It was brought up on my previous post that I had touched on a very critical subject. The destruction of western social life and isolation of modern westerners, especially men. How does this play out overall, what can be done, and to help this fit into this general site's theme, how has this affected gaming?
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I disagree. I think social media is a release valve for the society that was destroying itself with rules and social demands. We weren't having neighborhood barbecues before that point, so how could social media be the problem?
Also, I've met girlfriends and even my wife through social media. It usually involved mutual friends or social groups online.
I think the same people that destroyed social gatherings in real life are doing the same to social media.
They're narcissists. I've worked with a few, and they work that way for everything. Any authority they can get will be abused. Then they fill the board with all their work so you have to acknowledge them.
The best trick I've learned is to tell jokes. I mostly post memes on Facebook, and no one really knows my politics.
You know, I was watching this episode of an older show called Beastmaster the other day. In it one of the more philosophical characters had pointed out that the one way to counter illusions (IE, illusion magic) was through simple laughter.
There's something about this that seemed... both insightful and prophetic.
"If you struggle making friends offline, you'll struggle online too."
I agree, finding non-NPC people to talk to is hard online and nearly impossible offline. I honestly don't have time for people that constantly go on about leftist talking points. Most of my friends tend to be older men. Men my age either are apathetic about life, like talking to a husk of a person with no opinions or desires of their own or a passionate leftist.
Aye. Even though I've been generally not a fan of social media for a long time, especially with how I'd often seen it used, I've more recently become aware of certain benefits and advantages. Some more practical, others providing some useful incentive and encouragement for people to get out of their comfort zone and interact with the world a lot more.
Just as a small example, while I find selfies to be lame and narcissistic, seeing close friends taking photos and clips of their adventures provides me with a greater interest to go and seek out similar experiences. And it's not because I feel some sense of pressure or obligation, or because I'm trying to match up or compete. I simply feel inspired by what I see and want to enjoy some similar things.
There certainly are downsides of course, and I attribute a lot of this to how people sometimes choose to use or respond to the tools available. I think the trickiest part is the regular instant and on-hand access that smartphones provide, and how distracting and borderline habitual it can be to focus on that instead of putting it aside and enjoying your surroundings.
It's a tool. If you use it correctly, you have an amazing device. I discovered I could do a lot from just my phone and preferred it that way.
But then I see when a friend decides that the world needs to get their new joke about how they caught Trump this time.
Perhaps, but I’d argue that as time goes on modern AAA multiplayer games end up isolating people far more than in the past. With chats being opt in instead of opt out by default, more focus on grind and mtx over community and clans, the almost constant push to make gaming safe spaces where people don’t have to interact to play successfully. At least in the multiplayer games I’ve played in recent years, you don’t make friends as you play.
People socialize in nice gyms.
How does this play out overall? Not at all.
Just yesterday one of my neighbours attempted suicide by jumping off the bridge which resulted in her hospitalization.
What followed is entire neighbourhood coming together to devise a plan on how to take care of her cats.
Ended up adopting one of them despite being an unapologetically straight white christian working class male surrounded by women remotely working from their homes paid off by their parents.
I found nothing but support as the neighbours provided me with cat food, accessories, vet and groomer contacts as well as mass persuasion towards my landlord to not be an absolute bellend and revise my lease contract to allow pets.
Turns out the degeneracy of urban jungles and sanitized social media websites does not reflect suburbs.
Why did your neighbor attempt suicide?
The shit show started about a month ago when she was dumped by her boyfriend (2x while she was 5x).
She was practically barging into other people's houses just so she wouldn't be alone.
3 weeks ago I had to call ambulance because she lied collapse near my rental.
2 weeks ago her sister had police break into her house because of no contact, ambulance took her to hospital again.
And now she jumped off the bridge because she just couldn't take it anymore.
If there's anything I'm taking away from all this is that loneliness hurts more than lack of comfy life even though she had a paid off house by her parents.
Loneliness is a surprisingly lonesome bitch to deal with.
I know experts chock it up to how we've evolved to be "social creatures", but the actual neurological mechanisms for why such a dependency would exist is still so strange somehow. Yet even so, its effects are undeniable.
She couldn't find anyone to adopt her cats. ;)
True, true, false. Not a feminist, just a lonely old hag.
Seems to be the fate for a lot of woman who keeps riding the CC.
cats are a special case
I unironically like cats.
Not all cats, but the nice ones, at least.
They’re not everyone’s cup of tea (supposedly), sure, but I do like me a li’l furball.
Much, much less work than dogs, too.
