It has tons of small but useful tips:

- host it Monday or Tuesday from 7-9pm. People are usually free those nights and make sure it ends at 9pm for the folks who have to wake up early

- don't send an evite with "0 of 60 guest have responded". Start by having your core group accept and then send the invite directly to each new person

- have name tags. but make sure YOU fill out the name tags or you will have "Batman" and "Superman" at your party

- introduce people and have "get to know you games"

Now, I'm sure someone will say "this is so formulaic and doesn't feel natural!". That's kind of the point. You need to give folks some structure to be able to interact. The name tags for example remove the "oh, I met this person before but I can't remember their name so I just won't talk to them" etc.

0 - https://x.com/nickgraynews

1 - https://amzn.to/3ZhtSfi

Really, that’s it.

You want to play D&D together, you host and DM.

You want to just hang out, you reach out and propose what you’re doing.

You want more purposeful and meaningful time, join a volunteer group you vibe with.

Even if it’s meeting for coffee. You have to be the one who reaches out. You have to do it on a regular cadence. If, like me, you don’t have little alarms in your head that go off when you haven’t seen someone in a while, you can use automated reminders.

I have observed my spouse (who is not on social media) do this and she maintains friendships for decades this way. Nowadays she has regular zoom check ins, book clubs, and more, even with people who moved to the other coast. You do now have the tools for this. I have adopted it into my own life with good results.

Note: you are going to get well under a 50% success rate here. Accept that most people flake. It may always feel painful (and nerds like us often are rejection-sensitive). You have to feel your feelings, accept it, and move on.

You are struggling against many aspects of the way we in the developed world/nerd world live. We have a wealth of passive entertainment, often we have all consuming jobs or have more time-consuming relationship with our families than our parents ever did. We move to different cities for jobs, and even as suburban sprawl has grown, you’re on average probably further away from people who even live in the same city! You get from place to place in a private box on wheels, or alternatively in a really big box on wheels with a random assortment of people. You don’t see people at church, or market day, or whatever other rituals our ancestors had. On the positive side, you have more tools and leisure than ever before to arrange more voluntary meetings.

1. Hyper-perfect social media / television setting "the best" expectations for an event.

2. Decreased knowledge of how to host a gathering. It's not rocket science, but throwing one the first time can seem daunting. And throwing one well does take skill. E.g. icebreakers, identifying and facilitating the right introductions by highlighting mutual interests, making sure wallflowers have a good time, defusing tensions, food, etc.

3. Decreased American tolerance for and ability to handle awkwardness, and there's always going to be some awkwardness in social interactions.

4. Decreased public/accessible American meeting places. There used to (< 2000) be a plethora of low-cost, broadly-accessible spaces that could serve as training wheels for events (handling food, furnishings, cleaning, etc). They've essentially all been privatized, commercialized, and optimized to turn seats -- think real coffee shops disappearing in favor of Starbucks.

- lower expectations (my own and everyone else's). I work out the bare minimum that would work for the event and do that. People need food. They don't need music.

- tell people how to contribute: "bring snacks and drinks", ask one specific person to bring ice. when people arrive I often give specific tasks: "can you find someone to help move the table and chairs into the other room", "can you sort out music"

- do it the same way every time so it's less mentally taxing

- get a friend to help with setup

It may seem ridiculous, but it’s a form of stoicism adjacent philosophy that presumes nominally more control over one’s circumstances, and it has had excellent outcomes for me. Ratchet forward but expect modest clicks and be delighted when something goes right or someone comes through.

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I find that the more a group does things, the more everyone chills out. It's like the expectations come from a fear of being judged and from uncertainty. When everyone has information from the last ten events then you don't need to stress anymore, because everyone knows how this one will go and they've all judged one another already.

If there are other parties happening and you're trying to make a better one, by all means, go all out. But mostly people in their 40s aren't going to many house events, so they're just happy to be somewhere with people. They don't care that you didn't decorate or sweep the floor or prepare an elaborate meal. You made soup and they're thrilled.

Once you've got the gist down, try and find one thing that you can go a little overboard on; it makes it very memorable. Examples: I made a big pot of home-made chili once, and another time we did (what looked like) an extravagant nacho bar. It was both better and way cheaper than typical event food.

Definitely enlist an accomplice, but be aware you likely need to (appear to) be the mastermind.

Granted it’s still a lot of effort but it’s low key and I find people prefer that unless it gets enough momentum to become a “thing” haha

I wonder how much of this is due to our ever increasing sense of obligation to be "performing" all the time. Maybe increased by the perpetual presence of social media and the habits and mindset that both creating and consuming for it creates.

Hypothesis: modern society (especially apps) has decreased the amount of realtime, face-to-face social interactions at all stages of life, which has eventually manifested into a decreased average (there are still some social people!) capability to deal with social awkwardness. And consequently less comfort/appetite for putting oneself in situations where it might happen.

It’s due to people having higher standards than before and being bifurcated on every issue. There is deep polarization and tribalism within American culture.

Everyone consumes different content and there’s very little homogeneity within our culture. Like… Americans are more diverse than ever in terms of their thoughts and behaviors. They genuinely have little in common compared to many other cultures.

Part of the increased diversity is unavoidable due to technological changes eroding previous touchpoints. E.g. limited broadcast TV becoming cable becoming streaming.

But there does seem to be an increasing dearth of the logical tonic: discussion-facilitating diverse spaces. Places where people of different opinions can mingle, there are strong social norms around mutually productive conversation (and enforcement to discourage / weed out poison apples?), and that are open to new people.

My approach around this is suggesting the idea to people up front and then throwing everyone into a WhatsApp chat and laying down the plan. Anyone who can't join gets removed/leaves. No one expects a whatsapp group to be a refined VIP experience. It's just people getting together and sharing an experience.

Having moved countries and needing to start up a new friend group, things like Meetup or Facebook groups help a lot. There are _many_ people out there who are looking to meet people.

For throwing a party, my general rule of thumb is expect 50% of people to turn up.

I recently moved into a very upper class neighborhood (pacific heights) and enrolled my child in the neighborhood private school.

The social hosting skill I’ve observed and and able to do as well is extraordinarily high. People throw parties, know how to act, are cordial and polite and seem to reasonably enjoy each others company while also teaching their children the same.

This is how I remember mere middle class parents acting in the late 90s and early 2000s but my fellow millennials and z seem to be completely incapable of.

