I think this is really a spectrum and they are focusing on some more extreme aspects of it. But it is definitely not just an Asian thing and I believe to some degree this type of social withdrawal has affected perhaps a very significant portion of our society.
I have definitely been socially isolated my entire life to some degree or another. But much more so in adulthood. Again, I suggest that this is relatively common, not something that happens to only a few million people.
One aspect that is being glossed over is the amount of socialization or let's call it "pseudo-social" activity that is happening over the internet for these people.
I'm someone who generally does not have friends, leaves the apartment literally only a handful of times per month to take the garbage out and maybe buy groceries once or twice a month if I am trying to save money versus Instacart.
For me it comes down to money. I have a health issue that makes me fatigued etc. and don't have money for health insurance. I don't have money to go to restaurants or otherwise waste going out. So I stay home.
Because I'm always in a poor health and financial state, I feel uncomfortable trying to do any "real" socialization.
But I have always been trying one way or another to get to a point where I have a "real" online business that allows me to actually thrive. Such as buying a car and a house, getting health insurance and addressing my health issues, or paying taxes.
But what I have managed so far is usually just enough to scrape by. There have been some minor successes here and there but rarely have I ever felt like I had enough to truly meet my basic needs such as the health concerns or financial stability.
Anyway, I think it's easy to get in a position with health and financial challenges, maybe just a series of low-paying contracts, where some degree of social isolation is just practical and realistic.
I live in Iowa, and I had a roommate who just stopped going to work one day.
I learned after talking to her that she had done this before. In talking to her, it seemed to me a mix of anxiety and depression with a focus on agoraphobia.
Her family from several hundred miles came to retrieve her when they contacted me. She asked to move back in later, but I declined. I saw her start a new career some years afterwards.
I don't know if the "laying flat/tang ping" movement in China, or the issues of the people in the article, are completely separate from this.
tang ping is just an internet slang. Didn't expect it to have a wikipedia page.
In China, the "normal" is "to try to be the best". For example, less than half of Chinese students can make it into a "good college" (in China there's a very specific definition of a "good college"), but if you didn't make it, like more than 50% of your peers, that's enough to say that you're "bad at studying".
tang ping basically means quiting this kind of culture and accepting that one's normal. Buying a house and settling down in a city that's not Beijing or Shanghai, like 90% of people do.
the laying flat movement has mostly to do with lack of jobs/opportunity for young people.
- there's a societal trend to not hire people over the age of 30-35 in China. after months of looking for work, they've given up
- there's an unofficial 70% youth unemployment rate, and with 12 million new grads each year and intense competition for government work, sometimes hundred of applicants for a single stable government spot, the new grads give up
- the young generation has realized that no house/car/marriage/kid (没房没车没妻子) is a good way to live, and there's no pressure on them to create a life. so they lay flat. thus the abysmal marriage/child rate in China, which is near the bottom of world ranking
- the new grads don't want to work in a factory, day or night shift, for $2/hour.
- if the workers are in 1st tier cities, they can barely save up any money working and living there, due to the recent 50% reduction in wages ($1000/month -> $500/month) and increased spending on necessities. so it's easier for them to just not work and live off of parents.
These people have always existed. In the 20th century we just called them “shut-ins”. People who socially isolate themselves.
As kids there would be the old run down house with an older man or lady who would rarely be seen. They would be dressed shabbily, and the house would be poorly maintained but livable.
"Money" has also generally been the issue for me. Not simply the money to get to and enjoy activities. The money to meet (sometimes unrealistic) expectations of physical presentation (including clothing, grooming, the time and energy and diet required to work out) and therefore feel comfortable among people who will judge you for it - including, crucially and as a black man, authorities. The money to keep up with friends who might want to do things you didn't necessarily budget for. The money to feel comfortable with all of this while managing other necessary expenses (including, for some, supporting family).
When I had a job, I definitely didn't have the money for all of this, particularly while living in a hoity-toity resort town (and particularly when it became much more hoity and toity and white during the summer). Making rent was much easier (read: possible) when I just went home every day.
I have some other thoughts, particularly about how the modern job market makes it more difficult for young people to build durable relationships at work (which, as much as legal might abhor it, is indeed one of the avenues through which many young people make friends). Might edit/reply later with those. Suffice it to say, when layoffs disrupt the already imperiled process, you end up with a lot of people entering their late 20s/early 30s with social lives that are exceedingly fragile, if they're even extant.
At some point, I became so angry with this feeling that I stopped caring about what people would think of me altogether. However, this was somewhat destructive for me. Eventually, I seeked help.
Money vs. Time. If you need too much money to even be able to socialize that only leads to misery. The best way to socialize is to do projects on your free time with other people, there will always be some who are too tired to work much in their spare time and that is ok as long as you are invested. The big lie is that everyone is a Millionaire and that you have to spend money to socialize. Workers unions have historically in Europe and the US tried to create places where people could socialize without having to spend money. That is something I took advantage of and lent my time to as a young adult, I should spend more money on that now that I have it.
America has this too. It's homelessness. The drug abuse and mental illness makes it worse though. Unlike the comparably docile hikikomori, drug and alcohol use leads to erratic and aggressive behavior and makes accommodations and treatment impossible, hence homelessness.
100% this. I think the reason we see these people homeless in the US is due to the myth of the self-sufficiency. That if you can't succeed or fit in it's because you are deficient in some way. It makes it hard to ask for help and it's doubly so if you are introverted to this extreme.
Homelessness is the scariest thing for me. And actually I know that in many cases you became one without your actual influence on it. This problem breaks my heart.
I'm sorry for what you've been through and I hope your health gets better. However I believe you've phrased the following a bit poorly, although I'm sure unintentionally:
some degree of social isolation is just practical and realistic.
Unfortunately this leads to connotations that encourage people completely out of touch with the ordinary person's lifestyle (billionaires, CEOs etc.) make outrageous claims and dictating how they should navigate life with minimum wage and no insurance e.g. that CEO who said skip breakfast to save money, or HN's favorites that we should just shut up and be content with modern tech automating our creative abilities instead of assisting us with menial tasks.
