I lived in the midwest. The town sizes ranged from 3000 to around 50k. I've never really had more than 2-3 friends at once, and sometimes didn't have that. My ex wound up with schizophrenia, but that's another story altogether.

I started being lonely at 10 or 11. That's only gone away in the last 6-10 years. Regular internet meant I've met folks I can simply be myself with. I moved - across an ocean - to be with one of those folks. I'm rarely lonely anymore, even with the internet. Even with the language barrier. Even with my weirdness.

For the first time in my life, here I feel like I kinda belong, and it is a mix of offline and online stuff. I'm even in a country that is "difficult" for folks to make friends with - or at least they say it is. On the other hand, it actually fits my personality better.

I don't find it hard to talk to folks online. Male or female (I tend to have more male friends than female, and don't care about the distinction. My male spouse is the opposite). sure, some folks are simply there to flirt, but I can shut them down pretty quickly.

Asking the "wrong" people out in middle school ('90s) sure was a fast track to being an outcast. Paradoxically, the rising positive presence of LGBTQ+ people in media in the '90s made things worse. People were on the lookout for us!

I don't know if it was worse than the '80s where our presence in the media was almost universally negative.

Later, I found Twitter, and met a friend (also bi) who had lived mere miles away all my life. We probably never would have met without the internet. Having backup when we hang out has actually made me more social because I'm not worried about being alone up against a crowd who decides it's time to make an example of someone.

You sound like you guys are half joking, but then, not really. So I can't tell.

If it is that bad, I guess people can be bigger arse-holes than I thought.

It was weirdly easier being in a mixed "race" relationship back then. I got harassed by cops at times, slurs when out in public, and remember churches stating it was against god. But at least everyone didn't avoid me.

It was pretty normal to be minimally ignored and still find that I'm cautious of who I tell - women sometimes avoid me and men will sometimes make me an object. I truly think gay men have it worse simply because men are more likely to get beaten up by some groups. I think that it sometimes depends on where folks live as well on the severity of it all now.

Edit: I just came back to say thank you so much for asking about it :)

And that's with me being white and having the ability to pass as an ordinary dude most of the time. Trans women (especially of color) die every day, and that's just the ones who get reported on. Just as many get treated as "brawls gone wrong" or "tragic suicides" because their family didn't accept them and give correct information in the obituary.

There are more cisgender and heterosexual people willing to stand up against it, but that mainly helps when it comes to policy. It doesn't help much with the day to day for most.

edit: I do appreciate you asking. Way too many people assume things are fine now because there's gay people on TV, or some other arbitrary metric. There's still a long way to go.

I've stopped letting myself be bothered and it's actually done wonders for my social life. And most of them are staring because they wish they could be that open.

Who cares what these people (who are judging you for meeting someone in public) think?

They're very unlikely to be anyone meaningful if they're doing that, since being a good conversationalist is a trait that most successful people possess.

Some will get a sour look and resolutely look away, but many will smile and say something back.

I haven't had a bad experience doing that.

It’s a terrible place to live alone when young and single, but that’s not what it’s for.

To replicate the 25 minute commute times that are completely normal across America's car-centric sprawl into a dense and transit-centric area, one has to live in the most central and premium real estate. Great if you can afford it. Most can’t.

We stopped building the sorts of places where you can still get somewhere going at a reasonable speed around the end of WW2, and made it illegal, so it's now very expensive to live in a sensible neighbourhood, there aren't many left. It's a simple supply and demand problem, though not so simple once you attempt to unpack the reasons as to why we have this simple supply and demand problem.

There's a banality to true evil. It's a quirk of human social psychology that when everyone is doing the wrong thing, it stops being the wrong thing. This why rape=bad, and destroying the planet=pretty alright if you ask me.

Typical American suburbia takes density way lower than that. People here seem to value that separation for reasons above and beyond their parking needs. For example, not hearing the neighbors' footsteps through the ceilings or their TVs and family disputes through the walls. Giving each child their own bedroom. Having room for play and gatherings in the backyard. This suggests that, even without cars, we'd still insist on a pretty low densities. (Since it is homeowners in the center who control land use in the center, the frustrations of outer-ring commuters under such an arrangement don't make a difference).

