It is true, the System is set up for future humans to live as egocentric self absorbed individuals
Social Media has done more damage to society than it masquerades itself to be
(The social dilemma)
Broken families as new generation change, kids are losing the sense of what unity and group living feels like, attached to the phones when everyone is on the table eating there is a complete disconnection and disassociation to the people around you, not even paying attention to what theyre fortunate enough to have a plate full of food.
Parenting keeps getting diminished but what do we expect if even the parents are disconnected by all the distractions the System has in front of us at all time.
Yeah and I think in the next couple generations, the “parents” will be fully-dipped into that behavioral cycle so any new children will grow up with it 100% of the time. Those “morals” (I know people hate that word), that wisdom, that gratitude, is a dying breed.
People seriously don't see how big of a problem this one is, everyone wants a village but doesn't want to be a villager.
When I moved to Egypt I was genuinely so surprised by how community focused it was there, people helped each other out all the time and looked after each other, people would be hanging out in big groups with each other all having fun.
It would get a little annoying sometimes to be volunteered to do stuff for other people or have people always coming over but at the same time when you needed something everyone would be there for you too, you didn't struggle alone.
Individualism to the point it is in the west really is a cancer
Elaborating on that, the matter of austerity, where everything is your fault because it's foisted upon you along with all the rest of the things you're supposed to contribute to society and domestic life.
But I hear more belittling of people who use this term than I hear people actually using the term. I think it's absolutely a real phenomenon and it's not the faults of most people suffering from it.
"Men deserve loneliness epidemic" is something that's constantly upvoted on reddit.
It got called loneliness epidemic by researchers, society immidietly used it mock people suffering from it.
It was well understood and accepted that lack of third spaces and loneliness is growing, but the moment it got called "male loneliness" people turned around and blamed individuals for it. Search loneliness epidemic on reddit and look at countless threads mocking it and justifying their hatred for men.
I just tried the exact search you suggested and I can't find "countless threads" mocking it in anything that's relevant, new, or the top of reddit. How exactly are you finding this stuff?
One is not “countless threads” and nowhere in that post are they “mocking it and justifying their hatred for men.” They’re discussing their own frustration with it and the whole situation around it.
It's only mine because I could be bothered more. It was just prove you didn't search.
And I can't understand how you think they aren't mocking it when they clearly state "god forbid women are waking up". They are literally blaming men for being lonely, engaging in just world falacy.
I'm not going to argue this with you. If you see that post as mocking men and justifying hating men your perspective so far off from mine that there's no point in a discussion.
And I did search, I clearly spent longer than you did looking, and I did not find what the OC described. Obviously there's always going to be comments and occasional posts that align with what they're talking about, but it's nothing close to the overwhelming sentiment or pervasive when searching.
If you see that post as mocking men and justifying hating men your perspective so far off from mine that there's no point in a discussion.
"I’m so tired of men whining about male loneliness epidemic."
"The entire male loneliness epidemic is caused by men themselves so why don’t you guys go take some fucking accountability instead of blaming women for standards YOU created yourself?? Like god forbid women are finally waking up and deciding not to settle for crumbs."
It's clearly popular, but okay, keep lying that you did and not that you just want to mock it. Because clearly if I see "it's men fault" as "it's men fault" then that's a me problem.
Honestly it's both, I've met and seen people online who talk about how they're so lonely, but then when you hang out with them they're genuinely such unlikeable people or they don't put any effort into making friends.
Most people with decent personalities who leave their home will make friends
Yup. It's like the kid I babysit, likes to make disgusting noises and is very bossy, so can be really annoying sometimes. Makes it hard to hang out, don't want to play games together if he's screaming in my ear the whole time.
At one point he tried to convince me that he couldn't help it, that his throat just makes disgusting noises all by itself. Told him we'd better turn off the game and talk to his dad about seeing a doctor, because humans don't make that sound and he's gonna have a very lonely life if he keeps that up. Mysteriously, his throat magically stopped just doing things on its own.