Instead if you had written social isolation is inevitable without controlled financial and health stability, you'd be 100% spot on.
Human, social isolation and practical/realistic just don't fit together.
> we should just shut up and be content with modern tech automating our creative abilities instead of assisting us with menial tasks
This isn’t true. Dalle and ChatGPT are assists, they don’t really replace anything and make being creative more accessible. AI also helps with tons of menial tasks like code syntax
I know where you're coming from. Chronic ill health can be a really isolated life. I get out once per fortnight to the supermarket, once per month to the pharmacy, once per 6 months to my GP. Other than that I get away from home maybe once every 2 or 3 months.
I've had people say they'd go mad living my life. Well when your body works against you you just have to suck it up and deal with it.
As for friends, I have very few because I'm angry all the time. Being alone helps not face charges.
Those people have completely taken over the west. You suffer alone in hopeless isolation if you are not like them. It isn't that you somehow didn't succeed - the majority simply prefers to be alone. Only the fact that the majority is "individualist" like this makes it much less obvious.
There are emotional and mental support groups, churches, community events, and all manner of things you can do for free that may help break your isolation. It takes effort to do this. I know you are struggling, but ultimately no one will help you but yourself, which is a hard pill to swallow.
Yet in this article, they were helped without needing to reach out first (a crucial part for a socially withdrawn person). American/European society just chooses to ignore and not help the same kind of people here.
I think the main thing is the lack of on-ramps. Once you have fallen out of the social circulation, there is basically no way of going back. Unless you are able to stay within an extremely narrow range of behaviours (in terms of not being weird, basically speaking expected thinks in expected tone of voice and body language), nobody wants to associate with you. And since about the only way to learn these things is to be around people who already behave in the "right" way, a vicious circle arises.
It has nothing to do with debt, wealth or earnings. Completely independent things. People had it worse at every time in history in almost every place.
It has nothing to do with social media / internet. It just something people tend to fall into when they withdraw, and have no trouble abandoning as soon as the life outside becomes tenable again.
Social capital follows the same progression as regular capital. If you already have a lot of friends and acquaintances, it's easy to make more. You either get invited to things, or you can organise something and know people will come.
Loneliness is a big problem among recent immigrants. They all struggle to make friends at first, because they have no social capital to build upon. It's hard to break into established circles without being introduced by a member, and few people will show up to a stranger's party unless it's vetted by friends.
There is such a thing as being socially destitute, and the recovery can be quite difficult, especially when you have other things going on in your life.
Great reminder about immigration's social barriers.
Church and work are the lowest friction social spaces that I can think of outside of wealth dimension.
The problem still defaults to getting your foot in the door though. It requires a certain elevation of compassion and information in enough social circles for a single person to overcome cultural devides.
So about two years ago, we got my sister in law to move into our house, because she was graduating high school and we felt that there was more opportunity in NYC than in small-town-USA, at least for a younger person.
We like having her around, she's very nice, but she's also had trouble finding new friends/social-circles here, and I kind of feel bad for dragging her up here as a result. I've always been someone who is happy enough alone, and I generally find a few coworkers at every job that I become friends with anyway, it's never been too hard for me, but I realize that I'm pretty weird. I feel like I yanked her away from a relatively comfortable and established social circle, brought her to a place where she knows nobody, and then just expected everything to be ok, which makes me feel like a dick.
Doesn't help that I ended up yelling at her boyfriend a week ago, for valid-but-not-worth-yelling-about reasons, and now I think she's afraid to leave her bedroom, so I might have inadvertently given her hikikomori tendencies. I'm an asshole :/
[1] usually the especially geeky people who will listen to me ramble about math.
> Unless you are able to stay within an extremely narrow range of behaviours (in terms of not being weird, basically speaking expected thinks in expected tone of voice and body language), nobody wants to associate with you.
I'll agree on the lack of on-ramps but this is a pretty limiting view. There's all kinds of people, many who will share some of whatever you think your weirdness is. If you only want to associate with a certain slice of society, it is not so weird that only certain slices of society want to associate with you.
I would say it's not just behaviors but isolation causes stress on the body that increases more irrational behaviors and fears.
So that can be crippling when trying to get back to a health state that can handle relationships again. On-ramps to help destress the environment would be helpful too. It's a challenge because we haven't really built many areas where people are welcome to just be, even with 3rd spaces that doesn't those people that are now rewired in their stress state. Some types of maybe community service (clean up, plantings, painting etc) or festivals events might be more helpful here as they can sometimes be lower stress, no required interactions etc. It's a tough thing especially as people have different reasons to isolate though poverty is likely one of the most major ones.
The evidence that it has a lot to do with social media is very strong. See Jonathan Haidt’s work on the effects of personal phones and social media on young people’s mental health.
I see it in analogy to sugar free sweeteners. There's some evidence that the physical experience of tasting sweetness is an essential phase in triggering the body's mechanisms to deal with large sugar intake. And that triggering that mechanism without providing any material for your body to consume can actually do damage to you as it searches for something to metabolize (this is just an analogy, feel free to prove me wrong).
But just like that, online social interactions trigger some part of our internal mechanisms for reacting to actual community and belonging and healthy debate/conversation, but without the complete "meal" to digest that those things actually provide. Thereby triggering maladaptive behaviors and actually doing damage to the systems that regulate in person socializing.
Probably over complicated but who among us, right?
I think this relates alot to what other posters are saying about how it's difficult to break into established social circles without somebody introducing you in. After all, you're more likely to make friends with a room of individuals than a room of cliques.
What social media does is it greatly strengthens preexisting social circles that there is less incentive for someone to be open-minded and make new friends. Take video games for example, I can personally attest people were alot more sociable and open to friend requests a decade ago than today.
One perception on what is causing this would be Discord. In the past, most people playing would be individuals, and group activities would naturally force people to socialize with strangers. The friends you made in one game would not follow you to another. With Discord, nowadays it's more of alot of premade groups of friends playing these games, so there's no reason to socialize in public chat or care about strangers.
Now Discord isn't new, Skype or BBS existed years before, but they were harder to set up, so pre-made groups were less prevalent and the barriers of entry would naturally mean people with more of an open mindset would be using them. Discord in contrast is very easy to get started with, so the more "conservative" elements would take precedence.
