hackernews client

Making lots of money protects the children of the shareholders from being poor. Perhaps even their childrens children. Or their childrens childrens children. /s

dudisubekti

2 hours ago

This "loneliness" part of this article is confusing to me.

> People are more alone than ever, but they’re not feeling much lonelier than they used to. So maybe all this extra solitude is...fine?

Okay but the data examined for "more alone" is US data with unclear age range (most likely adults). But the data examined for "not feeling much lonelier" is UK data and US school teenager data. I feel like there's a massive blind spot with the fact there's no US adult data...?

bluGill

an hour ago

That was the point of the first part: nobody has data and so we cannot say there is any trend.

dudisubekti

13 minutes ago

But then we can't claim "There is no epidemic of loneliness" without proper data too. The honest (shame this word is ruined by LLMs) conclusion is "we don't know if there's an epidemic of loneliness," which can go either way: either there really is no epidemic of loneliness, or is undetected.

card_zero

7 minutes ago

Well you can do the Occam's razor / Russell's teapot thing, and ask why should there be any specific thing in the absence of (unlooked-for) evidence. Perhaps it's an epidemic of silliness, you know, or itchiness, or moodiness? Could be anything or nothing.

card_zero

an hour ago

Despite the lack of data, I have no hunch that there is any such trend anyway. Just wanted to say that before somebody inevitably says the opposite.

My gut feeling says: don't ask me, I'm a gut.

boilerupnc

21 minutes ago

The microbiome has now entered the room.

ShadowOfThePit

an hour ago

Interesting factoid:

> Over and over again, studies[0] find that people think that their past conversations went worse than they actually did and that future conversations will go worse than they actually do. But when you just make people talk to each other, they end up having a nice time and feeling more confident[1] about their conversational abilities.

[0]: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15298868.2020.18...

[1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002210312...

Razengan

an hour ago

I think it's a side-effect of certain facets of intelligence, mistrained or unrestrained:

Repeatedly processing memory, recursively calling the same function without a limit or exit condition :)

crazygringo

43 minutes ago

> All of this can be prevented with a few tablespoons of lemon juice, but people suffering from scurvy do not develop a hankering for citrus. They will suffer and wither and collapse and never even ask for a grapefruit.

Funny, I absolutely do develop a hankering for citrus whenever my body needs vitamin C. After a workout, and after getting sun at the beach, or just whenever I've gone a couple days without getting enough vitamin C, I absolutely develop a sudden craving for oranges/grapefruit/pineapple/orange juice/Emergen-C. And it doesn't go away until I have enough.

I assume that this is a kind of learned association, that you can recognize the feeling of vitamin C depletion and your body quickly connects that that goes away when you eat certain foods.

But my body absolutely tells me when I need vitamin C. And whether it's at a level of "it would be a nice idea to have some now" or "you need a LOT more vitamin C RIGHT NOW".

globular-toast

33 minutes ago

If you eat any vegetables at all it's unlikely you're ever vitamin C deficient. You are probably just craving sugar.

crazygringo

9 minutes ago

I cannot tell you how wrong you are.

boilerupnc

15 minutes ago

Surprised nobody has mentioned the rise of pet ownership into our lives (at least in the US) [0] and it’s resulting companionship benefits. Seems to me like a potential behavioral reaction to the “social stat” to help correct in some way.

[0]. https://worldanimalfoundation.org/advocate/pet-ownership-sta...

smt88

5 minutes ago

If you look at graphs of children conceived vs. pet adoptions among adults over the years? It’s a pretty obvious “X” shape (pets directly replacing children)

vintermann

26 minutes ago

> Remember 2017, when everybody was making slime at home? Remember how the coolest slimes were the ones that are liquid when undisturbed, but turn solid when you squeeze or poke them? The human mind is kind of like that slime: it only has shape when prodded and pushed by the presence of other people. When left to its own devices, it turns to ooze. And that sticky, shapeless substance provides the perfect Petri dish for all of our current pathologies. The penchant for voting for extremists, the hyperfixation on gambling away your life savings on sports and crypto, the dream of perpetual gooning—these are the disordered desires of a mind that’s been liquified by solitude.

I don't necessarily disagree with this, but author, you just spent the article up to now complaining about people asserting that people are more lonely without evidence.

alexpotato

26 minutes ago

> She ended up flirting with her GoPro cameras, hallucinating the sound of shamans beating drums, and accusing her electrical equipment of poisoning her with sound waves.