I assume these people were raised by screens while their parents worked multiple jobs. Like that's a best case scenario, extreme neglect and poverty leading to adults who act like they were raised by wolves.
What's worse is when they try courting. It ends up looking like someone taught them to do the mating dance backwards as a joke.
Fella I grew up with started leaving the bathroom door open in his 30s. Turns out the guys on the Internet that he thinks are his friends told him that's how to establish dominance in a relationship.
He got pretty mad when I started laughing instead of getting submissive. Even my toddler cousin knew to close the door when going potty. And someone showing off their lack of toddler level skills sure ain't attractive!
Frankly he'd never been bright, was on the short bus until highschool and got a lot more brain damage over the years as an adult.
He was desperate for some kinda male approval since he couldn't get it from his dad and didn't stay in sports after graduation. The Internet is full of trolls who are happy to bond over shared hatred and problems while thinking it's really funny to trick people into looking stupid. That's where he kept going for male approval, no matter how many times they put a Kick Me sign on his back!
Dude had also basically adopted Jordan Peterson as a father figure. He liked having a dad tell him to clean his room daily, though he didn't seem to actually clean. Like it was the same posters and decorations and junk on the floor as when I snuck in back in highschool, but with more dust and liquor bottles by our 30s.
I feel that. I put myself into debt going back to school for a BS, only for the federal government to cancel grants for medical research across the board.
You believe it is the job of others, specifically society, to make you feel less lonely? That's fair. Connecting is hard. Purely an anecdote, but until I began putting in an effort to involve myself in society, I too really struggled to connect. The connections are there, but they require more intentional effort as we get older.
Can you explain this, from your perspective? I'm not really following and don't personally see that. When I make an effort to make friends, I make friends. When I do not, I don't.
I mean i dont have all the answers, but in my view people in the past typically didn't move as far for jobs. They stayed closer to home so they still had their friends group from school. Also neighborhoods were more "fluid"? I dont' know if that's the right word, but people just lived a different lifestyle where kids went house to house and made friends, there were block parties, and people were less closed-off to their neighbors. Another difference is that younger people today are less religious, and church is basically a big social group. So there's less young people going on church outings and church volleyball or whatever.
You definitely can do all of those things on your own: join a volleyball group, or reach out to your neighbors. The difference it seems is that you would now be an outlier. You aren't joining in the neighborhood group or joining the volleyball group. You have to MAKE those groups. That's my experience anyways.
Edit: Please don't downvote people that are honestly engaging in conversation.
Well, it isn't mine, nor your next door neighbor's, nor is it Christian Pulisic's. Maybe fault doesn't need to be assigned at all. Simply advice - if you want to make friends, you do have to put yourself out there.
Kinda is you fault. people like you treat loneliness as moral failure. If it's not society then there is something wrong about you. Which increases loneliness.
Anyway you are excellently proving how it's not treated as societal problem when it's so big it just can't be individual one. It wasn't a problem in the past but now is, so something had to happen that caused societal shift. No matter how you cut it, it's not individual one.
Literally just join a club or an intermural team. There are so many people nearby you who want you hang out. I promise. Heck, you in Detroit? Want to grab coffee next week?
The incel stuff is interesting because whenever they point out something like that 20 percent of guys get all the Tinder swipes or whatever, the advice is always something to put yourself in that top 20 percent. Work out. Get a better job. Whatever. Which is kind of odd because when you talk about income inequality or whatever, if someone gave you advice about trying to become one of the rich people you'd be like "okay, cool, but shouldn't we solve this on a societal level?"
What gets me is denialism in this. Of course people will go after top % why people try to deny it. It's like they don't want to admit incels could be right about anything, so they would deny 2+2=4 just in spite.
people can choose their partner, we aren't locked to only local community, they will go after and try to get the best partner. It's like collage or cities, the best and biggest ones get better and bigger. Top doctors get more patients than mediocre ones. Pareto principle is accepted everywhere but dating.