Maybe social media catalyzes the problem but the point is that it’s not the root cause, in the same way that opioids did not in of themselves cause the opioid epidemic.
Sorry, i cannot edit on mobile but i just realized maybe i read that wrong. Are you saying that as opposed to countries without safety nets, or instead emphasizing that even with security nets it can still be a very difficult experience?
It isn't that you're failing, they are the hikikomoris, who want to be alone, and the very fact that somebody tries to socialoze with them annoys them. It's just the norm in the west, so that it's you who stands out, and suffers alone.
Sounds like social coaching has all the attributes of an untapped business niche. The question is, if there is just a obvious pain, why there is such a shortage of solutions. I think it could be because of the stigma associated with this issue or because people affect by it lack genuine interest in solutions as people are usually happy to pay for all kinds of self-improvements.
> Sounds like social coaching has all the attributes of an untapped business niche
The problem is that most of the potential customers are well aware that the field is full of hucksters and certifications are largely meaningless. I'm not about to pay for services I don't believe will pan out.
Doesn't scale is a huge issue. Lack of evidence that it works is another - and anything remotely evidence based is given by somebody like a psychologist and is very expensive.
Social coaching is just another venue through which scammers do their thing. Eg the Andrew Tate-esque "schools" making men even more dysfunctional in the name of teaching them to be "attractive".
It's very easy to talk about some sort of coaching for these issues, but imo it isn't really that straightforward. The people being suggested to take coaching are often very easily manipulated, and there's also the issue of everyone having a different standard for a healthy level of socialization, and everyone also loves to force their standard onto everyone. Result is that "social coaching" is going to be more like brainwashing/indoctrination in practice.
From my personal experience (I also went through a very dark period in my life and just recently climbed out of the hole I dug myself) I guess people are realizing that working hard won't get you anything close to what previous generations had. Once that settles in it's hard to push yourself to do basically anything.
Additionally, I also believe that feeling is compounded by social media where selection bias only shows you cherry picked moments where it seems other people are living the life you won't get.
Finally, among the younger generations there is a lot of climate change dread going around.
For me it was a combination of all these factors and to this day I can't pinpoint exactly what was the trigger, but after COVID lockdowns I simply kept social distancing.
My pet theory is that social media isn't the problem, the always-on surveillance created by smartphones is.
When I was in university, we had nude parties. I'm pretty sure nobody would risk that nowadays. That cherry-picking you mentioned goes both for highs and lows. In this day and age, you always need to plan for your worst moment to end up in someone's picture. The ubiquity of cameras has made everyday living more risky in the sense that you're constantly at risk of losing social standing over insignificant mistakes.
It's a double-edged sword. Without that ubiquity, 4 years ago today, George Floyd would have just been known as a junkie who slipped a fake bill and had a heart attack, if he was known at all. Instead, we were able to see with our own eyes what actually happened.
There is certainly a hammer/nail aspect to the issue (which is itself one of degrees), but I do think that part of the blame that gets put on the technology and its use lies more correctly with the society that makes judgments off of that use's outputs. Ideally, in a functional society, no one would bat an eyelash at coeds sharing platonic nakey time.
My grandfather said there were such parties when he was young. That would have been 1930s-1940s. And what's even more crazy is that this was in the countryside in Portugal.
>Worried about climate change? In the 1980s it was nuclear war.
Yet they could afford _homes_. One of the most important things any human can have. A place to feel safe, call home, not be afraid month after month that your landlord will raise rent by 50% or 100% leaving you on the streets with all the stress that comes afterwards, etc.
Also we have that now as well. We are at the risk of a total war between China, Russia, USA, EU, India, etc. all with nuclear weapons. We have the worst of both worlds.
Yet the new struggles are real too? explaining them away as more of the same does nothing. There are old problems and there are new problems and they're both problems.
well thats unhelpful, diminishing the concerns of people by implying: "back in my day we all had it tougher", just doesnt help and its just not true, back in the day it was a "different" tough but no less or more real than what people are experiencing now.
Well, I think whether or not people objectively had it worse or better is sort of beside the point. How well did people deal with adversity before? Are people lacking something now which is making them less resilient, and less capable of connecting? I'm not sure what the precise answers to those questions are, but it feels like folks are generally doing worse from a mental health perspective. That's a problem to solve just like the "real" problems of the world.
Your observation is neither novel nor helpful. People suffering are often not suffering due to a lack of information, or because they’ve never taken middle school history.
The article reports this happening in countries that are quite comfortable at the moment and have strong safety nets. This isn't being reported from Venezuela or Ukraine or even Poland or the UK.
China has something else - the "lying flat" movement.[1][2] This is just "dropping out", something China is now rich enough to allow. It's not about isolation, just not working much.
> Worried about climate change? In the 1980s it was nuclear war.
During the Cold War, they were at least telling kids (at least in the USA) that the nuclear holocaust might be avoidable "if clear heads prevail," or "if we beat the Russians," or "if they back down." There was at least hope. With Climate Change, we've told two entire generations of kids that there is no hope, it's inevitable and irreversible, and that there is no way to avoid catastrophe. So is it any surprise they're all doomers when it comes to Climate? If you tell everyone that everything is hopeless, then don't be surprised when a few conclude that it really is hopeless.
The on-ramps for fulfilling activity (not even necessarily jobs) are disappearing. If you want to learn something new, you're not looking at a nominal fee at a local community college; maybe the suggestion is to watch (flawed, unfinished) tutorials on YouTube, or to buy a creative influencer's course pack. Maybe that gets you basic skills, maybe you waste your time. But let's assume you picked up [skill]. Someone's probably not going to hire you for it. Do you try to make something by yourself? Here's the list of other skills you should probably pick up in order to compete (yes, you're competing) with the wunderkids who can produce [project], and also the associated devlog and Patreon and streaming schedule. Or, maybe you try to join an existing project that needs your [skill]. That's going to be a decent amount of time lurking the Discord, trying to keep up with a group of people who might not even like you because you're the weird new guy. If the goal is prosocial socialization outside of the house, this might be counterproductive.
