This article explicitly targets only "friends", rather than what the media is actually talking about today.
In places like South Korea the collapsing population is such an extreme crisis that the government gets involved very aggressively as a matter of long-term economic policy and national security.
In America we've made enormous progress on institutionalized misogyny even if it's a bit of an embarrassment that it's taken so long. Women didn't even have the franchise at a federal level until 1920, losing to the Emirate of Afghanistan by a year. And we've had some reversals on reproductive rights recently, it's not a monotone improvement.
But broadly by most any metric you care to choose from college graduation rates to life expectancy to likelihood to be incarcerated to likelihood to commit suicide: women are doing better than men on a lot of really important things.
I don't mean to imply that there isn't a capital-P Patriarchy: there is.
The meme that is destroying this conversation is in considering any man a patriarch, when almost by definition a vanishing minority of men are. An old white guy who is the CEO of a big company or holds public office? Probably almost certainly a patriarch, probably almost certainly enjoys absurd privilege at the expense of others.
But a typical white guy in 2024? He can't even take care of himself in a system that has no use for him. He's in no position to oppress anyone.
How is associating an idea with some tiny subculture a worthwhile comment on its merits? Is the implication that social scientists and statisticians claiming a loneliness epidemic on the payroll of big incel? Or is the implication that if you want to discuss the fact that people are becoming more isolated, it means you're an incel?
> "Loneliness" is really trying to figure out why young men/women aren't dating, partying, doing drugs, etc.
These are indicators. Nobody (except the party supply industry or the alcohol industry) is talking about people not partying for the sake of the parties, or not doing drugs for the sake of the drugs. They're talking about it because lonely people are unhealthier and less happy.
That's just one angle. There's also the angle where watching other people live great lives online—however illusory such perception is—makes us feel more pessimistic about our own lives and contentedness. There's also the angle of disappearing third places. There's also the angle a relentlessly commodified society is alienating. There's also the angle that watching millions of people die from a preventable illness makes us feel like less of a society. There's also the angle of the disappearance of community structures like Church from modern life causes this perception of loneliness. There's the angle that cultural pluralism causes us to perceive ourselves as more atomized than we are. Etc etc. Discussions on the topic are clearly far, far more varied than just those had by bitter young misogynists.
Do not take my observation of this as an endorsement of any of the above points, please.