Most young men live in quiet desperation, is it possible to resolve this? | Hacker News Reader

Most young men live in quiet desperation, is it possible to resolve this?

Same thing regarding a growing number of women too but men don't have the same support structure as women do. But this discussion isn't really about that -in a world where everything is connected and everyone's looking to solve a problem how do we solve loneliness?

There are apps like meetup but how effective are they? especially once your in your late 20s/early 30s it becomes exponentially harder on average to make lifelong bonds.

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I don't think this is an "external solution" thing. Some random gender-neutral ideas for becoming more interesting to others and being more interested in them:

- Read widely, both fiction and nonfiction. Become interested in and even familiar with experiences outside your own comfort zone.

- Work on empathy and tolerance. Be ready to hear and even validate things you don't fully agree with, whether it's politically or epistemologically. Learn to respect others and see them as people with full life experiences, rather than merely as potential partners or friends to enhance your life experience.

- Get life experience that is interesting. Note that this doesn't mean traveling widely or having an "interesting" job. In fact sometimes those things make you seem boring and are anyways often inaccessible. There are more accessible things to do, like volunteering with people who have different experiences than you, working on a local cause that is important to you, or learning to make art that represents your feelings.

- Make yourself go outside. The world is outside. Learn about the history of your local area and visit the important places in it.

- Pay a little bit of attention to things like hygiene, grooming, clothes. You don't have to go crazy, just shower thoroughly every day, get regular haircuts, and wear clothes that roughly match your age.

- As others have mentioned, find somewhere with a stable group of people and show up consistently.

- Get therapy, even if you think you don't need it. Most people need it.

- Avoid toxic X. Masculinity, femininity, whatever. Being lonely can make you feel like you need a rubric to follow. Don't buy it. Don't even take what I'm saying above as a rubric.

Ultimately the goal isn't to find an app that matches you with the perfect person or group of people, but to become someone who is interesting to and interested in more people overall. I empathize with the fact that people are sometimes hard to like, but almost everyone has something to recommend them if you are willing to listen, and so do you if you're willing to explore and expand yourself and share that with others.

I think these are all great suggestions for anybody, but it misses the point doesn't it? There is a reason these affect men more than women, why? And how do we fix that?

I used to do meetup and there were some groups i really enjoyed, and I did find some friends that i began spending time with outside the group. Aside from that, it seems like a lot of social activities marketed as being "for men" are based on exercising with other men and drinking alcohol with other men, which really limits people who aren't aware of less marketed activities.

I personally found a lot of enjoyment in swing and ballroom dance bc the level of exercise is less strenuous, there's more variety of people to talk to, there's generally no alcohol, and they typically have a structured intro time for beginners before an event.

There are groups trying to address this for men. F3[0] is a nominally exercise-focused group for men that is setup to encourage building social bonds. https://f3nation.com/

0 - F3 stands for “Fitness, Fellowship, and Faith”. The “faith” part doesn’t specify/require any particular religion, or that attendees observe any religion at all.

Some version of this question pops up every month or so, and I personally don't get the sense that people/society views this as a collective problem, but rather a problem for individual men to figure out on their own.

I have never felt true loneliness, but as a single scoped suggestion, I've always felt in good company in my teenage years playing MMORPGs in a tight-knit guild, and now in adulthood playing TTRPGs with local groups (not that there's an age limit to MMORPGs but I haven't found one that resonates with me for a while). For an even more extroverted person in a bigger city than where I live I'd imagine improv is in the same spectrum further to the side of "having fun by goofing off".

> Same thing regarding a growing number of women too but men don't have the same support structure as women do.

I’m a woman and I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about here.

Regardless, I’ve struggled with intense social anxiety and loneliness since about 13.

The only long-term ”solutions” I’ve found that help have been: having a partner, good relationships with my family and joining a club (in my case, a football club) that has recurring sessions weekly.

Obviously, the latter is something that’s more easy to “engineer” than the first two.

So my only advice is to find or start a club or interest group that regularly meets. I’ve found that groups on Meetup often don’t have the same group if people attending. So rather search for local sports groups or community groups where you’ll meet some of the same people week after week and be able to build relationships with them over time.

I understand, apologies for offending. Its not as black and white as I made it out in the OP.

The kind of loneliness I'm referring to is were you're completely alone and you don't have a partner, when you can go two months sitting indoors and have 0 texts on your phone. Obviously this is a complex subject so theres nothing I can really expand on without stating bias.

Why are you sitting indoors?

Its not me and I'm not sitting in doors but there are people who are so alone that no one would notice their absence. Actually quite a large problem in certain parts of Asia.

Because pointlessly sitting around on my couch is nicer than pointlessly sitting around in some loud venue or outside with god awful weather.

I blame Covid personally. Before Covid there was stuff going on that could motivate me to go do stuff, but not so much the last years or two. Even going out to bars feels tedious now.

Twenty years ago we were talking about the book "Bowling Alone". This is more of the same, there's a decline in civic institutions and civic engagement. Work is totally anodyne if you even go into the office. Low status men are left-behind in the dating market because women select high status men.

Do some group fitness class, they usually have some kind of social event once and a while, so you can at least get to casually know a few people.

I've found friends online since the 90's; IRC first and now Discord.

There are people who I know pretty well, but still have no idea where they live and what their real name is. Couldn't pick them out of a lineup if my life depended on it.

Look into men’s work / men’s groups. I’ve just started exploring this space and it isn’t perfect but I’ve found it quite helpful. There is something special going on in this space.

Some groups:

* Mankind project

* Sacred Sons

Why do you think women have a better support structure than men?

I don't want to get into that, I maybe labelled as something I am not. But its just personal experience and that's all I can say.

Besides the obvious, joining some group that interests you in your local area in order to meet new people, I'd also suggest checking out some discord channels where you can meet / chat / video chat with people. They really took off over the past couple of years, and there are quite a range to choose from.

https://disboard.org/ is a good index of them.

Not OP, but it might be because when you ask men and women about their social/support networks, men as a group report having a worse support network.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/29/health/men-friendships-wellne...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7488709/One-five-me...

https://medium.com/the-weekend-reader/why-dont-men-have-frie...

https://i.redd.it/lt7xl43joni61.jpg

Not that this is entirely my experience, but somewhat. But I'm a more "sensitive" guy and a lot of my friendships form accordingly. I'm probably not usual.

If you think women don't have WAY more resources than men in society, be it for their social health or otherwise, I have to question your ability to observe evidence.

What resources, for example? Genuinely curious. Social health, like access to psychologists or what?

Not GP: better/closer friends, no stigma about going to psychologists, and showing emotions is still seen as "unmanly" (which I used to great success to weed out partners early, as I tear up easily in movies and any date giving me too much shit for it I can safely discard)

"If you don't see this thing that's TOTALLY OBVIOUS to me, I don't know what to tell you." - Don't forget confirmation bias etc on your side. Different things are obvious to different people.

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