Did I mention that the increasing focus on "problem-solving," driven by the tech Cult of Productivity, seems to have predisposed people to the kind of skepticism and pessimism that makes finding problems to solve easier?
I don't understand at all. Because you (in my opinion, erroneously) believe that you need to work some X% harder than the last generation to accomplish the same thing you're just not going to try?
What about pretty much every generation prior to the last, who had to toil in hard labor most days, who often didn't have indoor plumbing, who often didn't even have electricity, who went off to war, did they have any easier time being "successful" than you? Did they just give up and not try? Do you honestly believe you're worse off in 2024 than they were? That you're working harder than they were?
I'm not even going to touch the climate dread stuff as climate change is a topic that can not be impartially discussed anymore.
> you need to work some X% harder than the last generation to accomplish the same thing
And this is the contrasting bit from the comment you are responding:
> working hard won't get you anything close to what previous generations had
The difference is that your sentence says they have to work harder to achieve the same, while their comment says that even if they work hard they can’t achieve the same. That is two very different things.
The reason that ppl give up now is not that it is worse now than before, but rather the opposite. Now you can do almost nothing productive and still survive. Before, you would simply starve to death.
> I guess people are realizing that working hard won't get you anything close to what previous generations had.
I hear this a lot. It’s also untrue. If you are open to anecdata, it’s trivial to prove this is untrue.
What people constantly miss and fail to consider is what they are working hard at. Hard work is a requirement for success and class mobility, but it is not sufficient. You must also work hard at the right things.
The truest thing I have learned about life is that you need to do three things to be successful:
1. Identify places where you can add value /for people who can compensate you/.
2. Learn how to articulate the value you add.
3. Ensure you get compensation for that value added.
If you do these three things, your hard work will pay off, maybe in a big way.
#2-3 is where I would say the majority of people get stuck. I sure have, I volunteer to help people whenever I can but that doesn't mean I'll get paid or compensated for it. Not that I mind but I can get burnt out.
#1 can really be hard when #2-3 never seems to come into the picture for long. It can make anything you do seem like a waste of time. Can you add value, sure, is it worth it? That's where it can be tough.
I think a problem with a lot of this too is lack of real long term community too. But I think some people are just better at managing that naturally.
I think also in men there's the expectation of being a provider as your only role in life, and the fork in the road is either this (reclusion) or unfortunately suicide (apparently work and financial pressures are 2/3rds of reasons for men's suicides).
I've had friends go like that, it's not nice. But the saddest thing is that it happens and the n we all just kind of...move on somehow?
I've recently finished reading "Civilized to Death"[0] and I can't help feel there's some truth to some of the ideas.
One idea that stuck with me is that shit zoos have concrete cages for the monkeys, and they're miserable in them, showing similar signs to modern humans (depression, addition, anger), whereas nice zoos try to keep the monkeys in similar environments to those that they evolved for, where the monkeys are pretty much chill. The author argues that we're constructing concrete zoos for ourselves and in the process making ourselves miserable. We're so far detached from what our bodies and minds evolved for, that it's an alien environment for our species.
If this holds truth, it's really no wonder that the more we pile on and the further we stray from our true species' preferences, the more horrible we will feel, and this hikikomori is a fine illustration of that.
As some comments pointed out 'what about the great depression', 'what about 'nuclear war', "don't you like your electricity"? These are all human patches for human made problems. I don't think the correlation between progress and wellbeing is as clear cut as some would like to see it.
I think even if we lived in a green paradise, there would be those who would measure themselves to others and still find themselves "short" to their more vocally successful peers
I think inequality and toxic competition from an early age demanded by our soceity is a much bigger factor
People feeling increasingly crushed by the daily grind to keep one’s head above water is almost certainly a bigger factor. So many people are just one unfortunate event, or even worse, one paycheck away from financial ruin with little in the way of an institutional safety net (and in the case of many, even a friends/family support network) and that takes a massive toll on one’s psyche.
Speaking for myself, if all needs were guaranteed to be met I’d probably be happier living in a walkable metropolis than idyllic countryside. The part of the city that sucks isn’t the city as much as it is the rat race.
Depends on the checks and balances you have in the 'society'. Are vocally succesful peers lauded? Then perhaps you could run into this situation. Are they mocked for having a big mouth? Maybe the chances are slimmer.
> I think inequality and toxic competition from an early age demanded by our soceity is a much bigger factor
Yeah, I tend to agree with you in that these are important factors into how things are playing out. And the scale. My God. We used to have inequality and competition between a small subset of people, now we're competing with 7+ billion.
I think the “by the way our planet’s dying” just adds to the framing of despair. It’s not the root cause but certainly compounds to it. Independently of this phenomenon, it almost feels like we’re reliving the ‘70s (pollution, urban decay, political breakdown).
I'm pretty sure the declining birth rate (or "fertility") is among the consequences of the change you are describing. The difference with past misery is the lack of stories to cover it up, or to give hope that this is temporary and it will get better.
I haven't read the book, but I think "concrete zoos," for humans, is more metaphorical than literal. Humans find comfort in much wider ranges of environment. If it were available, I'm sure many would find spaceships to be comforting environments.
IMO, the problem is that we're at this stage of social development, where capitalism, and the antiquated culture of jobs, management and deadline, is actively incentivized to limit human potential and creativity. Why? Because that's where competition comes from.
I have a job and I don't live alone, so I don't think I fall into the hikikomri definition in any real sense of the word, but I will say that remote work kind of made me adjacent to it. I sort of have a strong distaste to leave my house a lot of the time since 2020.
I still do leave my house, I have a job that requires me to be in the office for two days a week, but it's something I dread every single week for a variety of reasons. There's something bizarrely comforting about just staying in your bedroom all day and pretending the rest of the world doesn't exist, and it's kind of addictive.
Going outside and having a social life is usually worth it, but it's also kind of intimidating; I have to take a shower, get on the train with a bunch of strangers and not do anything too weird because of course I care a tiny bit what these strangers think about me for whatever reason, go into an office with people who are not-quite-strangers and work extra hard to not be too weird or say anything that might upset someone and keep my desk clean and have meetings with managers who could fire you immediately for any reason they want...it's all exhausting.
