US friendship is in freefall – shredding bonds and cutting lives short
nypost.com
nypost.com
I'm back in a city for a bit, hanging out with a more mainstream crowd, and the difference has been jarring. Dinner means an hour or two in a busy restaurant. Playing music is a planned event with low priority amongst busy schedules. Nobody helps eachother move, there's an app for that.
I'm shocked to see how quickly those norms have changed how I interact with people! I'm ashamed that I drove past a guy who clearly needed a hand changing his tire when I had my impact in my truck earlier. I don't know who I would call in this group for more than an hour over a beer to talk through heavy stuff without feeling I was imposing. I'm spending time with far more people, and on paper I'm doing so many things, but we're all a lot lonelier in this crowded place than my group and I were out in the woods.
Luckily it's a simple fix. I'll get back to focusing on my people soon, and will give them the effort and time that keeps us all thriving amidst the social wasteland. I don't necessarily need to leave the city to do that, but it's a lot easier to see what's important out past the pavement.
>small state is internally democratic and its government has to serve the individual
This has never been true, there is no relationship at all between size and democratic nature. In fact, I'd argue the opposite: small societies are more oppressive.
Neither has there been any relationship between "small states" and Peace. Again, one can see the opposite throughout History.
>disputed territories such as Alsace could become autonomous or sovereign instead
...Not even wrong.
>He predicts that the unity of the Western world will be realised by "by every Frenchman, Dutchman, or Italian becoming an American".
A prediction completely wrong.
A theory completely disconnected from Reality.
For many reasons (one being the risk induced by endogamy) it is way more difficult for masters of a small state to bar the individual from knowing what is going on outside, to escape... It fosters a healthy pressure on potential or effective abusers.
> Peace
Search for "Duke of Tyrol": https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/leopold-kohr-the-bre...
((quoting the source)) >> Kohr states that a disunited world would do away with territorial disputes and conflicts since cultures that currently demand autonomy will receive it, and disputed territories such as Alsace could become autonomous or sovereign instead.
> wrong
This is a suggestion, not a prediction ("could").
((quoting the source)) >> circumstance that illustrates the main difference in the manner in which Russians and Americans organize their respective empires. We proceed with seduction where the others use force. We assimilate the world through our goods, the others through their ideology. While the unity of the East is brought about by every Czech, Russian, or Chinese becoming a communist, the unity of the West is created by every Frenchman, Dutchman, or Italian becoming an American. This is preferable, I presume, but it spells national extinction for the peoples concerned all the same. We may say that, as Americans, they will at least be free, but so will all Czechs or Chinese once they have become convinced communists. Assimilation does not destroy freedom. It makes it meaningless.
> A prediction completely wrong
As a Frenchman or (remote) Russian origin living in China since 2017 I disagree.
That seems to unfortunately track. No bonds, less to lose by lashing out. A Mexican idiom comes to mind:
El Que Tranza, No Avanza ("he who doesn't cheat, doesn't get ahead")
So when you dehumanize your fellow man, life is just a rat race and you don't care who you step over to succeed. Not really a nation make.
>The reasons aren’t clear, but it may be that colleges have become more of a social experience than an educational one over the last few decades
Well I guess that's the part that reminds me this is still the NY post. It's an odd conclusion to come to when they report that friendships merely declined less than Hgih School students, not remained steady. It's not surprising that an environment of young adults with newfound freedom would form closer bonds than those on high school forced together with a rigid 5 class schedule that has much less control. College students can schedule entire days off, or no morning classes, skip a class with minumum fuss. That means more potential time to socialize outside of the weekends or 4-7pm on weekends.
>Last year one study found a full 25% of young adults “believe that AI has the potential to replace real-life romantic relationships.”
Well that's just depressing. Are a significant portion of the population really going to try to replace human bonds with AI too? We were supposed to reject the notion of Her (2018) and realize the human element can't be automated. Not follow it like a blueprint.
You got the exact opposite of what that means. Unless you forgot to negate Tranza.
"El que NO Tranza, NO avanza"
Source: Native Spanish Speaker.
How embarrassing. But yes, I'm sure I missed the first no.
I like your version better: He who cheats, does not advance.
Or you could say: He who cheats, cheats but himself.
It shapes every relationship and experience of life, until you accept it as reality, but it is the reality of a cheating man. A cheating man would say women are whores, because he's never been worthy of trust.
Think of it this way, all those lonely people out there are just waiting for someone to reach out and do something with? It's like shooting fish in a barrel.
I'm able to get out on average 10hrs/week just socializing without much effort by just putting myself out there and making events happen when and how I want them. If there's no existing group that interests you, chances are that if you make what you want, other people will be interested too.
I've tried hosting public groups, with partial success. Have you got any ideas there?