One huge aspect I’ve noticed is that it’s wildly expensive in time and money to host. An open cocktail night cost me nearly 3000 dollars to host. I can imagine this would not be common for Gen Z these days.

Up to a point, expenses are elastic and proportionate to income. Across different incomes, things like "dinner" or "cocktail" mean (and cost) very different things, to the point that someone on either end of the scale doesn't even know what is on the other end. A very wealthy individual might not know about the $1.50 Costco dog, and a less wealthy individual won't know about the $10,000 bottle of cab sauv (okay I'm making that up, I don't know either, but you get the point).

If you have $100k you'll make do with that, if you have 10x more, most people will find ways to scale the expenses accordingly. If you have 1,000x more, that's just wasted cash that does nothing for society, but that's another discussion...

I was highlighting partially how it's just generally expensive to host the first time a large group.

And in answer to "When that changed?" from parent, my guess would be mid-90s.

In that generations coming of party-hosting age after that were increasingly less likely to host.

My mom would constantly complain she used to be a social butterfly but having kids "ruined" that for her. Which never made sense to me, it's not like she ever interacted with us much.

One is reminded of this - https://x.com/dril/status/384408932061417472?lang=en

Partly what I was trying to point out is how 'adult life' gets complicated and expensive and most people are understandably just opting out. But at the same time, whats going out with it is just basic manners and social habits -- which is unfortunate.

I mean I've spent a couple hundo at Costco buying booze and food and paper supplies for a party I hosted and THAT was flabbergasting. How the fuck do spend three grand on cocktails? Is it like all top shelf liquor or something?

You can run an open bar with two bartenders for 50 people for that price? (Unless everybody is a complete lush, I guess ;)

Beer and liquor alone would blow past that figure.

If your version of hosting is "let's outsource it and just open the wallet", then, yes, sure, you can spend a lot of money. It ain't hosting, though. You failed the "what if I just replaced you with a bank account" test.

I don't think there is an upper limit on how much hosting a party costs. You can always go fancier if you have money to burn.

So yeah still wondering what sort of party you threw. I mean, yeah it's easily possible to spend that much, but it's also possible to do it for much less and you don't even need to really try.

That's not a cocktail party, that's a tailgate.

GP here, and no, that doesn't mean that.

It means you hire 2 bartenders to make the drinks, and you buy the supplies they use.

And, no, if you want a cocktail party, you don't "plonk a few cases of drinks on the table". That's also a fun party, but a different kind.

A neighborhood which is sometimes referred to as "Specific Whites" (but only tongue-in-cheek, right?)

If you want a kick, read through the 1957 edition of Air Force Social Customs [0].

It makes you realize how the art of entertaining has atrophied over the decades.

[0] https://archive.org/details/answerbookonairf00wier/mode/1up

My anecdote might have limited relevance here, but I think it's something worth considering.

I get the feeling that some people organise, while most people don't. I haven't seen the situation where a person organises stuff for one group, but not for another group. It always tends to be the same people doing the organising for all their friends. At least that's what I've observed, I'd welcome any other observations.

edit: poor choice of words

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox

We were hoping the other families would reciprocate, and maybe invite us to some of their gatherings (especially two families who hang out together quite a bit.) So far it hasn't happened at all, they just receive our graciousness and move on immediately.

Or think they’re doing you a favor by not rejecting your invite

Low key this feels why so much of our social life gets productized/monetized.

This is what mostly happened with me, I just got burned out from always having to be the one to organise everything or nothing would happen, which is what ended up happening after I stopped, we just stopped meeting up and eventually grew completely apart.

Now, I'm in a completely different country and I don't even have anyone's contacts anymore. But that's been life for me, people come and people go, never to stay.

I've accepted it by now, it can still hurt from time to time, but it is what it is, one should not force their will onto others, I believe.

I have some friends who very easily lose themselves in their work and the stress around it and if I wasn't the one checking in and basically pulling them away, I'd miss out on what are easily my favourite days out and it has no impact on how much we enjoy each other's company. Maybe one day it changes but until then I'm there for them.

That said, there are of course times where it's better to just let go. But those people were probably never that important to you in the first place.

For me, I'll host something for a small group if I get some inspiration, but on a week to week basis I'm often in extremely social third-spaces, supplemented by larger parties (probably bi-weekly). My effort is often best spent meeting people for deliberate, intimate, outdoor sports adventures or coffee hangouts, but the same person I know who tends to organize larger parties doesn't really feel like someone who'd be into these; they can't really hold a conversation 1 on 1 for very long, and they're not super curious or vulnerable or athletic in the way that's necessary to engage in those as much. He's a regimented, scheduled, impatient, person. They often need a sort of fabricated social vehicle (also likes to decorate and host), whereas I get nearly all of my socializing from incidentally being in social space.

I think it's fine to be either of course. It's ok that my organizer friend doesn't like heights, and so I won't invite him to climb mountains, he likes hosting parties, so I try to attend as many as I can.

Note that I don't mean the non-organizer (me) is just passively socializing, it's just that they have different catalysts built into the things they do that extend into socializing easily. I'm DMing 1 or 2 friends, multiple times a week, to do something we both enjoy or just chat while walking around the city. While parties and hosted things are neat, they're just not very good platforms for depth.

Just as well, I do try and be inviting to everyone who'd like to come out and do other things, in general it's important to reciprocate, but I'm not hosting a party just because someone else did.

Every community has one or two people that are "the engine" and constantly keep people reconnecting. Has nothing to do with social media, or Covid - it's always been the case as far as I can think back (and that's the early 80's)

Yes, you can push and prod people to occasionally host, but that's also a ton of work.

Other annoying parts are if you fight off anxiety and do go out you most likely will run into minor inconvenience like some Karen honking on you or making a fuss in front of you when you’re waiting in line. Minor inconvenience like that refuels social anxiety.

I'd use this as an opportunity to do something exciting with your life (if finances permit). Go live in Asia and do the nomad thing, if you're lonely there are a ton of Filipinas who want nothing more than to be a good wife and provide for their family. Try to start a business, take up some kind of art and make an honest effort to get GOOD at it, etc.

So you aren't one of the people that are lonely, because you have wife and kids

Though, I’m also single, so, maybe I wouldn’t feel such a need if I were married? Idk.

I've repeated this a couple times. Yeah, usually I have to do the bulk of the inviting and organizing. And yeah, it's uncomfortable being the "leader". But I know everyone enjoyed the time together. Those that didn't just never came and that's fine too.

You really can just do things!