I still try and make an effort to leave my house sometimes, but I kind of get why hikikomori do it.
Kind of same, except add a wife and a kid under way. There's plenty of us. Most people absolutely do not regularly "go out" if they work and have a family.
We maintain the bare minimum social interaction because we have to but we'd happily skip it in a heartbeat.
> Going outside and having a social life is usually worth it
Doubt.
The biggest reason for me not to attend social events is that 99% of people are useless from my perspective and it's extremely rare for me to come across someone I actually enjoy spending time with.
Well yeah I think OP means hanging out with those few people you socially enjoy being with. Despite being worth it, even that is sometimes an uphill struggle if you lose energy from it.
I'm still bracing to see how much better/worse language models will make the situation on a global level. So many times I find myself talking to them instead of actual people because there's no chat latency and they're nicer to talk to anyway.
Yeah. I'm similar too. I guess I was almost a hikikomori at one point. I was basically nocturnal and really afraid of social situations. But I was kinda forced into society by having to get a job and stuff; my parents weren't going to look after me.
I haven't been single for very long at all over the past 15 years, but I have very little social interaction. In the past I would force myself to go out to avoid being single and lonely. But every single time I've been in a relationship I shy away from this. I used to think I should force myself to do it, like how some people force themselves to exercise, but now I think why should I force myself to do something I don't want to do for my whole life? It's clear at this point it's part of my nature and won't change. Who am I trying to impress? I just want to be alone most of the time. It's as simple as that. I work from home 5 days a week and I've never been happier.
It's not that I hate every second of socialising but it's just not how I want to spend my life. I often tell people it's like going into a sauna. Yeah, you'll go in and enjoy it, but the most important thing is getting out. Nobody wants to spend their whole life in a sauna.
Yeah, I get it. I have friends, I like my friends (else I wouldn't be friends with them), and I like socializing with them, but it almost never even occurs to me to invite them out to do something. Stuff like that kind of makes me a little anxious.
It's also gotten worse since I completely stopped drinking alcohol for the last few years. I wasn't a huge drinker anyway, but the liquid courage of even a tiny bit of alcohol did relieve that anxiety, and made it easier to do stuff with friends. Now that I don't drink alcohol I'm a little boring.
In my experience, life-experience increases the self-isolation. To the point that the old-folkshome are often halls of quiet, as everyone knows what horrible behavior perfectly normal people are capable and do not wish to interact. The guy who conspires against everyone at work, that manager that harvests others laurels, the longer you life, the more you understand how many will flip on you in this prisoner dilemma of a society. So they all barricade themselves in suburbia, sniper one another through HOA letters and claim to do it for the family, till its time to inherit and even the core family falls apart.
Maybe some hiki is just more aware of what a lonely hellish life it is to be part of western society. And chooses to opt out. Lay flat. Assumes the party escort position. If he would at least consume drugs in there, but its just ramen and colored light.
I couldn't agree more. I think many of the people who choose to isolate just have more self-awareness and more defining bad experiences that makes them avoid too many social interactions that are not strictly necessary or truly beneficial in an obvious way.
In fact, I believe that the nicer and more honest you are in our modern world the worse it is for you.
At heart I'm a rather social person, I like talking to people and doing stuff with them. Yet, all my life I have been abused both verbally and physically, I got stuff stolen many times (often I was actually trying to help) and I get manipulated/used all the time without getting much in return.
All of this comes from being too different (not weird in a bad way, just different in the way I speak/handle myself) and abusive narcissists parents (one in particular) that destroyed my emotional self, teaching me to avoid all conflit at all cost and not stand-up for myself even though I would be capable.
All this is made worse in our bullshit job world, where every business pretend that they are a family and require you to give a lot of your life (like for example forcing you to eat with coworkers even though it should be a break for yourself) while still not giving any kind of security (you can be fired/discarded regardless of the quality of your work) or a real sense of being part of a larger cohesive group that stick together.
Because at the end of the day, even inside a small business, it's all competition, lies, exploitation, anything is OK to get ahead regardless of consequences on individuals, they are expandable.
That being said, drugs make everything worse in the long term, they are a relief/distraction but if you don't manage to kill yourself with them, they will cause more problems on top of the already existing ones. In a way, you could say that the users of hardcore drugs are somewhat ahead of the curve, because if they manage to OD it is sort of a salvation without having to deal with all the implications of suicide...
When you are a teenager it is so easy to treat your time as if it is unlimited and start sinking 1000s of hours into some MMO or other games that before you know it you are in your 20s with no girlfriend, job, skill or self-confidence.
Then you got Japanese entertainment like Hatsune Miku, idols and visual novels/anime that take advantage of lonely people with make-believe girlfriends.
It may not be accurate to paint large amounts of time spent MMOs and the like as a net negative, though. Speaking personally as someone who grew up in a tiny town where there’s nothing for young people to do, WoW and the small nerdy circle of friends that came with it almost certainly kept me out of serious trouble in my teenage years and I think ultimately helped steer my trajectory in such a way that allowed for a more successful adulthood, even if it was a distraction from shorter term development.
Of course this is something that will vary greatly between individuals, though. For some the depths of obsession are much more deep and destructive.
Lots of visual novels/anime are about shut-ins tremulously venturing out into the world and eventually making friends, usually after a lot of anxiety and misunderstanding. I think they'd probably have an encouraging effect. I remember one where a woman confesses her condition to the person in the next apartment, and is advised to start small by visiting the convenience store. She manages it, and is incredibly proud of herself. Soon she is making lists of convenience stores, and has visited every convenience store in a five-mile radius! And now her problem is to diversify, but, you know, it's a start.
How encouraging is it really if there is lots of VNs about shut-ins? Seems like just more escapism. How many does the average person play before they start going outside?
Note: Miku is a vocaloid, basically a voice bank licensed to producers who generate and tune a pre-existing voice with their own lyrics/music. Some of the music produced by these artists are actually amazing and it gets even better when a human singer covers the songs. (See supercell+Ado 恋は戦争)
Yes I know about the Idol part and I couldn’t care less.