I've tried posting events on local Facebook groups, mostly. But my experience is that very few people are actually active online and willing to physically do something.
The easiest for me was using my city's discord server as a launch pad for running book clubs, coffee meetups, and hikes. After a few successes, it's easy to gain a reputation for making things happen and it sort of snowballs from there.
It is way easier if you give away free food. Like, it could be coffee or donuts. It just have to be some token value, such that people don't feel that they only go there for the nominal reason if the event sucks.
When my local party has like booths talking with voters we have like cookies and coffee such that there is an indirect reason to stand there talking to us. Some sort of plausible denialability.
Also, there is the automatic social aspect of food.
For example, I enjoy board gaming, and used to use Meetup in the South because I found it difficult to make friends being an outsider in the South. Meetup was relatively helpful for going to a restaurant, just sitting down, having meal, and playing board games for several hours. And several of those then turned into roleplaying groups, social groups, and similar external to the Meetup.
On a quick search, most major cities seem to have board gaming groups:
Seattle: https://www.meetup.com/gearhouse-events/events/306262711/?re...
Los Angeles: https://www.meetup.com/los-angeles-werewolf-meetup-group/eve...
New York: https://www.meetup.com/new-york-games-nights-meetup-group/ev...
Atlanta: https://www.meetup.com/agguild/events/306018016/?recId=cd815...
Philadelphia: https://www.meetup.com/montco-board-games/events/304398746/?...
Chicago: https://www.meetup.com/chicagogames/events/306090271/?recId=...
Fort Worth: https://www.meetup.com/fort-worth-board-game-club/events/304...
Minneapolis / Saint Paul: https://www.meetup.com/saintpaulgamegroup/events/306244052/?...
Denver: https://www.meetup.com/meetupdenvermplusz/events/306229426/?...
Most are relatively free of cost, supported by businesses that have an interest in regular attendees visiting the stores and buying a few small products each time they attend (meal, drinks, snacks, ect...) A couple are gaming stores that ask for a small rental fee or offer free table space if you want to bring your own games.
In a time of further independence, over choice, and tech to hold onto previous friends, making friends who actually will physically meet up with you frequently is definitely harder.
But in a way, yes. Shared moments of triumph or suffering can accelerate that process. Those aren't necessarily moments you can always replicate, though.
Isolationism at every level of society. From friends, neighbours, people with a different background, other nations.
Future looks really depressing.
> We’ve long pondered why the marriage rate, and the corresponding birth rate, has plummeted in America. Answers often focus on financial stressors: Young Americans can’t afford a home like their parents could at their age, some speculate; others blame limited parental leave or poor day-care options.
> Perhaps — but the corresponding slump in close friendships doesn’t add up. People can still afford to make friends, can’t they?
Again, this is some ivory tower kind of nonsense. Of course if you can't afford to host people (no space), if you can't bond with other parents because you cannot be a parent, if you can't afford to leave your kids (with daycare or a carer) to socialize, how the hell are you supposed to invest the time in close friendships? And also, not being able to afford to invest in friendship makes total sense to affect the working class.
This article is a bunch of illogical slop.
However, so much of how people spend their free is consumptive that hanging out has become increasingly expensive.
Not a thing if no one has free time because everyone has to work.
> Having an extra hand and different set of tools when working on home projects is a net gain which means you can be better off while helping each other etc.
Again, who has the money to have tools? Who has the money to work on home projects? Have you seen the cost of construction materials lately?
As to things being more expensive that’s in part an illusion. Things where more affordable in the 1950’s when homes where 1,000sf, there was no cable bill, no cellphones, no internet, and no PC etc and that still represented a far higher standard of living than what came before.
I’m not advocating for giving up modern convince, just recognizing the slow shift from luxury to expected has real costs.
Well, yeah, its the NY Post. Slop is all they ever publish.
My personal experience has been that the same individualistic culture that allows people to do whatever they want and become whoever they want, that yields great results in a lot of aspects of life, also results in weaker relationships with others. At some point prioritizing oneself over everything else starts taking a toll on relationships. Do you really stop seeing a friend because they can’t afford to go places? Or do you stop seeing them because you are not willing to change your wants and not meet them somewhere that they can afford to go?
No, I think not being able to afford things contributing to a loneliness pandemic is also visible in other cultures where people are expected to work a ton for not enough money like South Korea.
>Do you really stop seeing a friend because they can’t afford to go places?
On a personal level, it's because I was traditionally the one planning get togethers, and then life got rough and I just planned less with no one to step up. Maybe they are also on hard times, maybe they had other groups they prioritized. Hard to tell.
I still try to at least check up once and a while remotely, but I do miss those times.
> Americans with college degrees experienced a similar but less steep drop.
They are saying the same thing as you on that point.