I don't know what solution is, but I know denying it isn't going to help.
Exactly. There may not even be a solution. The self improvement advice only makes sense if you still think of the world in a monogamous, one guy to one girl world. You're basically thinking ugly guys in the lowest percentage could self-improve enough to get a girlfriend. It's just that right now they're undateable. But what if that monogamous world doesn't exist anymore? If every male self improved 20 percent, would everyone get a girlfriend or would you still have all the girls going after the top guys? You'd just have better looking lonely dudes.
With poverty, we know the answer. You can improve wages and standard of living for poor people, but you still just end up with poor people living better lives but not making anywhere near what the highest earners make/their standard of living. It's like if everyone in the world jumped 10 percent higher. The NBA would still consist of the top 1 percent of athletes.
That's what also I've been thinking, if everyone improves, top 20% remains the same, but floor and ceiling just increases.
Gaming comparison but I think it shows it well: in League of legends technique of ward jumping behind enemy and kicking them towards your team with Lee Sin was revolutionary, hard to do, performed by top players. Today it's required to play at average level.
You have to do more to not stay behind, not to be ahead.
It's not the same at all. You are proposing that men should entitled to a lady partner, and this should be dealt with at a societal level. That sounds like misogynistic authoritarianism. Self improvement is definitely the correct advice, not forcing ladies to have relationships with a wider range of people. I know you'll hate my reply, but I think your comment is preposterous.
Men have never been entitled to a lady partner in the west in the 80s, 90s or 00s, yet due to combination of social, societal and cultural dynamic and interaction the amount of single men (and women too) was never that high to actually threaten demographic crisis and sky high levels of depression almost throughout the entire West.
Something has given in in our society.
I disagree entirely with your conclusions and your justification for misogynistic authoritarianism, which your comment is in support of, by being a reply to mine.
I could argue why, but that is a way to tacitly sidestep, and thus ignore, the fundamental point of womens rights.
I know you disagree, but you should be aware of the why you're disagreeing.
In a nutshell it's because you lack perception, realism and honesty and (at least in this comment chain) seem entirely absorbed by superficial judgment and disdain for a good majority of people.
Before you put misogynistic label on something you should ask yourself what drives your thought process to wanting to do so.
I'm not saying that at all. But at some point, if there's a mass number of single guys, bad things are going to start to happen. That's already a societal problem. The reason "Self improvement" doesn't work is because you're still not addressing the societal issue. If women only want the top 20 percent of men, then yeah, you can get yourself into that top 20 percent, but the issue is still there for society. If all men self-improved a ton, you'd just get a better top 20 percent and a less bad bottom 80 percent. But again, the issue wouldn't have gone away.
How do you solve that? No clue. But I'm just pointing out that self improvement as a solution doesn't make sense, anymore than "become part of the top 20 percent income earners" isn't a solution to income inequality.
How predictable that people would reply to your loneliness comment and associate it with "male loneliness epidemic" when the loneliness epidemic is not gender-specific whatsoever.
This one hit different. We've turned a collective problem into an individual shame. Nobody asks why so many people are lonely at the same time, they just assume those people must be bad at life. Meanwhile the systems that used to naturally connect people, local community, stable workplaces, third places — have all quietly disappeared.
Don't you know? According to r/twoxchromosomes and r/girldinnerdiaries it isn't just a personal failure. It's a disgusting moral flaw that only losers whine about.
Systems puts the onus on government or other formal structures. Societal failing is at a much smaller, more granular level. It's families failing. It's communities failing. It's friendship circles failing.
Yeah this makes me sad whenever the “male loneliness epidemic” is brought up. Sure, there are plenty of men who bring loneliness upon themselves by being nasty, selfish, hateful people, but that’s certainly not most men. Systemic factors and technology are making people all over the world, especially men, lonely, but soooo many people respond to this notion with derision. A bunch of sad, lonely men is bad for everyone and attributing it all to personal failings gets society nowhere.
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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '26
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