It’s the people like you that generalize a whole culture that ruin it.
Yikes dude, stereotype much? Anime actually got me out of my "hikikomori" phase by encouraging me to study and get a gf. You can laugh but it's true :).
Considering the strong inability of modern women to show interest in the average man, I find your comment offensive. The thing is, these people wouldn't get girlfriends either way and now you're just here to bully them. Some people simply aren't cut out for having a girlfriend or having children. Forcing them into doing that just to satisfy what a literal "random" person on HN said is absurdly cruel. You don't care about their lives so just shut up.
Those 1000s of hours are what got me my job, skill and self confidence. It's people like you who hate it when others are self confident.
Readit News
https://archive.ph/lt04t
I have definitely been socially isolated my entire life to some degree or another. But much more so in adulthood. Again, I suggest that this is relatively common, not something that happens to only a few million people.
One aspect that is being glossed over is the amount of socialization or let's call it "pseudo-social" activity that is happening over the internet for these people.
I'm someone who generally does not have friends, leaves the apartment literally only a handful of times per month to take the garbage out and maybe buy groceries once or twice a month if I am trying to save money versus Instacart.
For me it comes down to money. I have a health issue that makes me fatigued etc. and don't have money for health insurance. I don't have money to go to restaurants or otherwise waste going out. So I stay home.
Because I'm always in a poor health and financial state, I feel uncomfortable trying to do any "real" socialization.
But I have always been trying one way or another to get to a point where I have a "real" online business that allows me to actually thrive. Such as buying a car and a house, getting health insurance and addressing my health issues, or paying taxes.
But what I have managed so far is usually just enough to scrape by. There have been some minor successes here and there but rarely have I ever felt like I had enough to truly meet my basic needs such as the health concerns or financial stability.
Anyway, I think it's easy to get in a position with health and financial challenges, maybe just a series of low-paying contracts, where some degree of social isolation is just practical and realistic.
I learned after talking to her that she had done this before. In talking to her, it seemed to me a mix of anxiety and depression with a focus on agoraphobia.
Her family from several hundred miles came to retrieve her when they contacted me. She asked to move back in later, but I declined. I saw her start a new career some years afterwards.
I don't know if the "laying flat/tang ping" movement in China, or the issues of the people in the article, are completely separate from this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping
In China, the "normal" is "to try to be the best". For example, less than half of Chinese students can make it into a "good college" (in China there's a very specific definition of a "good college"), but if you didn't make it, like more than 50% of your peers, that's enough to say that you're "bad at studying".
tang ping basically means quiting this kind of culture and accepting that one's normal. Buying a house and settling down in a city that's not Beijing or Shanghai, like 90% of people do.
It has nothing to do with social withdrawal.
- there's a societal trend to not hire people over the age of 30-35 in China. after months of looking for work, they've given up
- there's an unofficial 70% youth unemployment rate, and with 12 million new grads each year and intense competition for government work, sometimes hundred of applicants for a single stable government spot, the new grads give up
- the young generation has realized that no house/car/marriage/kid (没房没车没妻子) is a good way to live, and there's no pressure on them to create a life. so they lay flat. thus the abysmal marriage/child rate in China, which is near the bottom of world ranking
- the new grads don't want to work in a factory, day or night shift, for $2/hour.
- if the workers are in 1st tier cities, they can barely save up any money working and living there, due to the recent 50% reduction in wages ($1000/month -> $500/month) and increased spending on necessities. so it's easier for them to just not work and live off of parents.
As kids there would be the old run down house with an older man or lady who would rarely be seen. They would be dressed shabbily, and the house would be poorly maintained but livable.
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When I had a job, I definitely didn't have the money for all of this, particularly while living in a hoity-toity resort town (and particularly when it became much more hoity and toity and white during the summer). Making rent was much easier (read: possible) when I just went home every day.
I have some other thoughts, particularly about how the modern job market makes it more difficult for young people to build durable relationships at work (which, as much as legal might abhor it, is indeed one of the avenues through which many young people make friends). Might edit/reply later with those. Suffice it to say, when layoffs disrupt the already imperiled process, you end up with a lot of people entering their late 20s/early 30s with social lives that are exceedingly fragile, if they're even extant.
Instead if you had written social isolation is inevitable without controlled financial and health stability, you'd be 100% spot on.
Human, social isolation and practical/realistic just don't fit together.
This isn’t true. Dalle and ChatGPT are assists, they don’t really replace anything and make being creative more accessible. AI also helps with tons of menial tasks like code syntax
I've had people say they'd go mad living my life. Well when your body works against you you just have to suck it up and deal with it.
As for friends, I have very few because I'm angry all the time. Being alone helps not face charges.
It has nothing to do with debt, wealth or earnings. Completely independent things. People had it worse at every time in history in almost every place.
It has nothing to do with social media / internet. It just something people tend to fall into when they withdraw, and have no trouble abandoning as soon as the life outside becomes tenable again.
Loneliness is a big problem among recent immigrants. They all struggle to make friends at first, because they have no social capital to build upon. It's hard to break into established circles without being introduced by a member, and few people will show up to a stranger's party unless it's vetted by friends.
There is such a thing as being socially destitute, and the recovery can be quite difficult, especially when you have other things going on in your life.
Church and work are the lowest friction social spaces that I can think of outside of wealth dimension.
The problem still defaults to getting your foot in the door though. It requires a certain elevation of compassion and information in enough social circles for a single person to overcome cultural devides.
We like having her around, she's very nice, but she's also had trouble finding new friends/social-circles here, and I kind of feel bad for dragging her up here as a result. I've always been someone who is happy enough alone, and I generally find a few coworkers at every job that I become friends with anyway, it's never been too hard for me, but I realize that I'm pretty weird. I feel like I yanked her away from a relatively comfortable and established social circle, brought her to a place where she knows nobody, and then just expected everything to be ok, which makes me feel like a dick.
Doesn't help that I ended up yelling at her boyfriend a week ago, for valid-but-not-worth-yelling-about reasons, and now I think she's afraid to leave her bedroom, so I might have inadvertently given her hikikomori tendencies. I'm an asshole :/
[1] usually the especially geeky people who will listen to me ramble about math.