- some lawnmower parents won't even their kids with close relatives
- many apparently bought into the "nuclear family" (parent[s] + kids) and not the extended family. About the extended family, or the replacement by a close neighborhood group, parents are on their own - - and that's a recipe for disaster.
What would you expect to happen in actual 3D reality, when everyone thinks their "real life" is in their Call of DooDoo raid group?
kek...
>In 2018, a Pew Research Poll found that teenagers who were connected with their friends online were more likely to also hang out in person. By 2022, in-person outings for teens had collapsed.
>Can their online friends fill the role that real-life ones once did? Maybe — if those “friends” even exist.
>Last year one study found a full 25% of young adults “believe that AI has the potential to replace real-life romantic relationships.”
Those are factors, but it's pretty clear the pandemic accelerated such things as such that these cause isolation rather than a conduit to meet up.
And AI romance is on the rise. Is this healthy? I wouldn't think so; and I'm mostly saying that because I hate the idea of a corporate server having such a dangerously intimate connection with a human. Sounds like a Black Mirror episode.
I'll begrudgingly stay open to the more general theory of a personal AI you fall in love with otherwise. Very fearful, but I'd feel like a hypocrite as a game dev who has technically done tiny contributions to this if I suddenly say "you can't care about fictional characters".
[1] https://www.americansurveycenter.org/research/disconnected-p...
Much of the article that is the source is actually devoted to the discussion about working class vs educated divides and lack of access to communal public places then resulting in diminished possibilities for socializing and friendship. Quite a bit actually focuses mostly on public parks, libraries, public gardens, restaurants, bars, libraries, and community centers.
Parks and libraries have some of the most significant shift as far as the educational divide. Half with 4 years visit, while only a quarter without.
Restaurants being the most popular among the "third places" (not public parks or libraries)
"Americans report that people in their community can gather in restaurants or diners (46 percent), coffee shops or cafés (41 percent), gyms or fitness centers (37 percent), and local markets or corner stores (35 percent). Relatively few Americans report they can spend time with their neighbors in bookstores or other retail spaces (20 percent) and barbershops or hair salons (22 percent)."
Restaurants, grocers/markets, and barbershops appear to be the most egalitarian, parks and gyms appear to be the furthest separated based on educational divides.
Even "no access" to "minimal access" has a fairly significant shift in friendship numbers reported. 32% "no access -> no friends", vs 17% "minimal access -> no friends" The "3-5 friends" category also jumps from 23% to 36%, and the "10 or more" jumps from 6% to 13%.
Educated people also tend to walk their neighborhood a larger amount, thereby resulting in greater amount of "chance encounters" or "friendly chats", and thereby more friendships.
The best opportunities that the "high school or less" members seem to feel they often have is religious society membership and communities.
There's also some discussion on divides on hobbies and freetime with education, and that part was actually kind of saddening from a certain perspective, as the numbers really look like "high school or less" feel little ability to engage with hobby, activity, community, workout, or sports related groups in their communities. Rather stark divide. 5-10% vs 15-20% in almost every category. Slight variation with ethnicity (African Americans seem more comfortable with community groups) yet lack of college education really seems to impose a harsh sensation of isolation in America.
Notably though, the project does appear to mostly be a one person show doing their own surveys, and writing every article (this survey notes Sam Pressler as supporting).
The article's appear to be well written, and methodology appears to be sufficiently explained. Appear to be notes, sources, and citations on supporting material (some self referential to their own articles). However, simply, a note that it also appears to be a one person website doing their own independent surveying, publishing, and research.
Methodology: "AEI’s Survey Center on American Life designed and conducted the survey. Interviews were conducted among a random sample of 6,597 adults (age 18 and up). All interviews were conducted among participants in the Ipsos KnowledgePanel, a probability-based panel designed to be representative of the US general population, not just the online population. Interviews were conducted in Spanish and English between March 29 and April 15, 2024."I've seen the same on several discussion forums, where writers talk that way, using terms and self descriptions that are like internalized societal denigration. Like they're not really part of America, because they didn't get the 4-year degree that's expected.
They get some form of implicit "you're not book smart" response, or "you're not pursuing societally 'correct' behavior", and that turns into a class divide. Often it seems to arise like resentment or hate for not choosing whatever it was you're "supposed" to do to be socially acceptable.
What I notice here (Switzerland) which has a lot of clubs and associations is that less and less people come and less and less volonteer to help manage the club's functions. Notice that the clubs are still there; the opportunity to socialize is present, the club exists, has a place for its activities, a program; yet less and less people take the opportunity.
Basically, it has both issues. Your rationalization is valid, and its one side of what's going on. Society de-socializes, the clubs and activities still exist, yet less and less people take the opportunity. Those activities and clubs then wither and fade away with lack of participation.
