am going out on a limb to defend him here, but founders going back into the arena deserve at least a little bit of defense because it's hard enough to take the chance to make anything ever.

You'll hear more about how Ikaria really works, and I realize the post is light on details, but don't write this startup off before you actually try the software itself.

I hate to be cynical but all this `tech to fix the social problems created by tech` really brings out the cynic in me.

Realistically I know that we do need new solutions but the solution to a drinking problem isn't to deliver better, more mindful alcohol.

Edit: To the comments below, I am not asserting that tech has actually created an entire new set of problems out of nothing, just that that is the narrative on display here and in other places. This is part of why it makes me so incredibly cynical.

The immediate cost of being alone is going down.

We need to understand, no matter how much a person has read or introspected their behaviour or are kind at their heart - no one will every be able to live up to the expectations of millions of people on internet.

This is why relationship advice on internet is such a joke, whenever anything happens, advice that's given to them is "leave this person, this person is abusive, manipulative, you deserve better". They follow the advice and end up alone and convince themselves that being alone is best.

Now, about the people who want to pursue romantic interests,the game is soo different now.

Long ago, girls from my town only dated local boys. They had to do with what's available to them locally but these days, one girl tells me that their boyfriend is coming to see them on weekend from Italy, while others boyfriend is coming from Greece, etc... Meanwhile men of town have drowned themselves in video games, porn and drinking/drugs because they've no meaningful relationships - they told me they feel like loser because girls aren't interested in them.

Yes, the men they are with are wayy better than what's available locally. Better according to preference of those girls, not according to me. Can I blame women for choosing best available to them? No. Many guys will do same provided they had the opportunity.

If romantic interests is not what you wanna pursue, it hardly matters if you are not very attractive - you can find plenty of people are church, at beach or anywhere where you see people. Finding people to spend time with us not difficult at all provided you can fulfill the minimum required to not put off the people.

I am pretty sure when people say they are lonely - they are talking about absence of people in their life who care about them or make efforts to make them happy or go out of their way to make them feel special, cared for, treasured. Who doesn't want this?

How technology can solve it?

Combined that with the fact that this whole "reveal article" has no actual substance and trying to sell me the idea and emotion rather than a feature makes feel that I'm being manipulated already and I hadn't even opened up the app yet!

I feel that the "app" medium has lost any credibility for providing solutions of this sort.

I wonder what his values and purpose are.

She writes:

> Loneliness, the common ground for terror, the essence of totalitarian government, and for ideology or logicality, the preparation of its executioners and victims, is closely connected with uprootedness and superfluousness which have been the curse of modern masses since the beginning of the industrial revolution and have become acute with the rise of imperialism at the end of the last century and the break-down of political institutions and social traditions in our own time. To be uprooted means to have no place in the world, recognized and guaranteed by others; to be superfluous means not to belong to the world at all. Uprootedness can be the preliminary condition for superfluousness, just as isolation can (but must not) be the preliminary condition for loneliness. Taken in itself, without consideration of its recent historical causes and its new role in politics, loneliness is at the same time contrary to the basic requirements of the human condition and one of the fundamental experiences of every human life. Even the experience of the materially and sensually given world depends upon my being in contact with other men, upon our common sense which regulates and controls all other senses and without which each of us would enclosed in his own particularity of sense data which in themselves are unreliable and treacherous. Only because we have common sense, that is only because not one man, but men in the plural inhabit the earth can we trust our immediate sensual experience. Yet, we have only to remind ourselves that one day we shall have to leave this common world which will go on as before and for whose continuity we are superfluous in order to realize loneliness, the experience of being abandoned by everything and everybody.

Dealing with "uprootedness and superfluousness" is one of the most perplexing questions facing modernity. I doubt an app can address this but...good luck.

This all started with a very simple question: Do we fundamentally believe that technology can help us create more meaningful relationships and increase our social wellness?

If we believe the answer is yes, then we absolutely must do everything in our power and ability to try to find the answer. That's why we decided to build Ikaria.

We are not ignorant to the value of real, in-person communication and interaction, and we're not trying to replace it. We've done deep research on the psychology of relationships and loneliness, and the mental health impact of it. The problem exists with or without social media, although numerous studies have shown the problem can be exacerbated by social media.