Sad story: I met a girl today who “adopted” a three month old puppy, yesterday, in Australia, and then decided the next day that she would fly him back to Brazil, today…
Tiny puppy, no preparation (she didn’t even have a crate!!), never travelled before, let alone three long international flights, didn’t have its vaccinations, and will be forced into quarantine (almost certainly) when it gets to Brazil… And even before she left, she was already leaving the puppy behind with other people (“to mind him”), while she walked off and did chores… If we hadn’t been there, he would have run away. She didn’t even tie him up!!
There was nothing I could really do to stop this, but I fucking hope they stopped her from taking him out of the country, because that’s just… Evil.
I hate seeing animal cruelty like that. But it’s hard for randoms to stop some dumb backpacker bitch. Have to leave that up to the authorities…
But man, I hope this dog gets taken off her. Made me sad.
Then I guess we need to use them as a bargaining chip.
This is wholesome.
Obviously not the suicide attempt, but the rest of it, including you adopting the cat! 😸
I’m pretty dark on the world right now, so I needed something wholesome like this.
Well done you.
We need to stop the flow of immigrants. The constant arrival of huge numbers of foreigners is contributing to the problem.
We also need de-urbanization combined with making urban areas less alienating for those still in them. That means taking care of crime and homelessness. There is little political will to do this.
A long time ago a friend opened up his house and said anyone was welcome at any time. This house became a major hub for my life. There were sleeping bags all over the floor, and people started buying food and helping with rent to keep it open. Several marriages happened from it, and we all keep in contact to this day.
The neighbors thought it was a cult. The police started to just hang out from time to time. There were videogames in every room, and a closet full of magic the gathering cards. We had long discussions on physics. At one point the lower half of the house was broken into by the landlords son, and they had a loud drunken party while everyone upstairs was reading the Bible. The neighbors still hated my friends place even after he helped in finding and capturing the idiots.
I think society has forced quietness to the point that socializing is impossible. We've created so many lines, and built up so many bubbles that having a get together is very difficult. Even if it's a bunch of quiet nerds, society says this is wrong.
The only recourse is to ignore them, and have a save slot for the police when they arrive.
The discussion in question:
ArchRespawnsAgain "The sperges are obsessive about women, but you're touching on a big issue that usually gets ignored. Social life in general has collapsed. It's not just an issue with romance. People have fewer friends and socialize less IRL overall. You really need to build some kind of social circle. That's got a bigger chance of working than just trying to ask women out until you hit the jackpot. The lack of a social circle makes people more paranoid as well since you don't know anything about the people you are trying to date. If you have mutual friends, there is vetting that has happened through that.
For meat space activities, there's the classic bowling billiards, etc. and card and board games. Small town festivals are a bit of a hidden gem in some places. For rural areas, there's fishing, hunting, and other outdoorsy stuff. There's the odd birthday parties and such.
The red pill media has, over the years, become very black pilled and sensationalist on the subject.
For years, these people insisted that they had it all figured out, that they understood women and could get you laid and help with long term relationships and even marriages. They're now terminally single and black pilled. Despite this, they have not admitted to being wrong about anything and still insist they have it all figured out. Keep that in mind as you read the rage baiting screenshots of reddit posts they base their worldview on."
MargarineMongoose "I wish more people would talk about the complete collapse of social life. It's fucking terrifying and is the underlying root cause for a whole host of problems in the modern world. We need more in the way of efforts being made to correct the issue. I've been trying to do what I can in my small sphere of influence by just sending out a weekly email to try and get people together to go hiking once a week, but it's like pulling teeth to get more than one or two people to show up regularly. It's what we all need though, something where we all get together regularly to interact with one another."
Slav4U "As much as I hate to say it, the collapse of social life is the fault of men. In times past the men would organize groups and events (rotary, masons, etc) that would be social and help the community. Otherwise men would organize BBQ and neighborhood meetups.
We dropped our responsibilities, many with no father figure to teach them.
I tell you though, people are hungry for it if you start. I am introverted but have taught myself to organize and have gotten to the point where I throw parties where I get more people than I invited.
It can be done, but only if you make it so. The benefit as well is you can make the party what you want it to be."
What's a social life?
I meet my friend maybe once a month, I mostly only leave the house to go to work. I have forces myself to go back to the pistol club regularly for the first time in a good decade, but that is my only real social activity, and most of the time I shoot 50 rounds of .22 and leave. With electronics it takes barely 15 minutes. At least when we shot on paper the walk and talk to patch the targets was social.
I have no girlfriend, I take SSRIs to leave the house and I function poorly doing many social things. I'll be 37 in October and I've been worse than this for most of the last 20 years.