If we want to solve this at the society or community level, there needs to be more opportunities for low stakes interaction. Places that people can passively gather around a communal activity. I'm reminded of the ladies dancing together in public squares / parks in China. They're usually a group, but mostly anyone can join in. You can just follow along and interact as much as you'd like. If you want to leave, leave. If you want to stay and chat, stay and chat.

Downtown San Mateo for example has the potential for this. It's already a closed off street where people go. But today there aren't group activities there that encourages passive interaction, people are still in silos. Perhaps if there were some games / puzzles, chalk boards, townhall type of table setup, that'll encourage passive interaction.

OP gave the thread a very good and valid suggestion. Treating this as a societal problem - for "society" to solve - is lazy thinking.

If you want something you've never had, you have to do something you've never done.

Of course if you never go out of your house, you're not going to have many social interactions. But your environment and the culture you live in makes a difference too. You can quit smoking yourself clearly, but the collective push to discourage smoking has done a lot to reduce the overall use of cigarettes.

Making the society more welcoming works. It worked wonders for me. I moved from a country where things like meetup events are not common and groups are less welcoming to strangers. Having moved to UK, meetup events allowed me to go out and socialise because I could sign up without speaking to anyone, and go there and participate in the activity, without the pressure to socialise, it was an optional benefit. These settings allowed me to socialise with strangers that I could never do before.

My town does an annual party. I heard about it and showed up to volunteer. I did that for a few years. It wasn't as productive in producing friends (I'm in a different location than before that is more insular) but even so, it got me out of the house and, for the few months before the event, was pretty much fun.

These kinds of things are often available if you just look around. It doesn't require knowing people ahead of time and is low stakes. If nobody is friendly, it doesn't matter.

Piggybacking off your suggestion, I like the idea of holding up a sign advertising a free activity that anyone can join, located in a very public space, with zero committment, so they can both show up and walk away at the drop of a hat. Whether it's an ad hoc organized chess tournament, or D&D game, or "one word story" or literally anything. That will have to wait until nicer weather, though, to avoid having to rent a place.

[1] https://chicagosignguy.com

Your instructions to comment on your blog are incredible, come talk to you face to face. If I didn't live on the other side of the country it would be meaningful to tell you what it meant to me in person.

You generally do not go to the gym and fail, exercising works more or less the same for almost everyone, you get good hormones, you feel good.

Socialising, on the other hand, is entirely different. Some people thrive in it, some people feel much more dread afterwards.

When this doesn't happen what do you do?

No, no, no, it's absolutely not the same, OMG, nothing alike. "I dont want to go to the gym today" isn't the kind of profound, all encompassing, and existential dread that attempting to organize a social event is. Especially when you push yourself to organize and it doesn't work out, which has happened to me before. Those feelings are legitimately nothing alike, the fact someone is comparing the two is wild to me.

I do still need to try to overcome it and get over it, but it's not even as remotely as simple as you claim.

If I may I made an attempt to crack at this very problem with Tatapp (tatapp.astekita.com). Any feedback is very much appreciated.

Even if there were state programs that established and ran these sorts of events and created low-friction ways of interacting with people, people could still say "well that assumes a certain baseline of energy."

It is true that somebody who is in the midst of extreme depression and can't get out of bed is probably not going to be able to set up a local dnd game. It is also the case that the large majority of people are absolutely capable of doing this sort of thing.

> You have to do it on a regular cadence.

I've posted about this before, but my wife and I sort of accidentally started a trivia team that's been going strong for like four years. Nearly every single week for four years, we get together with some subset of about 15 people. Most the regulars are there most days.

I also started cold plunging and have been doing it with the same regularity as trivia -- nearly every single week. It's a much smaller group, but it is absolutely part of our routine. Rain or shine.

Both these things have given several of us some really great friend time that makes that loneliness fade away.

Every idea like “let’s have icecream socials at..” started as one person’s pipe dream which they then acted on and executed. No one is coming to rescue us. There’s no secret hand guiding humankind.

You definitely can’t solve loneliness for society but you can solve loneliness for your immediate circle by organising activities and that’s already a huge improvement.

In contrast, sitting back and saying this needs to be solved at a higher level does nothing at all.

I am thinking of a chain of causality like:

People do not plan things, or they flake on events because they're tired. Theyre tired because theyre working too many hours and are obese. They work/obese because because they consume too much. They consume too much because we're a spiritually empty society. (Just to put up an initial draft hypothesis).

I'm thinking if we can solve some of the nodes closer to the root we can have a higher impact than just burning ourselves out trying to deal with the leaf nodes.

A lot of people are more comfortable with a shared experience objective. This provides a means to do something and a reason behind meeting.

If you are always in the mindset that you are giving and everyone else is taking that can really impact how you perceive everyone. And 9/10 most people over estimate how much they give and under-estimate how much they take.

There is also something powerful with "I _get_ to take my new friend to a place I find cool" rather than "My new friend is using me to go to my cool place". Changing the way you internally frame things drastically helps.

I know it sounds absolutely stupid hogwash but it helps.

https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/gratitude-bed-every-morning...

I hope this helps!

That's not a "mindset," dude.

It's really hard to try to make that relationship more reciprocal and it really sours you on trying to create other relationships. You wonder if there's something inherently wrong with you. If your lot in life is always to be an outsider.

There's also the second type of person one can get caught up with, the narcissist. They think that the world owes them everything and they will take, take, take and never give anything. This one is a typically bit easier to deal with and do a little less damage to your mental health. Though they can sometimes be charismatic, so difficult to spot early if you aren't used to dealing with that type of person. The charismatic ones don't demand anything, especially not right off the bad. They make you feel like it's your choice to do them favors.

It's easier to notice if you have exceptionally "wanty" people in your life. But can happen regardless.

Some relationships are dysfunctional. Some people are toxic. That's not a "mindset" problem. It's clear you're not familiar with dysfunctional relationships, which is great, so don't accuse others of having the wrong "mindset" when you don't know.

But then I tried to imagine receiving what I thought I wanted, and whether it would truly make me happy. The answer is almost always no.

The few times the answer was yes, I traced down why within myself, and found that, honestly, I just wanted people to care about me.

Then I realized that they have already shown ways that they care about me, just not the ways I was wanting or expecting, or found as meaningful.

Or I realized that I was not believing that they cared about me, and that it was merely a performance, but that I had no good reason for doubting it, and was just being overly demanding of a sign. (Not always, though. With some people, there were clear signs they were faking it.)