Since we cannot avoid technology, we must reclaim it and give people spaces where they can form healthy habits and healthy relationships with their phones and each other. Very much like the fitness industry was born from a junk food epidemic, it's time for a shake-up in junk social nutrition.

Our goal is to bring healthy relational practices to the forefront. Very much like Calm and Headspace have done for mindfulness and mental health, we would like to do for social health. From what we've seen, the behaviors we learn in a digital space are transferable into the physical world.

We are working directly with experts and mental health professionals to help inform our product decisions and include them from the very beginning. This is bigger than any one person or idea, and we believe it's going to take a village.

So far, in our closed beta, people are reporting feeling closer to everyone in their groups, increased levels of happiness, and a positive relationship with the app. (i.e. "This is the only app where I allow notifications other than text")

For me, personally, it's brought me much closer to my parents and I keep in touch with them more than I ever have. I'd love for more people to have that experience.

We welcome criticism and support equally, thank you to everyone who has shown interest and has shared their views.

This might be another clever way to harvest private user information. Are you lonely? Hey, how about some therapy? Here’s a list of some good therapists. (Your name was auctioned off to the highest bidders.)

Or how about some Zoloft? It cures everything. Buy now, for a 25% discount. (Your name and demographic was auctioned off to the highest bidder.)

If I was a lunatic, then, I don’t think I want to be in some random company’s insecure database, just waiting to be hacked.

"Bader met Dadashi through an offline men’s group for discussing life, love and everything in the wake of Secret’s collapse and a rough romantic breakup. After just a few weeks of these meetups, they say they felt closer to each other than to most of their friends."

"Basically, since 2004, technology has created this monumental shift in the human social experience. We’re more connected than ever technically but all the studies show we’re lonelier than ever,” Bader explains. “It’s like eating McDonald’s to get healthy."

And the conclusion is to take VC money to make a slightly different McDonald's. I just can't even.

0. people's survival depends on them interacting

1. the established ruling-class is dethroned from atomizing and monetizing people into individual, lonely, learned-helpless products who are taught to spend 10% of their pay on a laptop every 3 years, forgo single-payer healthcare and spend 10x more for medications

2. people can afford housing, start a family and put down roots instead of going in insane debt, gig economy pseudo-jobs, changing jobs/moving like a pinball or living at work to burn-out

3. return to solidarity, cohesion, the Golden Rule and basic decency as the prevalent modality

... will they do so.

The suburbs are isolating, and building strip malls instead of walkable downtowns (for both suburbs and denser areas) just adds to that. We pushed for the quiet and privacy of suburbs but took it so far that we eliminated the human interaction.

We need to start prioritizing spaces and urban design that encourage social interaction. Build walkable downtowns around commuter rail stations. More parks, coffeeshops, community spaces to suit different hobbies, etc.

Is the product going to be similar?

What Bader learned from watching Secret’s users “do this in the dark” was the realization that “actually, we need to learn to do this in the light, to have that same kind of dialogue, but do it openly with each other.”

Hell of anti workplace toxicity spot if you ask me.

We need to regain this piece of our humanity back.

Im doing l my share, are you ? HN does lean towards the light from what i can see.

I sometimes feel like the tech industry is an episode of black mirror.

Overall the Internet and the dating/hook up apps I believe are one of the problems to the loneliness epedemic Ive read about (all or many of us are too judgy online). People being immediately judged and swiped right on (throw to the bin) without ever getting to know someone. Someone who might make you pee your pants with laughter!

Greed in the form of housing policies where that is used as a tool for investment, rather than an investment in the community.

Greed in the form of a missing integration in to society and support for all who are in it to at least a basic level of guarantee. (Popular example, Star Trek utopia)

Greed in the form of profits being squeezed upward rather than shared as prosperity for all.

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If everyone had their own, quality (private, outside noises/smells/etc excluded by good design and build quality), living spaces nearer to each other that would be far better for the design of our cities and the environment.

If everyone had a useful, non-broken-window, job and place where they added value to society, that would be better for everyone.

If everyone needed to expend less and less of their day working as things got more efficient, we would have the time to actually exist as humans / intelligent emotional beings among Family, Friends, and those we don't yet know.

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I really believe that if people were treated like people, and had the time to be better people, much of our social ills would sort out sooner rather than later.