politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
I'm not arguing for car dependency, and it is component to the loneliness epidemic, but it's not the sole cause. More than 1 in 10 Europeans are lonely, so car dependency can't be the only factor.
This widespread loneliness has really only hit its stride in earnest in the last decade or so. And what hit the scene about 10 years ago? Social media, ironically. The thing that is ostensibly designed to connect us has pushed us apart.
We can't have an honest conversation about this without identifying who it affects the most: young men. As a crude metric, /r/ForeverAlone has literally an order of magnitude more users than /r/ForeverAloneWomen. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the latter subreddit literally banned male users because the female users were getting asked out on dates ... literally this meme.
Which brings me to dating apps. They have insanely lopsided demographics that make half of all men who use them persona non grata. They have a greater matching inequality than the economic inequality of Venezuela. This is not a comfortable conversation to have, but ignoring it won't help solve the problem.
Speaking of the economy, that sure isn't helping either. What limited opportunities for real-world social interaction still exist are becoming less and less accessible when more and more people have to spend more of their time earning piss-all income just to scrape by.
The loneliness epidemic is a coalescence of these, and other factors, that have been accumulating over decades of consolidating organic social opportunities into overorganized spaces with inherent and high barriers to entry.