Or I realized that there was no context in which those things could come up, so the genuine love from the other person might actually be present, it's just that there's no opportunity for them to express it, until a scenario is created where it makes sense for them to do so in some way.

And other similar thought experiments within myself. This has led to me (a) realizing that a good number of people do actually care about me to a significant and meaningful degree, and (b) I need to take the initiative more often to create situations where they can express it, even if it's something as simple as asking them to have coffee with me.

It seems to me that every relationship is value oriented, even ones we consider absolutely perfect and pure.

Take for instance a mother's undying love for her newborn. She values that newborn for a few reasons. She sees herself in it. She sees pure innocence in it that needs to be protected and nourished. She sees all the potential good (i.e. value) this little child may one day bring to society. She sees her own personal fulfillment in the act of bringing this to fruition, which brings her joy, even amidst all the sacrifices she may have to make for it.

Is any of this selfish or bad? Does it in any way devalue her relationship to the child?

Extrapolate this to other relationships. A perfect friendship, where two people meet together regularly to find out about each other's recent activities, and encourage each other in life's difficulties, and foster one another's growth and good. They each care about the other, ask how the other is doing and what they're thinking and feeling, offer each other consolation, comfort, and help in times of distress or difficulty. Each gets this from the other, mutually beneficial. One may offer it exclusively at one time, the other reciprocates later, not out of obligation, but gratitude and personal desire.

Is this wrong? Is this selfish? Is this bad?

I don't think that was the message the book was trying to give, but that's what I got out of it.

So yes, people will wonder, subconsciously or not, what's in it for them. If you can give status or if you are naturally entertaining, this might all seem a little less obvious.

Unless you are pretty and young, nobody will automatically want to be around you unless you’re providing value.

Easier to just host a party or meetup where you can over invite and if some people don't show up it's no issue.

He is trying something different now, to make a hybrid campaign where there’s a lot of one-shots in a broader story arc. It’s structured like missions in an ongoing struggle.

Maybe if you want to do board games, we need more games that scale up and down easily. I’m not a board game person, IDK.

It does reduce the possibility of highly on rails campaigns and instead requires more of a sandbox plan with one page dungeons and stuff. Even so, it seems made to solve this exact problem.

The playstyle is called West Marches.

IMHO, the important bit of this style isn't so much the player pool flexibility (tho it does help that case), but the inversion of who's driving the story. The DM prepares the world, but it's up to the players to organize their excursions outside of the safe zone, for their own reasons. This forces more involvement of the players in the story, instead of the more passive campaign on rails you mentioned.

So in the GP's case of flaky low-effort players, West Marches style may not help because it puts more burden on the players in addition to just showing up and having everything presented to them.

That said, if the group can manage to do it, player engagement should be higher, and the DM suffers less disappointment because they're only prepping a session of content based on the players' plans for that session, not a long storyline that requires more alignment and adherence.

I don't do tabletop, but I do write, and making these is helpful for worldbuilding.

The one thing about D&D is that I know almost everyone there exclusively through the campaign, and 90% of my interactions with them have been in character, which means I actually know very little about their personal lives. We're getting better with this with non-D&D hangs though.

Party games: Scale well with more people, easy to explain

- Werewolf

- Werewords

- Codenames (favorite)

Beginner Games: Accept a decent amount, somewhat easy to explain

- Camel Up

- Flip 7

- Dungeon Fighter

- Ticket to Ride

Games that have nothing to do with your problem, but I just wanna mention:

- Everdell: Cute critters prepare for winter

- Root: Cute critters prepare for war

- Azul: Place fancy tiles that look and feel delicious

- Bohnanza: The best part of Catan without the bad parts

With the rules variant that you can play out-of-order if you add an identical card to the one that's on top of the stack, it disrupts the otherwise pretty linear play, and easily scales up to 10ish persons and still be fun.

One thing I do that helps is get people to RSVP with a specific arrival time, and do my best to have a game about to start around that time.

If you show up unexpectedly, then I'm not going to feel bad about you sitting out for an hour or more.

People unexpectedly bringing a partner/friend who is not really that into board games is the absolute worst thoguh.

We've been having ongoing games (around 2 going at every one time) since about a year now I think.

Still do in person games as well, but this at least keeps that group going through in-perwon drought periods.

You're trying to arrange the wrong type of event. A board game group plays a variable number of games simultaneously to accommodate the number of players each game can support. A board game group does not try to fit everyone into the same game as a matter of principle.

Now, I host meetups which typically get 8-15 people and multiple games, so an unpredictable player count is not an issue.

But that's the whole issue. Who am I supposed to reach out to? The 2 people at work I occasionally talk to because they happen to sit in the same office as me?

Longer term: make opportunities to occasionally talk to other people. Join a club, join a fitness group of some kind, take a class at your local library. It's got be something in person with enough repetition with the same people that everyone involved can overcome inertia enough to talk.

Try to say 'yes' should an occasional contact invite you to something, because it's pretty common that you won't get asked a second time if you pass on the first - I assume that's because we're all scared stiff that no-one likes us.

I host board game days.

I organise a pub trivia team.

I organise singalong nights.

I host occasional parties. Soup nights. Zucchini parties.

I set up a lot of group chats and keep them alive.

I organise to visit my family.

For a lot of events, I get a 5-10% attendance rate compared to the number of people I invite. People are busy. It just means I need to keep expanding the circles of people to invite. If people don't want to come it eventually becomes clear and I quietly remove them from the lists. But mostly I hear the opposite - they really want to keep being invited, even if they don't make it often.

I moved to a new area. Searched for chess clubs. Couldn't find one.

So I created one. We now have ~10 people showing up to each meeting. From young kids, to older retired people. Facebook is a blessing for finding groups of people who are looking for things to do. It's really that simple. Just do things.

This is an incredibly good point. Like all things of this nature, I liken the process to panning for gold. In truth, you may not want to invest in people that aren't all that invested in you or the activity at hand. It stinks that the success rate is lower than chance, but it's probably better this way.

This is a thing that's always surprised me when I've been in the US. How common it is to enthusiastically arrange to do some activity together, get a meal, play a game, have a drink, whatever, and then for people to just call it off at the last minute. It seems much more socially acceptable to do so than either the UK (where I live) or France (where I have lived and still visit regularly).

The loneliness thing seems common across Europe too though so I'm not suggesting this is the root of the problem. But I do think that whilst this is a global problem the solutions are likely to be local, working with and leveraging different cultural norms.

Anything but a purely positive or enthusiastic response is not allowed in US culture.

