It's kinda tricky to start conversations with strangers in a world where everyone has their Airpods in, or in cultures where talking with strangers if frowned upon.
For example, I'm trying to make new friends now in my 30's in a foreign country where everyone has their friends/cliques since childhood, and it's basically playing the game on ultra nightmare difficulty.
I can see why a lot of people just give up and hermit themselves into their introvert hobbies and resort to para-social relationships with people online, as forced socialization consumes a lot of time and effort with next to no returns.
You're missing the point. Airpods are not a core issue, but people insulating themselves audibly (and maybe soon visually if the Apple Vision Pro catches on) certainly doesn't help spark up random encounters with strangers in public.
Sure, some of it is due to more awareness on mental health than in the past, but a lot of it is also due to things just being worse and more difficult.
Is it more difficult, or do we have greater expectations?
I look to my grandparents' generation and they "settled" for their neighbours as friends. I seriously doubt they were perfect soulmates, but they put in the effort to make it work and ended up quite close as a result. Whereas people in my generation seem to want that instant spark. If that isn't felt, they keep looking instead of working on building a relationship with who is there. Nowadays, becoming anything more than an acquaintance with your neighbour is almost unheard of.
As in - When you, the digital-first-lonely-guy, put away your phone and turn to the obviously-busy guy on his phone with earbuds in and doing super important socialdoomscroll work and you say "Hey, cool shoes!" suddenly it's not a problem anymore.
Instantly.
And it's never not been that way.
Now, you're correct that if they just fucking did it, it'd _probably_ be fine. But what happens when they try to speak to their peers who scoff and ignore them? Or when every person they try to talk to simply can't hear them. Or when there simply isn't a place to go after school and chat, and all social interaction stands on phone organizing as a prerequisite.
Yes, if they broke the seal on interpersonal interaction they'd see that almost everyone is actually positive and happy to speak and make friends. But that seal is getting harder and harder to break every day
It reminds me of the reproductive crisis that started happening in Japan some decades ago. The blame, as I recall it, was on the rigid social norms meant that it was super uncomfortable for everyone whenever a guy tried to talk to a girl. Guys stopped trying and switched to being absorbed in jobs and increasingly niche obsessions, further from the normalcy and reality around them.
Seems like we're not taking any hints from their example and instead saying "gee, society is bigger than me, woe is me, I'll just continue digging the hole".
It's exactly like evolution in nature. Life didn't start on land because one single fish decided to jump out of the water an breathe air then every other fish followed, no, it started because collectively millions of fishes died trying to do that at the same time over millions of years till adaptation of the species to the new environment happend.
Society is exactly like that as a collective. Going against societal norms as a lone wolf, doesn't get you seen as some sort of rebel hero who everyone looks up to, but as a weirdo/creep most of the time if you aren't handsome, rich or charismatic.
The point of the conversation is that if /you/ are feeling isolated (and, statistically speaking, YOU ARE) /you/ can affect /you/ by breaking out of your lil self-imposed isolation chamber and doing what normal humans do: communicate.
Will doing so change society? Who gives a hoot? /You'll feel better/.
Frankly these excuses are just that. Excuses. Stop catastrophizing. Start trying. And, while I'm ranting, stop encouraging others to catastrophize too.
Communication is a two way street where the other party has no obligation to listen to you when you want to communicate.
How do you communicate where people aren't interested in listening to strangers?
None of the advice requires the other to person do anything, but you're doing a great job of demonstrating that they /do/!
...
Thinking about this thread... I've had another thought.
I wonder if those that're trained to primarily communicate online are trained to do so adversarially in order trigger people. Triggering people is the most effective way to keep talking to someone. Like how they say if your child or pet can't get enough attention out of you they'll do naughty things, because even getting yelled at is... attention.
Yes & no. I think this speaks to the bubble most HN commenters live in. Step outside a VHCOL coastal city and the statement does not hold...
I don't live in any coastal city. I live in mainland Europe.
“Fear of places and situations that might cause panic, helplessness, or embarrassment. Agoraphobia is an anxiety disorder that often develops after one or more panic attacks.
Symptoms include fear and avoidance of places and situations that might cause feelings of panic, entrapment, helplessness, or embarrassment.
Treatments include talk therapy and medication.”
turns out, the poison (talking) is the cure (talking).
Whoever came up with the modern definition of "agoraphobia" has failed to define the term. "Fear of places and situations that might cause panic, helplessness, or embarrassment." Is there any other kind of fear? The word is so broadly inclusive as to have little meaning.
ἀγορά (agora) – assembly, especially an assembly of the people; the place of assembly; speech; market, marketplace [1]
φόβος (phobos) – fear, terror, alarm, fright, panic [2]
Agoraphobia seems straightforwardly to mean "fear of public spaces and interactions." A person might say that etymology is not definition, but if you look at the most common examples of agoraphobia, this is exactly what's being described. [3]
We need to stop being so "inclusive" in our definitions! The purpose of a definition is to make something finite, i.e., to circumscribe its boundaries in order to enable clear thinking about that specific term. Broad definitions harm critical thinking.
1. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%80%CE%B3%CE%BF%CF%81%C...
2. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CF%86%CF%8C%CE%B2%CE%BF%CF%8...
3. https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/agoraphobia/over...
Adaptive socialisation happens through conversation. It is as scary to live in a society where conversation is forbidden as it is in a society where discourse is manipulated or perhaps even made overwhelmingly toxic to the point where people relapse into the sort of brutish tribalism that... forms the plot of many Roddenberry episodes.