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I'll agree on the lack of on-ramps but this is a pretty limiting view. There's all kinds of people, many who will share some of whatever you think your weirdness is. If you only want to associate with a certain slice of society, it is not so weird that only certain slices of society want to associate with you.
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So that can be crippling when trying to get back to a health state that can handle relationships again. On-ramps to help destress the environment would be helpful too. It's a challenge because we haven't really built many areas where people are welcome to just be, even with 3rd spaces that doesn't those people that are now rewired in their stress state. Some types of maybe community service (clean up, plantings, painting etc) or festivals events might be more helpful here as they can sometimes be lower stress, no required interactions etc. It's a tough thing especially as people have different reasons to isolate though poverty is likely one of the most major ones.
I have powered through by wearing a Cleanspace Halo but that precludes a real lot of places I used to go: cafes, cinemas, theatres...
But just like that, online social interactions trigger some part of our internal mechanisms for reacting to actual community and belonging and healthy debate/conversation, but without the complete "meal" to digest that those things actually provide. Thereby triggering maladaptive behaviors and actually doing damage to the systems that regulate in person socializing.
Probably over complicated but who among us, right?
What social media does is it greatly strengthens preexisting social circles that there is less incentive for someone to be open-minded and make new friends. Take video games for example, I can personally attest people were alot more sociable and open to friend requests a decade ago than today.
One perception on what is causing this would be Discord. In the past, most people playing would be individuals, and group activities would naturally force people to socialize with strangers. The friends you made in one game would not follow you to another. With Discord, nowadays it's more of alot of premade groups of friends playing these games, so there's no reason to socialize in public chat or care about strangers.
Now Discord isn't new, Skype or BBS existed years before, but they were harder to set up, so pre-made groups were less prevalent and the barriers of entry would naturally mean people with more of an open mindset would be using them. Discord in contrast is very easy to get started with, so the more "conservative" elements would take precedence.
Once you ignore finance and lack of housing (and/or overpopulation), then yes.
Easily the most stressful and financially unstable moment in my life.
It was only two months, but I genuinely thought I'd never recover my social standing, or confidence ever again
The problem is that most of the potential customers are well aware that the field is full of hucksters and certifications are largely meaningless. I'm not about to pay for services I don't believe will pan out.
It's very easy to talk about some sort of coaching for these issues, but imo it isn't really that straightforward. The people being suggested to take coaching are often very easily manipulated, and there's also the issue of everyone having a different standard for a healthy level of socialization, and everyone also loves to force their standard onto everyone. Result is that "social coaching" is going to be more like brainwashing/indoctrination in practice.
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Additionally, I also believe that feeling is compounded by social media where selection bias only shows you cherry picked moments where it seems other people are living the life you won't get.
Finally, among the younger generations there is a lot of climate change dread going around.
For me it was a combination of all these factors and to this day I can't pinpoint exactly what was the trigger, but after COVID lockdowns I simply kept social distancing.
When I was in university, we had nude parties. I'm pretty sure nobody would risk that nowadays. That cherry-picking you mentioned goes both for highs and lows. In this day and age, you always need to plan for your worst moment to end up in someone's picture. The ubiquity of cameras has made everyday living more risky in the sense that you're constantly at risk of losing social standing over insignificant mistakes.
There is certainly a hammer/nail aspect to the issue (which is itself one of degrees), but I do think that part of the blame that gets put on the technology and its use lies more correctly with the society that makes judgments off of that use's outputs. Ideally, in a functional society, no one would bat an eyelash at coeds sharing platonic nakey time.
Think times are tough now? Try the great depression.
Worried about climate change? In the 1980s it was nuclear war.
People living paycheck to paycheck, barely scraping by? Media glorifying the rich and famous? Nothing new.
Yet they could afford _homes_. One of the most important things any human can have. A place to feel safe, call home, not be afraid month after month that your landlord will raise rent by 50% or 100% leaving you on the streets with all the stress that comes afterwards, etc.
Also we have that now as well. We are at the risk of a total war between China, Russia, USA, EU, India, etc. all with nuclear weapons. We have the worst of both worlds.
Nuclear war didn't happen. Climate change is happening. Pretty key difference!
As opposed to now when it is nuclear war and climate change? :)
China has something else - the "lying flat" movement.[1][2] This is just "dropping out", something China is now rich enough to allow. It's not about isolation, just not working much.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/world/asia/china-slackers...
[2] https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/arti...
During the Cold War, they were at least telling kids (at least in the USA) that the nuclear holocaust might be avoidable "if clear heads prevail," or "if we beat the Russians," or "if they back down." There was at least hope. With Climate Change, we've told two entire generations of kids that there is no hope, it's inevitable and irreversible, and that there is no way to avoid catastrophe. So is it any surprise they're all doomers when it comes to Climate? If you tell everyone that everything is hopeless, then don't be surprised when a few conclude that it really is hopeless.
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Did I mention that the increasing focus on "problem-solving," driven by the tech Cult of Productivity, seems to have predisposed people to the kind of skepticism and pessimism that makes finding problems to solve easier?
Or, you could just... not.
>Have problem
>Don't care.
>Don't have problem anymore.
What about pretty much every generation prior to the last, who had to toil in hard labor most days, who often didn't have indoor plumbing, who often didn't even have electricity, who went off to war, did they have any easier time being "successful" than you? Did they just give up and not try? Do you honestly believe you're worse off in 2024 than they were? That you're working harder than they were?
I'm not even going to touch the climate dread stuff as climate change is a topic that can not be impartially discussed anymore.
You are saying this;
> you need to work some X% harder than the last generation to accomplish the same thing
And this is the contrasting bit from the comment you are responding:
> working hard won't get you anything close to what previous generations had
The difference is that your sentence says they have to work harder to achieve the same, while their comment says that even if they work hard they can’t achieve the same. That is two very different things.
I hear this a lot. It’s also untrue. If you are open to anecdata, it’s trivial to prove this is untrue.