Join an organization. For example every city has Toastmasters, most have several. Easy to find, and it is an excellent place to meet people. And you'll learn how to convert social anxiety into social adrenaline.

Do you have a faith? Actually go to church instead of just believing. Are you non-religious? Several strands of Buddhism can be followed as philosophy and practice without adopting any mystical beliefs. Vipassanā (also called Insight) and Zen are a couple of examples.

And how do you turn random people that you met into life-long friends? You can reduce the time investment by a lot. If you call someone on a spaced repetition schedule, you can make them internalize that the door is always open. Without requiring a large commitment on either side. And a spaced repetition schedule is easy to achieve - just think Fibonacci. I'll call you back in 3 days. Then 5. Then 8 (round down to a week). And so on. It feels like a lot of calls at the start. But it slows down fast. Over a lifetime, it is only around 20 calls.

Play around with it. If it was someone you met and hung out with on a cruise, maybe start at a week for that first call. Either way, you're reinforcing the idea that we like to talk, and the door is always open.

You can use a similar idea to keep people who move on from your workplace in your life. People always mean to stay in contact. Then don't. But with structured reinforcement, you can actually make it work.

If it works, it works, I guess. And in a thread about loneliness, that’s all that matters. But it seems a bit calculated rather than organic, which is what we think of as the platonic ideal of friendmaking.

But if you really want calculated...try https://amorebeautifulquestion.com/36-questions/ on for size.

I've been working on a solution that makes it easier to meet people. When you're out for coffee or something and feeling social, you can signal you're available. Since you and your potential friend already nearby, it should reduce cancellations. I built an app for this, check it out if you have time: https://tatapp.astekita.com/

I would love to further the combat, please reach out to me Joseph de Castelnau on IG and X.

Anthropologically, this matters because our social brains are tuned for inevitability, not optionality. We are adapted to environments where interaction is frequent, predictable, and constrained. Dunbar-scale groups, reciprocal dependence, and ritualized coordination did the work that calendars and reminders now attempt to approximate. When those constraints exist, friendship is an emergent property. When they are removed, it becomes a management problem.

Modern life systematically dismantled those constraints. Mobility replaced permanence, private space replaced shared space, and passive entertainment replaced collective activity. Flaking became costless. Absence became invisible. Optionality exploded. None of this happened accidentally; it was a deliberate trade in exchange for autonomy, flexibility, and economic efficiency. But the biological machinery did not change with the environment. We are still running hunter-gatherer social hardware in a world optimized for individual choice.

Seen through that lens, the advice to host, schedule, follow up, and accept rejection is not wrong, but it is compensatory. It asks individuals to manually recreate what used to be automatic. One person becomes the forcing function that the environment no longer provides. That can work, but it is fragile, asymmetric, and emotionally expensive, especially for people who are sensitive to imbalance or rejection. Framing this as “how friendship works” subtly turns a systems failure into a personal obligation.

If the goal is to reduce effort rather than heroically absorb it, the real lever is not better social skills or more persistence but reintroducing constraint. Social bonds form most reliably where interaction is inevitable rather than intentional: fixed schedules, shared physical spaces, repeated exposure to the same people, and light obligations that make absence noticeable. This is why gyms, religious communities, teams, classes, and other ritualized environments still produce friendships with relatively little effort. They partially restore the conditions under which our social instincts evolved.

There is no free lunch here. Effortless social life was never free; it was paid for with reduced choice, reduced mobility, and reduced privacy. You cannot fully recover that world without giving something up. But you can recover much of its function by selectively sacrificing optionality in exchange for repetition and proximity. The modern workaround of turning individuals into social project managers is effective but unnatural. Rebuilding environments that do the work for us is closer to our biology, closer to our history, and probably the only scalable way to make social connection feel less like a second job again.

Finding new friends as an adult can be exceedingly difficult, but becoming a friend to someone is surprisingly easy.

Lots of people (and if I'm being honest I'm one of them, so no judgement) just sort of expect friendships to come to them. But if you actually do the hard (and somewhat socially risky) work of inviting people to do things, offering to help unsolicited, organizing gatherings, etc. new friendships are much easier to come by.

Problem is it gets fucking exhausting to organize and reach out after a while. Especially with DnD.

There was a post[1] sometime back about just having coffee in the afternoon outisdes and how that brought in more people.

I also write about it here [2].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43473618

[2]: https://blog.papermatch.me/html/Wheres_the_human_touch

I wonder whether part of this is a habitualization of intolerance for just being with oneself - to be ok with feeling bored, for instance. Most suggestions are about "doing". Just being with oneself without a doing is painful for many from what I've seen.

This is true, but as long as the success rate is >= 1 other person, it's okay.

I started a running club for my apartment block (about 200 flats with maybe 300 residents). I posted flyers out once advertising it as a friendly social running club. Of the 300, the group has about 15 people, of which 5 are regulars (every other week at least), and just 2 of us are super regulars (multiple times per week). It's a terrible success rate, but those are 4/5 good friends.

At first it bothered me how flaky people were. Some people joined the group but have yet to show up in person. And some joined the group and are yet to even converse in the group chat, but hey, they'll come along when they're ready.

I would like to mention this link from HN

> A nerd is a person seen as over-intellectual, obsessive, introverted, or lacking social skills.

It's not a stereotype that nerds are socially awkward but rather "nerd" is the name for the stereotype.

Instead, a better goal is to become comfortable talking to strangers. If you could do that confidently, anything is possible socially.

Here’s a framework to do that:

1. Adopt a useful attitude.

Before any social situation, consciously choose an attitude that serves you socially: calm, relaxed, enthusiastic, curious, friendly, or simply open. This replaces the useless defaults that keep you stuck: reticent, scared, angry, confused.

Assume people will like you.

2. Set an intention for the interaction.

Decide on one small goal for the interaction. Not “be charming” or “make friends,” rather something achievable.

Example intentions, ranked from easier to more difficult: - To appear friendly (smile, make eye contact) - To greet people - To find out what’s going on around town - To enjoy talking with people - To meet people - To make someone smile - To enjoy getting to know someone - To make someone laugh - To get someone’s contact info - To flirt - To talk to the most attractive person in the room

3. Find comfort in your body.

When you arrive at a social space, take a deep breath. Know that you’re safe inhabiting your body, no matter what anyone thinks of you or says.

4. Set your expectations.

Paralyzed about what to say? Set the bar low. Say your words and expect nothing in return. Confidence in delivering your words will grow. Confidence in social acceptance will follow as you see people respond neutrally and positively.