I'm fortunate that I can afford to live in a high-rise district and commute in reasonable time by train and elevator. But even with so many places a short walk from home, it's a big metro area - there are many more I want to go which are not so close. Without a car, I felt isolated and trapped. It's great to have neighborhood businesses, but you get tired of the monotony after a while.

Camaraderie is harder, and making jokes others don’t like can be stigmatizing. I wonder if one’s culture of informality is just less assumably universal than it has been in the recent past. I also wonder if living in a city can desensitize you to how exhausting it can be to invest in a social interaction with no clear payoff.

Chicago is one of the few big cities that is still relatively open to these types of spontaneous interactions.

London on the other hand is not.

Even 10 or 15 years ago - at the time I had a job that was 100% travel time, and found I could generally bootstrap a decent social life in a new town by just going to the nearest cafe and striking up conversations with neighbors.

Nowadays, though, most people are engrossed in some piece of electronics or other, and seem more inclined to regard attempts at socialization as an interruption.

(not that I disagree the phone as shield makes the problem worse).

Taking your example of meeting people online. I was on the internet in the late 90s as a teenager and it was incredibly easy and fun to meet people on IRC or ICQ and just chat. Some of those people I even eventually went on to meet in person. There was no motives, no romantic interests, whatever gender people were. Fast forward to now, these things seem unthinkable to do now both for adults and adolescents, safety concerns, predators, etc.

Take real life neighborhoods for example too. Growing up in the 80s and 90s in both Asia and America, when someone rings the door bell, you open the door and see who it is and talk to them. Nowadays this is almost not the norm anymore. In the past 2 years I have been assaulted and robbed as close as a block away from my house. I'm not opening the door to any stranger ringing my door bell, even if 99% of time they are harmless solicitors. There's far too many incidents of people abusing the trust and trying to cause harm when you let them in. I am not risking that.

I don't know what the answers might be to all of this. Is society actually getting more dangerous? Is it just that we're hearing more thanks to more news and internet? Is it overall income inequality in society that causes more crimes to occur? I have no answers to any of these.

A couple years back I knocked on the door of a stranger's house. A man answered it with "what the f*ck do you want?" I replied "the car in your driveway has its lights on." He softened up immediately and thanked me.

I'm old, and I was instantly very suspicious this was some sort of scam, or she had a partner that was going to rob me, or whatever. I couldn't believe she was just trying to be nice.

She talked with me for a while, and was not put off by my suspiciousness. Eventually I agreed to the hug, and it was very nice, and then she left. That was it. She didn't want anything from me, she just wanted to give.

It's a unique experience in my life. And a much appreciated one.

In a way we deeply lacked the level of discussion we get now online, a lot of opinions couldn’t be discuss effectively with neighbours (for better and for worse). I see them as a lot more genuine than any interactions we had before.

Ideally we need both of them, but I think from now on there will always be a split between very personal online interactions and softer “human” interactions IRL.

I think this is an underappreciated feature of "grinding": it gives players a great excuse to put in time and build social bonds.

>Of course when you're a kid, you can be friends with anybody. Remember when you were a little kid what were the qualifications? If someone's in front of my house NOW, That's my friend, they're my friend. That's it. Are you a grown up.? No. Great! Come on in. Jump up and down on my bed. And if you have anything in common at all, You like Cherry Soda? I like Cherry Soda! We'll be best friends!

In public people wear headphones while walking, on public transportation, and even in grocery stores.

I agree there's some truth to this. But even more so think it's simply a lost art. Why strike up a cheap quick chat when all you have to do is stare at your device.

I'm old school (read: over 50 y/o white male) and I interact with people all the time. But it a skill to read someone and ideally make them laugh / smile.

I think you also have to have a certain amount of empathy (which I feel most ppl lack). "Hey. Nice shoes." or "I like you jacket" goes a long way. But that's more than clicking an icon. And it means you're taking a __small__ risk to engage someone else instead of waiting to have your own ego stroked.

But I deleted my Facebook (really only social media I had) and I haven't had a hard time meeting new people. Really I'm doing a better job. I think this is more because I'm not using Facebook as a crutch. I used to just say "Oh I'll add you on Facebook" (which ironically is way more invasive than a phone number) and then never message them. We'd both like each other's posts and whatnot but it felt really disingenuous.