What people constantly miss and fail to consider is what they are working hard at. Hard work is a requirement for success and class mobility, but it is not sufficient. You must also work hard at the right things.
The truest thing I have learned about life is that you need to do three things to be successful:
1. Identify places where you can add value /for people who can compensate you/.
2. Learn how to articulate the value you add.
3. Ensure you get compensation for that value added.
If you do these three things, your hard work will pay off, maybe in a big way.
#1 can really be hard when #2-3 never seems to come into the picture for long. It can make anything you do seem like a waste of time. Can you add value, sure, is it worth it? That's where it can be tough.
I think a problem with a lot of this too is lack of real long term community too. But I think some people are just better at managing that naturally.
I've had friends go like that, it's not nice. But the saddest thing is that it happens and the n we all just kind of...move on somehow?
One idea that stuck with me is that shit zoos have concrete cages for the monkeys, and they're miserable in them, showing similar signs to modern humans (depression, addition, anger), whereas nice zoos try to keep the monkeys in similar environments to those that they evolved for, where the monkeys are pretty much chill. The author argues that we're constructing concrete zoos for ourselves and in the process making ourselves miserable. We're so far detached from what our bodies and minds evolved for, that it's an alien environment for our species.
If this holds truth, it's really no wonder that the more we pile on and the further we stray from our true species' preferences, the more horrible we will feel, and this hikikomori is a fine illustration of that.
As some comments pointed out 'what about the great depression', 'what about 'nuclear war', "don't you like your electricity"? These are all human patches for human made problems. I don't think the correlation between progress and wellbeing is as clear cut as some would like to see it.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Civilized-Death-What-Lost-Modernity/d...
I think inequality and toxic competition from an early age demanded by our soceity is a much bigger factor
Speaking for myself, if all needs were guaranteed to be met I’d probably be happier living in a walkable metropolis than idyllic countryside. The part of the city that sucks isn’t the city as much as it is the rat race.
> I think inequality and toxic competition from an early age demanded by our soceity is a much bigger factor
Yeah, I tend to agree with you in that these are important factors into how things are playing out. And the scale. My God. We used to have inequality and competition between a small subset of people, now we're competing with 7+ billion.
IMO, the problem is that we're at this stage of social development, where capitalism, and the antiquated culture of jobs, management and deadline, is actively incentivized to limit human potential and creativity. Why? Because that's where competition comes from.
I still do leave my house, I have a job that requires me to be in the office for two days a week, but it's something I dread every single week for a variety of reasons. There's something bizarrely comforting about just staying in your bedroom all day and pretending the rest of the world doesn't exist, and it's kind of addictive.
Going outside and having a social life is usually worth it, but it's also kind of intimidating; I have to take a shower, get on the train with a bunch of strangers and not do anything too weird because of course I care a tiny bit what these strangers think about me for whatever reason, go into an office with people who are not-quite-strangers and work extra hard to not be too weird or say anything that might upset someone and keep my desk clean and have meetings with managers who could fire you immediately for any reason they want...it's all exhausting.
I still try and make an effort to leave my house sometimes, but I kind of get why hikikomori do it.
Doubt.
The biggest reason for me not to attend social events is that 99% of people are useless from my perspective and it's extremely rare for me to come across someone I actually enjoy spending time with.
I'm still bracing to see how much better/worse language models will make the situation on a global level. So many times I find myself talking to them instead of actual people because there's no chat latency and they're nicer to talk to anyway.
I haven't been single for very long at all over the past 15 years, but I have very little social interaction. In the past I would force myself to go out to avoid being single and lonely. But every single time I've been in a relationship I shy away from this. I used to think I should force myself to do it, like how some people force themselves to exercise, but now I think why should I force myself to do something I don't want to do for my whole life? It's clear at this point it's part of my nature and won't change. Who am I trying to impress? I just want to be alone most of the time. It's as simple as that. I work from home 5 days a week and I've never been happier.
It's not that I hate every second of socialising but it's just not how I want to spend my life. I often tell people it's like going into a sauna. Yeah, you'll go in and enjoy it, but the most important thing is getting out. Nobody wants to spend their whole life in a sauna.
It's also gotten worse since I completely stopped drinking alcohol for the last few years. I wasn't a huge drinker anyway, but the liquid courage of even a tiny bit of alcohol did relieve that anxiety, and made it easier to do stuff with friends. Now that I don't drink alcohol I'm a little boring.
Maybe some hiki is just more aware of what a lonely hellish life it is to be part of western society. And chooses to opt out. Lay flat. Assumes the party escort position. If he would at least consume drugs in there, but its just ramen and colored light.
At heart I'm a rather social person, I like talking to people and doing stuff with them. Yet, all my life I have been abused both verbally and physically, I got stuff stolen many times (often I was actually trying to help) and I get manipulated/used all the time without getting much in return. All of this comes from being too different (not weird in a bad way, just different in the way I speak/handle myself) and abusive narcissists parents (one in particular) that destroyed my emotional self, teaching me to avoid all conflit at all cost and not stand-up for myself even though I would be capable.
All this is made worse in our bullshit job world, where every business pretend that they are a family and require you to give a lot of your life (like for example forcing you to eat with coworkers even though it should be a break for yourself) while still not giving any kind of security (you can be fired/discarded regardless of the quality of your work) or a real sense of being part of a larger cohesive group that stick together. Because at the end of the day, even inside a small business, it's all competition, lies, exploitation, anything is OK to get ahead regardless of consequences on individuals, they are expandable.
That being said, drugs make everything worse in the long term, they are a relief/distraction but if you don't manage to kill yourself with them, they will cause more problems on top of the already existing ones. In a way, you could say that the users of hardcore drugs are somewhat ahead of the curve, because if they manage to OD it is sort of a salvation without having to deal with all the implications of suicide...
Then you got Japanese entertainment like Hatsune Miku, idols and visual novels/anime that take advantage of lonely people with make-believe girlfriends.
Of course this is something that will vary greatly between individuals, though. For some the depths of obsession are much more deep and destructive.
It’s the people like you that generalize a whole culture that ruin it.
Those 1000s of hours are what got me my job, skill and self confidence. It's people like you who hate it when others are self confident.