You might be talking to a grumpy person. It’s okay if you don’t get the response you’d hoped for.

5. Start impossibly small.

If you’re severely out of practice (nervous, anxious, uncertain), set out to initiate an interaction with someone where you accomplish just one objective. Then stop and celebrate that win. Don’t try to combine all of these into one interaction—you will get overwhelmed. Then initiate another interaction on another day and accomplish another objective.

Objective: Say “hello.” If you tend to be quiet, focus on being heard. Find confidence in your voice.

Objective: Say the first thing that comes to mind and see what happens.

Objective: Notice something about a person and comment on it. “Nice shoes!”

Objective: Notice something about the environment and comment on it to someone nearby.

Objective: Ask someone a question for information.

Objective: Ask someone their opinion.

Objective: Ask a question that invites an emotional response rather than a factual one. “What do you love about living here?”

Objective: Join a circle of people in conversation.

6. Make it a habit.

Start today: say one thing to one person. Repeat tomorrow. Then the next day. Within about a week, it becomes second nature. The scariness diminishes. Soon, you’ll actually want to talk to people.

When you learn to talk to strangers, you’re more than halfway to making a friend. Friends will help keep you out of loneliness.

Most importantly, you have to hear “I can’t” and be really cool about it or folks will half commit out of guilt and bail. They probably have a good reason, especially if they have kids. Or maybe they’re just exhausted! That is valid - you will sometimes feel that way too, and you should clearly (but politely) communicate it when you need.

If you consistently say yes/no and adhere to it, people will return the favor and you’ll all be better for it. My social life vastly improved post COVID when I adhered to that. My friends and I are incredibly honest so now folks rarely bail (always for good reason) and we all can reliably plan to hang out without guessing if someone actually means “no” when they say maybe and all that nonsense.

when i am in this mood my mantra becomes, "be an instigator".

in consumer societies people flee real freedom's anxiety by conforming to market ways, treating connections as consumption not production. lasting bonds need effort patience vulnerability, all anti-consumer virtues.

Fromm said that in market societies love and relations follow the commodity and labor market exchange pattern. they want low-effort replaceable humans. So they became low-effort replaceable humans.

I always feel like I organize things to much. It's one sided

This "hypersensitivity" and even paralytic fear must be understood as a narcissistic trait (people fail to recognize this, in part, because they have a limited view of what is narcissistic, as something necessarily bombastic, and of course, narcissism tends toward a blindness of one's own narcissism). By recognizing this to be the case, the subtle temptation toward self-pity, or normalization or even valorization of such qualities, can be prevented. Narcissistic traits are antisocial, and so it stands to reason that narcissistic traits impede one's ability to form healthy relationships.

> You are struggling against many aspects of the way we in the developed world/nerd world live.

The liberal consumerist hyperindividualism of our age is an anthropological position that conceives of human beings as atomized units that merely enter into transactional relations with other human beings. "Society" is merely something contractual and utilitarian, and in practice has the flavor of mutual exploitation. In effect, society is reduced to something like a marketplace. This is, of course, totally bogus and destructive. We are intrinsically social animals. Society is a common good, a superordinate good, toward which we have certain general, non-consensual moral obligations and something we need to flourish as human beings.

Because of the bad anthropology the contemporary world is rooted in, we often feel its practices and aims to be meaningless and hollow. We also find ourselves oscillating between the twin errors of collectivism and hyperindividualism. These two extremes are forced onto us by the paradigm of this false anthropology. One looming danger today is that, as the liberal order collapses, we do not know what will replace it. The loudest contenders are undesirable.

> more time-consuming relationship with our families than our parents ever did

That depends. On the one hand, family life was much more robust and lively in many ways than it is today. Parents weren't as careerist then in general. Families were larger, so the abundance of siblings meant you didn't have a lonely childhood at home, and a large pool of potential friends outside of it. Older siblings would assist with younger siblings, and children would participate in domestic duties, so in that sense, parents would not need to be as involved in all aspects of the daily life of the children and the functioning of the household. And in the past, families tended to concentrate more in the local area, so grandparents were typically near children and grandchildren and so on. In other words, a robust family life enables a robust society in general. Social life becomes "thicker" and mutually reinforcing.

The time-consuming element you have in mind is therefore related. All of the responsibility for taking care of aging parents falls on the few children they have or who live nearby. Without siblings or friends, parents step in socially more than they would with their children (or else consign them to the cesspool of social media and internet garbage). There are also cultural factors: parents can become overinvolved or inappropriately involved in some respects, like the proverbial helicopter parent, which itself can be spurred by the collapse of society around them, if not careerist ambitions for one's children.

Which brings us to your main point...

> You have to be the one who creates things to do.

Today, communities often need to be more intentional. If there isn't a community around you'd like to join, you have to be the one who initiates it. It's not guaranteed to function or last, but what's the alternative?

This doesn't "solve" the so-called loneliness epidemic, of course. The proposal here is more modest, namely, if you want people in your life, you have to look for them. Every community or social group needs a reason for its existence. The weakest form is rooted in utility, the second weakest in fun and pleasure. They are transient. The best and more robust kind are to be found in the common pursuit of virtue. In these and through these, we could begin to witness the birth of a healthy society.

There are a ton of reasons for this. Work, school, coordinating plans with their partner, other commitments , other friends and family and honestly people just being flaky. For D&D this can be particularly bad if you're missing a couple of people who just flaked. Other activities don't have that problem and it can still be an issue.

There was a time when going out and doing things was necessary for social interaction. That's not true anymore. Online is sorta social. It's kinda close enough to scratch that itch for many, particularly because it has none of the coordination and/or travel issues.

But also people just have less free time. Because we have to work so much.

Hobbies in general have becom ea luxury. By that I mean you're spending your time doing something that doesn't earn an income. That's good but an increasingly large number of people don't have that as an option, hence "luxury".

Put another way, the ultimate goal of capitalism is to have all the worker bees constantly creating wealth so Bezos can have $210 billion instead of $215 billion.

Quoting from elsewhere in this thread: "I have made big inroads solving my old-age isolation with AI. Personally, I prefer Claude."

The people who most exacerbated this epidemic were forged here in this culture and were rewarded with trillions in investment to step between every social interaction, to monetize our connections, to maximize our 'engagement' and capitalize on the damage they caused. They will not stop until there are laws and enforcement mechanisms that address these perverse incentives.