There is an interesting phenomenon called "the Firehouse Effect" that is similar but on a group level.

The idea is that if you take a group of humans and isolate them, they will begin to believe wilder and wilder ideas and communicate those ideas amongst themselves. This happens because the group is not routinely "reconciling" with broader society which in turn is slower to adopt new ideas.

It's named after firemen who would spend a lot of time together in firehouses.

https://absoluteengagement.com/blog/are-you-stuck-in-the-fir...

alexpotato

23 minutes ago

So this is anecdotal but lines up with the points of the article:

- texting has given me the ability to stay in touch with lots of my friends

- being a suburban dad with 3 kids who have activities has made it VERY difficult to see other dads in person

Couple this with a lot of the other families having two working parents, spontaneous "let's go hang out, dude" is effectively zero.

What's more common is having to either:

- have a routine scheduled "dads hang out" event

- scheduling a hang out 2-3 weeks in advance (which also sometimes gets cancelled due to "sick kid", "wife got stuck in traffic" etc)

ShadowOfThePit

an hour ago

Weird post. I like the way it's written, there are lots of very interesting links, and the images are quite unique. But it goes on and on, and the conclusion is lacking.

I'd enjoy it for fun, to pass the time, to read a dozen follow-up articles. But as a one-off post to learn and inform myself? Ugh.

Unrelated, but two of the many links have ChatGPT referals. I'm not sure what to think of it. I guess it's fine?

doginasuit

an hour ago

I'd be interested in a good article that questioned the loneliness epidemic narrative, but this isn't it.

shusaku

29 minutes ago

If you think that, at least explain why. What is the point of this comment except to make you feel superior by recycling some snark?

ljm

an hour ago

I've only heard of "loneliness epidemic" in terms of "male loneliness epidemic" and it's framed entirely around young men not getting the attention they expect from women.

The male loneliness epidemic is also known as the growth of incel circles and the influence of supposedly masculine influencers who will do literally anything but treat women both as equals and with respect. And the way these groups work is that they need to keep their membership up, so it's in their interest to keep you away from women by turning you against them.

Whatever narrative there is about young men being left behind by progressiveness, it is a big lie over a smaller truth (the system fails everyone and now it is sometimes failing young white men, in terms of education). Not so different to the great replacement theory I would imagine, but based on gender not race/religion.

orangedog

27 minutes ago

I feel like this is really unfair.

Robert Putnam has chronicled how third spaces are gone (more than 20 years ago). This is a major problem in society and it doesn't just have to do with males and it does not only have to do with incel oriented stuff. "Deaths of despair" are up.

When you sit down and write this stuff I think you need to stake a step back and ask what you are contributing. This is just a mean screed aimed at men and doesn't offer any evidence for why you think lonely men should be cast as just wanting undeserved attention from women.

I know personally that I'm lonely. I have some working relationships, I communicate with my family and friends sometimes, but that's it. I don't want attention from women, that does not matter to me. It is exceedingly easy to get caught up in what is basically anti-social activity (browsing the web, posting on Hcker News - seriously), then you hit your 30s and 40s and you realize you haven't formed any real relationships with people in awhile. It can hit like a load of bricks and then where do you go? I don't know what up with the younger crowd but they obviously feel like they don't have a place anymore.

I just think what you said is not kind at all and tries to turn what is a real problem into some online talking point. This isn't about a bunch of boys caught up in incel rhetoric (you sound like you are caught up in some rhetoric yourself), but it is real people suffering with society being entirely different than it was in any other generation in history.

api

an hour ago

It’s an interesting point made in about 10X the words it should have taken.

It’s a major issue I have with nonfiction in general though. Most of the words are superfluous. Unlike fiction it’s not prose-poetry or storytelling art either, just dry filler.

4ndrewl

an hour ago

Except that the most effective way of conveying facts _is_ through narrative and storytelling.

That and powerpoint, obviously.

HPsquared

an hour ago

It's not effective on the large fraction of people who tune out due to the length.

api

an hour ago

I'm skeptical of whether that's always true, especially today.

Usually when I want pure facts I now want concise and to the point. If I want art I read fiction. Fiction can convey other things, even facts and new ideas, but the main reason it exists (at least for me) is that it's art.

iamacyborg

28 minutes ago

Go drink Margs with friends.

Cures both your scurvy and your social scurvy.

