To be a shut-in is the inability to access the full spectrum of what life has to offer.
Beside, as anyone familiar with using the internet, there may be so much entertainment, and yet there's nothing on the internet either.
I have no family to speak of, and I don't have any acquaintances outside of work. And I've never met any of my colleagues face to face. Many of whom have never seen a photograph of me. Most of our interactions are in Mattermost chats, emails, or work items. Most people only know me as ASCII codes rendered on a screen to form words.
If that doesn't qualify me as a shut in, what does?
>To be a shut-in is the inability to access the full spectrum of what life has to offer.
My response to that would be to ask why such things would be appealing in the first place. Why should one that finds no reward in dealing with other people at all, aspire to being promoted or falling in love? Both of which inherently require dealing with other people.
The same argument has been used to oppress people since time immemorial, whether they were brown skinned, homosexuals, neurodivergent, Jews, or various other arguments for being “not as we were evolved to be”. (You have targeted one form of neurodivergent people here).
If you ignore the eyeblink of the last 100 years, then we have hundreds of thousands of years of brutal rape, war, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, enslavement, and I’m sure we could think of a few others…
It would be very hard to argue that this is not “what we’re evolved to be”, since we so lustfully pursued these endeavors for literally 100 times as long as we have recorded history.
This argument is basically the same exact sentiment as “because that is Gods will” or “because that is the way it’s always been done” dressed up in a patina of science by including the word “evolved” in it.
A good question. I define that with: nothing happens. Life becomes static. Events don't happen.
That's what I meant by being a shut-in. To be fair, a shut-in to having a life is a range rather than a binary thing.
My response to that would be to ask why such things would be appealing in the first place. Why should one that finds no reward in dealing with other people at all, aspire to being promoted or falling in love? Both of which inherently require dealing with other people.
I don't know. I was OK with not meeting people in real life. Then I started meeting people, and started to find a new dimension in life. I found that I have certain social talent that I didn't know I have.
One thing to take into consideration is that people changes and their preferences changes. They are not static.
Anyway, it's not so much about having photos or being able to see someone's face. It's about something happening. It's kinda hard to define.
Again, no failure, but no success either. No exhilaration, and no happiness. Life is static. Nothing happens. Sadness may happens, but hopefully good things should outweigh that.
It's worth keeping in mind that the only useful judge of success/failure and happiness/despair is you and you alone.
This means your experience and what you consider success and happiness are only valid insofar as you are concerned. They cannot and should not be applied (nor forced, for that matter) upon anyone else.
Personally I think your definition doesn't actually work, tbh. Where do you draw the line for "no participation in society"? Wouldn't that mean any interaction? Now they can't even order through a web portal, can't comment on social media like reddit etc. You'd need to create an incredibly controlled environment to make that viable, which would remove the self-imposed aspect of it.
Even the article you're commenting on has a hikikomori releasing a game project after several years. He wouldn't be one according to your definition either, even though everyone that knows about him IRL would absolutely call him one.
For the record, a hikikomori makes a video game? Wow. I wish I can do that. It's a matter of effort, of putting a foot in one another. The thing is, developing a video game and releasing it to the public is inherently a social activity, unless you write the code only for yourself.
Things are happening. Playing video games which is what creates despair for me. Nothing happens outside of that video game. Don't get me wrong, playing video is a lot of fun, but it isn't beneficial when there's too much of it.
The currently accepted definition is however merely:
* spending most of the day and nearly every day confined to home,
* marked and persistent avoidance of social situations, and social relationships,
* social withdrawal symptoms causing significant functional impairment,
* duration of exceeding six months,
* no apparent physical or mental etiology to account for the social withdrawal symptoms.
Under these criteria (quoted straight from the linked Wiki article), a person working from home office with no contact can also become a social recluse, even if it's certainly a different experience then what you've experienced
There's plenty on the internet. There may have been more outside, but cultural shifts are decreasing that. So the Internet is becoming surprisingly (and depressively) more competitive.
I partially solved that by actually just learning the science as opposed to watching more educational science video. There's only so much edutainment that you can tolerate.