Building American cities around the whims of car manufacturers is, to my mind, as bad as any social media. We've foreclosed casual connection in so many ways, and social media stepped into that gap and wrenched as hard as it could. Lower real wage growth also matters, free time and funds are required for a full social calendar.

It's multifaceted, but none of these issues can be solved without real political power that counters the whims of capital, venture or otherwise.

I think your framing of history is wrong. Trains, and later cars were extraordinarily convenient compared to former methods of travel. We adapted infrastructure to maximize this convenience, not to profit companies. In fact, it's the other way around: companies profited off the demand for convenience they provided.

The same could be said for social media. People wanted small, low-risk interactions with other people over the internet. Companies capitalized on this, and realized that increasing dopamine is the only way to increase capital.

> it requires organized political and social movements, then the legislation and re-allocation of public funds for the public's good

I would reverse the first two, or maybe even remove the "political movement" part. Why is it necessary? It always starts with (a) one person taking concrete action on some principle, then (b) one small group of people joining that person on principle, then (c) this turning into a movement on principle and snowballing momentum until the change is exponentially impactful on society. Later, when the public agrees it's a good thing, they may choose to publicly fund it. Only a-c are necessary for it to make a meaningful impact.

I recently took a local wheel throwing (pottery class), which was daunting at first, among a class of almost all females, younger, etc, but im 6 months in and literally just interacting with humans is one of the best parts of my week. Hobby is pretty cool too, so completely different than banging code all day.

Sometimes I don't feel like going after days of being alone and literally talking to no one, it puts you in a "zone" for sure, but then I go to the class, and you realize, at least imho, humans are social creatures. It's like food, we need that interaction or we whither and die.

You can have political/religious conversations with people who disagree but often it feels like walking in a mine field.

If everyone followed the rule of avoiding these topics, I wonder how many people would never hear an opposing opinion, maybe even a more beneficial one, to the one they've grown up with. I think these topics should be encouraged.

That said, the moment you disagree with someone on one of these topics, some people will definitely fly into a small rage, or instantly cut off contact with you, or even slander you to others, or some mix of these.

Ultimately, I think that's fine. For one thing, you have just learned that this is someone you probably don't want in your life anyway, because they can't handle disagreement in a civil way.

And you learned it fairly quickly and at a small cost. Even if they slander you, people whose opinions you'd actually care about will generously take their word with a large dose of salt, especially based on their character, since such a character usually has other tells too.

So my current stance is to just be open to these topics.

Just yesterday, while I was sitting here at the library, someone approached me and asked me to watch his phone while he used the restroom, in case ICE came in and took it. He was joking, but we went into a slight conversation about politics in general, in which we found out that we disagree on certain topics, and he almost took offense at me disagreeing. I was friendly and open to him the whole time, and he was friendly when he left to use the restroom. But when he came back and sat back down, and later left the whole library, he left without even so much as a goodbye or wave. It seems like he just didn't like me anymore because of my disagreement. And that's fine with me. Both would have been fine.

First, I didn't express an evil or hateful opinion, or any which could reasonably incite indignation or justified anger.

Second, I was willing to dive into a discussion, he wasn't. He seemed more closed minded, which to me seems to be a sign of emotional immaturity.

Third, we did (implicitly) agree to disagree, which I think is the right, peaceful, mature, and civil course of action when at an impasse.

Fourth, we weren't even at a genuine impasse, but an artificial one he created by simply ending the conversation after finding out that I didn't agree with him. Maybe if he heard my reasons, he might find something he agrees with, or something that tempers his emotinonal reaction?

These two are a strict no go for me too.

Another thing that worked well for me is to keep discussions very low and quick on topics like personal relationships, work, career and hot button topics like AI, weather, traffic, climate change, house prices, etc. Basically avoid anything that a newspaper would think is worthwhile for frontpage or editorial column.

I go heavy on food, travel, culture, rumors, art, movies, music, design, festivals, holidays, games. You could talk hours on stuff here, just pick an artsy cultural magazine or subreddit and keep up.

Side note, inviting views from both sexes makes for some very interesting short conversations. Both have very very different takes on the same things and therefore won't talk too long. Both being interested in very different things (think dress belts, hair supplements, birth control vs fishing, bourbon and soccer) brings some newness into the conversation.

This is an element of cancel culture, or a culture which indoctrinates to tattle/report one another.

This is anecdotal, of course.

> most of my friends have dropped off or gone crazy

If you find yourself to be the one who is isolated, then I think you need to look inward. My best friends and I share completely polar opposite politics. We have known each other for almost 50 years now. We have had yelling matches over politics, especially during the Pandemic. We have now stopped talking... about politics. We still chat every single day throughout the day. I laugh heartily at least once a day over some extremely offensive joke that one of us sends, usually at each other's expense. But we never, ever talk about politics anymore and we are happier for it.

Maybe you need to rekindle those friendships and see if you can avoid politics. If you can't then I think it's more on you than them and you should reflect on that.

This function runs subconsciously all day long. From talking to strangers to reaching out to a friend, the lonely mind is much more aware of negative outcomes, so your mind protects you by telling you things like „I don’t talk to strangers because I would annoy them“ or „I don’t reach out to that friend because he’s probably busy“. And that makes it much much harder for lonely people to maintain a healthy social life.

As for the fix, you can try to set the social event up in a way that has less room for perceived threat. Think of third places, regularly scheduled meetings, etc. Or you can work on the function itself (=your thinking patterns). If you look at research on loneliness interventions, working on this function is the most effective way to help individuals overcome persistent loneliness.

Now the sad thing is that people don’t like to hear that the most effective way to combat loneliness is to work on their own perceptions, which makes the sales pitch rather challenging.

For example, I often find it quicker and easier to agree the timing and details of weekend trips to meet up with friends in other countries, involving one or both sides traveling significantly to meet, than arranging a single evening to meet for dinner with a single existing German colleague or friend living nearby. Of course these people have lives and arrangements I must fit in with, but I'm convinced that the examples I'm thinking of do not have such overwhelmingly busy schedules as to explain the observation.

This might sound like a trivial observation, but I suspect that the overall effect, if you scale even a small fraction of this behaviour across a whole country, could be huge.

The German social scheduling culture can definitely be a viscous circle, where everyone having to plan their calendar in advance forces everyone else to plan even further in advance if they want to have a chance to meet up.

I do think it's probably felt the strongest for adults between ~18-35, where your circle of friends spreads out across the country/surrounding cities/world, and any get together necessitates travel. After that, when people settle down (potentially have children) they usually form new circles of friends that are more local again with more opportunities for spontaneous meetings.