But since I haven't had that crutch it actually makes me work and focus on building real relationships. This even includes plutonic relationships with the opposite sex.

I'm not saying go out and delete your Facebook and other social media (at least for this reason), but that a lot of us just rely on it as a crutch and real relationships require work. I just think social media makes it easier to be a hermit and kind of tricks you into thinking you are building relationships when you aren't. I often here "I'd delete my Facebook but there are so many people that's the only way I can keep in contact with them." Liking somebody's status and photos isn't keeping in touch nor is it relationship building. But I think most people think treat those actions as if they were.

And I feel like now because of this people think it is weird to talk to someone they haven't talked to in even a few weeks. Hell, I'm okay if I haven't talked to someone in a few years. Life is busy. Life is strange. It is okay to not have to keep in constant and instant contact with people. And I think we forget this because we have technology that no longer makes this the norm. Because in the past instant and constant contact with someone meant you lived with them or extremely near them.

tldr: Relationships take work

What happens on Pluto stays on Pluto, right?

(This is my favorite autocorrect mistake of the week. Thanks for catching it)

It's weird we are told not to trust anyone online but for some reason started using our real names/address/geotagging our events publically.

Does this actually exist? Could it be that it's become more acceptable for people to be dicks to each other, so why risk it?

To counter that, I try to keep up with the local sports, as a base for small talk.

I would also add that the whole minefield of communicating with someone of the opposite sex, especially if you are a man. It seems that you have a high risk of being called up for harassment if you want to start a friendly conversation with a female as a male for example. This is a direct consequence of the whole metoo thing.

Over the last 15 years, society has been more and more strict into defining what is an acceptable social behavior. You are supposed to stay in your lane and not talk to anyone basically, except in accepted places like a bar, sometimes.

I think in 20 years nobody will talk openly on the streets. All the interactions will take place in well defined "apps" or in defined places like a bar. Everything outside that will be looked down as weird.

This is already half happening with dating. You have a higher risk of creating an incident in real life so everyone is now using well defined dating apps with a well defined flow and a well defined experience.

The world is becoming more and more tasteless. Everything has to take place into well defined boundaries.

I work in tech and some of my male coworkers privately tell me that they avoid talking to womens they don't know at networking events or at conferences because of the way it might be interpreted nowadays.

I also think that it's easy to get sucked into circle-jerks that promote and exaggerate these fears of being accused of harassment. As long as you're considerate and respectful, no reasonable person would think you're harassing them. There are always unreasonable people, that shouldn't divide us into men vs women, into groups that fear interacting with each other.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: this is the third warning in a few weeks. We ban accounts that continue to post uncivilly after we ask them not to. Please review the guidelines and use this site as intended.

And as a guy, when you start a conversation with another stranger guy, none of this "Looking and feeling creepy" applies.

Being a victim here was not claimed at all. The discussion here is related to why people are feeling more lonely. And I believe that the boundaries of socially acceptable man-women interactions (amongst others) really shrunk over the last decades, yes.

I also used to approach women non-stop (as you would put it). I simply do it less nowadays because I'm aware of the higher risks associated with it. This has nothing to do with being a victim. It is a loss for everyone, and simply a shift to more "streamlined" ways to meet people such as "apps" that remove all the surprise and risks from the interaction.

On a side note, Why does this discussions HAS to yet again go to a Feminist vs Trump view of the world.

I take public transit a lot and I always see people start random conversations with strangers over little things. People usually don't even respond too badly to the crazy people who talk to everyone. Unless they're being rude or agressive the worst reaction I tend to see is people politely ignoring people like that.

I also have random people come up and talk to me fairly regularly, i've had some great conversations with random people i've met.

My dad gave me a piece of advice he got from a friend of his when he was young about interacting with people in public. It helps to remember most people are just as nervous and afraid of you as you are of them, but at the same time, most people are looking for someone to talk to.

Paying attention to people's body language and reactions helps. If you pay attention you can usually tell the difference between someone who's nervous and someone who just doesn't want to talk.

People really aren't so bad. You gotta remember humans are social animals interacting with eachother is something we naturally do. Today's society may make it difficult, but those drives for human companionship are there.