> You can’t form relationships that way
Plenty of millenials and Gen Z can
We've been building groups online ever since we were little
Plenty of millenials and Gen Z can
We've been building groups online ever since we were little
I hate to break the news but most relationships simply are loose and impermanent, we just don't usually notice how brittle they actually are.
As for trust, is it really reasonable to trust someone more or less just because they've been in front of you vs not? And I mean that both ways: too trusting of people in front of us and not enough of people away.
I make no claims to reasonableness. We are not creatures of pure reason and our friendships are never totally rational. All I claim is that there's something which ties offline friends to me and I to them, particularly if we've worked together, which is not present for any of my online friend groups.
Probably true at some level, but I'd wager that's much more common for Gen Z and younger millennials for a variety of reasons, as well as among people who just aren't really authentic, suburbanites, and people who just don't invest in friendship building.
However, that's a bit of a silly comparison, online relationships have some value, maybe a lot maybe a little, but they aren't an equal substitute for a friend in meatspace
Even after WFH for a long time I think everyone becomes used to it, but there is definitely something missing.
Same as junk food isn’t necessarily the cause of health issues - rather lack of enough healthy, not processed to the tits food is the cause.
Replacing most/all food intake with junk food is going to be bad.
Doing it periodically with enough of the ‘real thing’ to compensate? No issues.
The issue is not enough of the real deal. Which is possible until something breaks because of the alternative, but not necessary.
If you put someone in a capsule in say Antarctica, and they only communicated with other people via video chat - would anyone be surprised if they went crazy?
Hell, I think we’d all be surprised if they didn’t.
The challenge right now is a lot of people (including many people here) are de facto in that pod in a way that they can’t see, because theoretically they could walk outside and have conversations, etc.
They just won’t actually do it, because there are less visible factors pushing them away - factors that in many cases they aren’t allowed to see or acknowledge.
It is possible, and in many places quite easy, to make local friends without relying on coworkers.
Facebook Groups has been very helpful to find local groups.
It’s also pretty easy to demonstrate how there is a direct relationship between how hard that is to do, and obesity and bad health outcomes.
Yes, caused by toxic corporate culture and the modern American work week. There are no third spaces because everyone is busy working, and we all hate the people we work with.
When people say "community", your corporate hell-hole should be the absolute last thing to enter your mind. The fact it's what you turn to and long for really highlights the problem. We've destroyed communities and conned the average joe into thinking work life is their life. Their family. Now we take that away and they're nothing.
The problem isn't the taking away, the problem is getting to a point where the only thing standing between happiness and being a loser is asking how the weather is going by the water cooler.