One of the most fundamental reasons for my own personal loneliness is that, in many of the connections I've made, they simply do not feel sincere, genuine, authentic, and simply because the other person clearly has a different motivation for "caring" about me than actually caring about me.

For example, the churchgoers I've met have always felt like they were only spending time with me to get me to become a member of their church. They were eager to throw money at me if I lost my job, or offer to help me move, but never wanted to get coffee outside church hours.

Therapists are another example, obviously financially incentivized to talk to me. There are definitely some who care simply because it's part of their personality, but that still says nothing about me and any connection they have with me.

And I shared a story elsewhere here of a priest who I had literally just met minutes before, and who actually went in for a hug the moment I mentioned having a hard time with something, as if this random hug from a complete stranger meant anything other than him following a virtue signalling script.

No, I am convinced that the solution must be free, it must be volunteers doing it without anyone knowing about it, without the belief that they're earning brownie points from God or gaining a potential member of some organization, and without getting paid or rewarded for it, except for the reward of having a new and worthwhile friendship with the lonely person.

I have a small handful of people who I talk to regularly, who I genuinely listen to, and who genuinely listen to me, who genuinely enjoy my company, and whose company I genuinely enjoy, whether in small talk or deep conversations, serious topics or lighthearted fun.

These people give me by far the most joy in my life out of any relationships I've ever had before. And it's because we worked toward it the right way, and built our way up to it, finding common interests and building a real, organic connection from them.

What you're describing here is an answer to the question "why aren't people 'just' being more social".

Certainly too, social media has played a big hand in this, but for many people, myself included, these activities feel high-risk, with a low probability of reward. Regardless of the correctness of the perceptions that have led to this feeling, the feeling exists and it is becoming more and more pervasive across society. And, like most problems centered on feelings, "have you tried not feeling that way?" is rarely, though not never, effective.

I actually have an interesting story here. For a couple of years I found a third place for myself in VRChat. It was great, I made friends, I spent time socializing for its own sake on a daily basis for hours. But something changed over time. I'll hop on now, look at each person on my friends list, look at private and public rooms I can join, and instead of being able to just jump in, the same feelings of "this is high-risk" that hold me back IRL result in me closing the game after ten minutes or so.

So what exactly happened? My theory is that, being a completely new "kind" of space, my brain didn't see the choices as "social" in the same way as IRL. But over time it relearned the same lessons in this new context, driving me away from social interaction.

Why? What are the unconscious lessons I learned, and why did I learn them? What have I unintentionally internalized that turned an enjoyable, effective, low-stakes virtual third place into an emotional slog that incentivizes self isolation in the same way IRL socializing does?

Lasgaard M, Qualter P, Løvschall C, et al. Are loneliness interventions effective for reducing loneliness? A meta-analytic review of 280 studies. Am Psychol. Published online October 23, 2025. doi:10.1037/amp0001578

If you know German, you might be interested in the two books on loneliness published by Noëmi Seewer and Tobias Krieger.

We have a free scholarship option if you can’t afford the course. Our short term plan is to cooperate with (German) health insurance companies so there will be no costs on your part.

Is there such as thing as loneliness, theoretically, I mean.

Consider this, since when was the physical body or its constituents not lonely. Imagine nail on finger, it grows anyway, lonely :), amazing!

Ask about the abstract parts too, the heart or the mind. On its own it is always lonely. But the mind is imagining way beyond, because it can. That little twist in thought, creates such a dilemma. Mind can bring more to life, it can comprehend that loneliness is included in the experiential existence AND simply to move on "along" with life. The bonding is built in. Nothing magnificent, it just exists and evolves, amazing!

The naive solution is to place blame on the people who are influenced by the most advanced behavior modification schemes ever devised by humans. Kinda like how the plastic producers will push recycling, knowing they can shift blame for the pollution away from their production of the pollution, because people love blaming. You'll see commenters here telling us that the answer is for people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, get out, get involved in their communities under their own willpower. These ideas are doomed from the outset.

The real solution is already being enacted in a number of US states and countries[1]: legally restricting access to the poison, rather than blaming the people who are at the mercy of finely honed instruments of behavior modification when they're unable to stop drinking it under their own willpower.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_age_verification_...

Limiting at which age you can use the product is just one part of the puzzle. You could also hit a big tax on ad revenue gained via social media to veer people off from ruining their brains. There is a host of others tools as well and I think we will see them implemented more and more. The tech billionaires fight back and rather fund a fascist dictator to power than lose a single cent, but there you go. But I think the Musk’s and the like have constantly stepped over boundaries to the extent that the tide has changed.

Most of my real-life friends are people I've first met online, or as a consequence of having met someone online. Those online sites have mostly been run by enthusiasts, driven by some hobby, fandom or other interest. A couple of them have risen highly in popularity and attracted many thousands of users, and also served news and allowed vendors to use their site for interactions with customers.

Those communities that have thrived have made sure that discourse does not get poisoned. They have had active, strong but fair moderators. Many have strict rules against discussing politics or religion, but people have a need to discuss that too sometimes — and being identifiable e.g. between subreddits could put people off from doing that.

Also, where do you draw the line to what is an online community and what is "social media"? I've avoided Facebook and X-twitter, but I know genuine communities exist there too.

But making children (and adults, because how else can you tell without checking) give their biometrics to companies (and by extension the highest bidder (palantir, paramilitaries, and police)) that helped create and then exacerbated this crisis is like asking the drug dealer association to help folks quit by giving them new exotic chemicals heretofore undiscovered.

You 'win' the war on pollution by making companies actually pay for their externalities, repeat offenders cease to exist, their assets seized, and their executives are jailed, rather than just 'paying fines' for the thousand of corpses they leave in their wake.

Likewise, if social media companies produce informational or social 'pollution' so defined, we can do likewise and insist they defray the cost of the damage. If they are no longer profitable when the cost is not paid by society, then they'll have to learn to innovate again.

Also, the naive view is to place all the blame for a broad cultural shift on Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/TikTok and pretend people can't choose to limit their use. Someone pretending there can only be a single factor to blame for a problem is usually a biased person with a bone to pick. The rhetoric supports your cause, but the US is not going to ban social media for adults any time soon and telling people they're helpless until the government bans social media is unhelpful at best.

We've created these unhealthy gardens where young people feel safe, removing any reason for them to engage in the real world. They don't thrive in these places, they slowly withdraw.