However, on the other side, once those clubs and activities vanish, then opportunities that might have been there before no longer exist to even attempt. An opportunity for socialization vanishes, thereby accelerating the de-socialization.
Very tragedy of the commons type result. There's a communal field. Then some participants start abusing the communal field. Then people accepted of the communal situation previously (because of fair behavior) start pulling back and becoming stingy / paranoid / anti-sharing in response to the exploitive actions of their neighbors. Then the communal resource no longer exists and is ruined for all participants. People who might have joined the communal field use previously no longer have a communal resource to join.
Many parts of the world are experiencing very extreme income inequality as more wealth gravitates towards the top. I suspect this is happening almost everywhere but it definitely seems to be the case in the US, Canada, the UK and (to a lesser extent, perhaps) in western Europe. With the bottom 50% of the population just barely able to survive it's not at all a surprise that social activities and opportunities are going extinct.
I think socializing really is a luxury not afforded to most people. The folks in the top 50% of income live in a very different world from the bottom 50%
Many days of the draining 9 to 5 that mostly just encouraged crashing on the couch and trying not to do very much for several hours. And that was a relatively stable paying job by comparison to many. Working a normal plus a gig job in the modern world seems like there would be little time for anything else.
On the wealth gravitating, had the same consideration (figure many have). With the excessive focus on wealth, the majority of the world is different for the upper 50% (with the caveat that they then focus into the upper 50%, of the upper 50%, of the upper 50%, ect...)
Personal view is it would not be so bad, if the wealthy were actually spending anything. Except unfortunately it seems to have turned into the Russ Hanneman joke from Silicon Valley. They don't want to spend anything because they're worried about losing their status on the ladder bracket. And the only objective is "move to the next upper 50%." If you're $999 millionaire, you fall off the "wealthy" list, and it's like binary where suddenly you get uninvited from all the events people on "the list" get to go to.
From a game designer background though, it's frustrating, because it's like a game where there's 10-20 possible "resources", and all anybody will pay attention to is the "coin" quantity. Almost nothing else provides any form of status or tangible benefit. Academic citations don't really provide that much. Military rank doesn't really provide that much. They all still converge towards "bank account" and "coin" quantity.
I've never been to the US but this extreme-right stuff has made its way to Holland too. They already gained 30% of votes in the last election. Meaning I had to drop a lot of friends. Once they start screaming about "woke" or bitching about trans people they are forever out of my life.
At first I used to try to reason with them. I thought sure, it's just a misunderstanding. I'll just explain it and give some official links and we can move past this. I explained countless times that no, kids aren't given gender surgery. No there's no deep state trying to make people gay (as if you even could!). No, nobody would ever go through a whole transition just so they can perv in the women's bathroom. The very idea is just insane if you know what it entails.
But there was no point. These guys just want to be so angry they're foaming at the mouth. They actually enjoy their hate, there's no way they let something as trivial as facts get in the way. They wave official statistics and reports away as 'deep state propaganda' or 'the woke agenda'. It doesn't matter that what they're angry about isn't true and makes no sense. They just want to be angry and 'stick it to the man'.
One of my ex-'friends' even asked me seriously if I had plans to transition. I said no, why would you even think that? I'm very happy with my gender and identity and always have been. Well, he said, several of your friends are trans and they spread it around. I quizzed him on it thinking he was just trolling but no, he really believes this. Heard it in some podcast. Just... WTF. This is exactly why we need education on these subjects in schools.
But anyway, so I have no time anymore for that kind of negativity in my life and I'm sick of arguing about this. And listening to all this hate. So I'm done. Note that I'm not disrespecting them or calling them names. I'm not even angry at them, if anything I'm just sad. But I just don't want to interact with them anymore.
The good thing though is that I did get closer to my progressive and LGBT friends. We never talk about this because we all hate negativity, we just roll our eyes at the news. But we realize we need to stick together to defend ourselves when the time comes.
As far as the cause I'm basically blaming social media for it. They strive for engagement to maximise their eyeball time and hate is a very powerful driver of engagement. It might not even have been a conscious choice by these companies. But I am getting very worried now where this is heading.
This is somewhat unfortunate. People like this need to go to a political meating and see what is talked about. There might be exceptions but the media and thus public conception about what parties talk about and think are prioritised question seems more or less made up.
I agree feed based social media is to blame. But I would say the problem is bilateral and need mutual understanding in the communication.
Like I said I have tried dialogue but it didn't work. And it's not like every one of them has a unique "opinion". It's all the company line.
I feel the prevalence of the t in hbt movement is so low (edit: at least when I was in my 20s in the late 90s) that they are mostly talked about and not with especially in nominally supporting political parties.
Sounds like you're in a cult.
Besides what other people do isn't even their business.