TFNA

2 hours ago

> no one is getting rich selling anti-loneliness pills (yet)

There is already an ecosystem of for-profit social events in European cities (and probably elsewhere) profiting off people's desire to meet up with other human beings when social opportunies have shrunk. Once has seen this on e.g. Meetup.com or Facebook for years now, where bot profiles are used to swell event-signup numbers so people think they will meet more people. Indeed, with the enshittification of Meetup, the only forces that prosper on that site are for-profit ones.

wannabe44

2 hours ago

> no one is getting rich selling anti-loneliness pills (yet)

Social media, dating apps, even andrew tate was doing well till some point.

bluGill

an hour ago

I don't know much about Andrew Tate (what I've heard suggest I don't even want to look him up, but maybe I should)

For Social Media and dating apps - both ran into similar problems: they are a small part of the means. Facebook only have 5-10 minutes of real friend content per day. Dating apps can perhaps fill more time per day - but success means you "find someone" and close your account never to return. If you want to get rich you need to find some way to extend the time people spend on your platform - and that means something other than your premise. Facebook is filled with garbage. Any mildly successful dating app will be bought out by a big player because that app is taking away from the big player.

hermitcrab

31 minutes ago

>(what I've heard suggest I don't even want to look him up, but maybe I should)

I really wouldn't. If you don't know anything about him, count yourself lucky.

bcjdjsndon

2 hours ago

> There is already an ecosystem of for-profit social events in European cities (and probably elsewhere) profiting off people's desire to meet up with other human beings when social opportunies have shrunk.

They're called nightclubs and bars lol trust HN to be so insulated from the wider world

stub_out

2 hours ago

The scurvy part definitely tracks. So many developers live on ramen and energy drinks; basic nutrients become an afterthought.

amelius

an hour ago

The energy drinks often contain a lot of added vitamins.

ta988

an hour ago

Most of them of the B group for various reasons. Addition of vit C is not that common.

bcjdjsndon

2 hours ago

He makes good points on statistics but at the base of all of the data, it's just surveys... I know it's not feasible to survey everyone all the time, but I wouldn't make any conclusions off such data

tonyedgecombe

an hour ago

>I know it's not feasible to survey everyone all the time

I think we are getting pretty close to that.

b3lvedere

30 minutes ago

I love being alone. I'm never lonely. Maybe i'm crazy.

throw310822

3 hours ago

> no one is getting rich selling anti-loneliness pills (yet)

No but those who claim to have observed a worrying phenomenon will be interviewed by the press, invited to conferences, listened to by politicians, and will be first in line to receive further grants to study the worrying phenomenon. It's not corruption, it's just normal gratification for your hard work and a feeling of being relevant. Better than studying things and having to report on the absence of any finding.

ThrowawayTestr

2 hours ago

Do people not like juice? How do you get scurvy in 2026?

Vinnl

an hour ago

The article is talking about "social scurvy", which they use as a metaphor for people not realising they need to get out of the house and meet up with other people every now and then.

ShadowOfThePit

an hour ago

Not the point of the post. Just a clickbaity-ish comparison to reel you in.

conception

an hour ago

In the world of protein low carb pop tarts juice is poison.

sebastiennight

32 minutes ago

How hard is it to find some high-protein fruit juice these days?

Given that there's no strong regulation that forces fruit juice to be made from fruit, I'd wager that this is already a product line.

Razengan

an hour ago

"There is no epidemic of loneliness" say the people who don't know what loneliness is (by the very fact that they have channels to broadcast anything, and colleagues to study such things with etc)

≈ "Just stop being so depressed!" reddit.com/r/thanksimcured

What's undeniable is the disgusting monetization (and control) of connecting people.

moralestapia

28 minutes ago

I have worked on efforts to connect people with each other.

What I've noticed in many of these meetups created for other people to mingle, is that a lot of people that drop by, who don't have a loneliness problem, make the atmosphere worse for everybody else who does. Instead of fostering genuine connections, they just "don't see the issue" and shoot down genuine attempts of others (who might be introverts, shy, whatever) to connect. Such a thing is completely out of place, because the whole motivation for said meetup was to get people to know each other.

I have started placing notices like "if you have friends, don't come" lol, which is a bit controversial but actually upgrades the experience. An analogy, imagine a married guy dropping into a singles dating event to talk about how a great relationship he's in and "tips to survive a marriage" and whatever (also, if it is that good then why are you here?), you get the idea.

And I also agree with your last sentence.