You must log in or # to comment.
I’m always super hesitant to comment on stuff like this because I don’t want to be lumped in with the fascists but I’m going to break that rule just this once. When people hear “Male Loneliness Epidemic”, it means different things to different people. It appears to me as most left leaning people hear, “I don’t have a woman that caters to me and my needs”. For myself it means, “I don’t have a Support System of friends and family to lean on.” A partner would be great but I would get far greater satisfaction in gaining a group of friends or a sense of belonging. Paired with likely Autism and ADHD, things aren’t super rad for me on any aspect of life. That’s all my own stuff to deal with though.
The takeaway is I hope anyone reading this is doing okay, regardless of gender. I may not get the struggles of your life, but I hope you are overcoming them.
I think there is a general loneliness epidemic, but it’s particularly acute with men who were never pressured or given the opportunity to develop the skills necessary to build and maintain a community around them.
Like the systems and environments that used to facilitate this no longer exist, and it is left to individuals to do it them selves, something impossible without those skills. Those institutions and systems that used to facilitate community building have been pivoted to profit or dismantled if they couldn’t generate profit or if they were actively undermining the profitability of something else.
Yeah, that was my interpretation as well, although I’ve heard the alternative usage too. Also, same situation for me. I’ve got a very few people that I’m friendly with, but no close friends. Hope it gets better for you, man.
I wish this was accurate. There would be a lot less fascists.
This is absolutely a major contributing factor, but there’s more to it than this. Everybody is lonely, pretty much regardless of gender. This issue hurts everyone.
And it is also caused in part because of how fucked up we’ve designed our society. It’s nearly impossible to make friends as an adult because
- we’re all working too much to have the free time for it
- there are (effectively) no third places where you can hang out with the expectation to meet people without the expectation of spending money
- to get anywhere you generally need a car, highways and roads divide and spread everything which makes walking or biking difficult
- social media is run for profit, not for the sake of actually connecting people
- these above issues feed into the issue OP is pointing out. If you are lonely and your life isn’t going too well, then you’re gonna seek answers for this complicated issue. And fascists are all too willing to take advantage and provide simple answers. It then turns into a self feeding cycle.
I’m sure there’s a bunch of other reasons too, but those are the ones of the top of my sleep deprived head. Even if all the above awful values men have disappeared, the above problems would still need to be fixed.
Also to add to the list:
-
As third-places don’t exist without paying for things, more socialisation has moved online where intimate connections are not as deep as inperson so the connections are weaker and don’t last as long.
-
Internet socialising has a tendency to form echo chambers and social bubbles so interacting with new people with different perspectives, even online, is more difficult which is eroding socialising skills.
-
Dating sites and apps have capitalized on this loss of places to meet people and most of these platforms are controlled by a single entity: Match Group.
-
Match Group are explicitly making the dating experience worse for both men and women because it makes more money for them and they have little to no competition.
It goes like this: women get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of messages and harassed on the platform, women leave those platforms, fewer % of women on the platform, men then pay money to get more potential matches, women get overwhelmed, and therefore the cycle repeats.
At least that’s my impression from the experience I have had and observed when asking my women friends about it. Not sure how the experience is for those looking for non-hetrosexual relationships, please comment below how it’s similar or different for other groups.
-
Besides the stupidity of this post, you guys do realize that male loneliness is, in part, just how we organize as primates, right?
The fascists go for a predatory numbers game, hitting up as many women as possible while hoping they find ones vulnerable enough to get roped into an abusive relationship. It’s a strategy that breaks down against women who socially reinforce self respect amongst each other. Of course, this isn’t unique, as fascism similarly recruits vulnerable men who struggle with self respect. It’s abuse and cruelty all the way down.
