
The Blindness of Social Wealth - montrose
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/opinion/facebook-social-wealth.html
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asherwebb
There certainly is a crisis that social media and greedy online platforms
(greedy for your time and ad dollars) prey upon. And yes the breakdown of
social relationships with family, community and neighbors is certainly a big
part of this. But consider historical factors in the USA. The breakdown of
church - this was the de facto center of many communities for generations up
until the post-vietnam era and the culture wars that have ensued. Combine this
with the loss of farms - from more than 6 million in 1935 to roughly 2 million
in 2012 - farms have gotten bigger. When agriculture dominated the rural
economy having closer knit ties with neighbors was not so much a choice but a
necessity. Also we are a country that embraced the idea of moving - be it from
the city to the suburbs or the American South to the industrial American
north. We have not done a very good job replacing those connections and it is
breeding an epidemic of loneliness and addiction - not only to digital media
but also to opiates. There is not an easy fix of course but folks should
certainly consider the intrinsic value of these things before they decide to
write off their family or community because of a difference of opinion or
worldview. And another factor is that capital is increasingly accumulated at
the top percent or 1/10th percent of earners. The folks in the middle and
lower class find they have to work more to have a quality life than they did a
generation or two ago. We are so busy working and driving to work and running
our kids around that we barely have any time for friends and that is truly a
shame.

~~~
rdiddly
You touch on an important factor: land-use and transportation policy. The lack
of "walkability" in the typical suburban neighborhood is certainly not
helping. I don't mean the ability to go out and take a walk for the exercise,
I mean being in a place where walking is the best way to get to useful places
and do things... the grocery, the doctor, the hardware store, and ideally,
your job. Dense cities have this, to some degree. Rural areas don't, but they
usually have a small town nearby with a main street (if Walmart hasn't
decimated it). But in the suburbs you're generally inside a car to get
anywhere at all, and how much incidental, accidental contact are you going to
have with your neighbors from behind a glass pane at 25 MPH?

~~~
bitwize
I used to live in some of the burbiest burbs imaginable. I lived a bit out of
the way but many of my schoolmates were right in the thick of it: tract homes,
manicured lawns, the whole bit.

Back then -- I don't know about today -- going to the store may have been a
chore that required a car, but visiting your neighbors was easy. You were
bound to see some of them as you went out to get the paper or water the lawn.
Car traffic was so light that kids would play in the street -- basketball,
hockey, frisbee, racing go-karts or RC cars, whatever. All the kids in a
neighborhood all seemed to know one another really well.

There's a lot to dislike about suburbs, but by themselves they're not some
sort of dark magic socially isolating force.

~~~
refurb
That was my experience as well. In the suburbs you generally knew your
neighbors, at least more so than in the city. I live in a city now, and I run
into my neighbors and chat with them, but that's about it.

Also, the suburbs tended to have more kids and generally be safer (not as much
traffic). As a result, I spent most of my youth just hanging out with
neighborhood kids. And my parents hung out with neighbors.

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thisisit
There is a growing culture of reaction videos on YT. People watch other people
watching and reacting to stuff. That never sat well with me. And I always
wondered - are people so alone or insecure that they need to watch other
people's "reaction" to feel better? Given the rise of reaction channels on YT,
I guess the answer is resounding - Yes.

~~~
jotux
This isn't really new, right? Laugh tracks and live audiences have been used
in radio/tv since the 50s for the same purpose.

~~~
Lionsion
The point of a laugh track is to make the show itself appear funnier; the
laugh track is in the background, invisible. I think what he's describing is
different, more like focusing on the laugh track itself and ignoring the show.

~~~
mc32
Laugh tracks are there to do the laughing _for_ you. That is you can just sit
back and not even have to put in the energy to laugh. It does it for you.

~~~
Lionsion
I thought they were there to prime a laughing response, because people are
more likely to laugh with others than alone.

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CmdrKrool
This article makes some decent points but it's a shame that it had to be
weakly and opprobriously framed as a kind of 'wealth' struggle. As the article
itself says, "the tribes have become weaponized", I guess.

~~~
evanwise
It's interesting and rather revealing that your first reaction to a critique
which draws an analogy to material wealth is to defensively frame it as nasty
or distasteful.

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abnry
"It’s that Facebook and other social media companies are feeding this epidemic
of loneliness and social isolation."

This is less about Facebook and more about people on the internet.

~~~
quxbar
Yeah, I was socially isolating myself online WAY before facebook!

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lainga
I see now: /r9k/ posters were internet hipsters, creating reality-distorting
bubbles of isolation and despair around themselves before it was cool.

~~~
daodedickinson
I managed that before r9k debuted... and I'm still socially bankrupt. There is
no escape.

~~~
km3k
Exactly. You can keep going back and it was always happening on the Internet.
I was doing this on various forums before 4Chan was a thing. People were doing
it nearly a decade before I was born, on BBSes in the late 70s.

~~~
graphitezepp
It just steadily became more common. Turns out replacing real in person
socializing with digital distraction is just not a good idea/

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malvosenior
_" I was really struck by this last week, when Mark Zuckerberg came through
Washington. Most of the questions he faced at the congressional hearings and
most of the analysis in the press were about Facebook’s failure to protect
privacy. That’s the sort of thing that may be uppermost on your mind if you
are socially wealthy, if, like most successful politicians and analysts, you
live within a thick web of connection and feel as if your social schedule is
too full."_

Or you know, because they were there to discuss privacy and not try to
regulate away loneliness, which obviously isn't the role of the government
anyway.

~~~
chongli
If it's not the role of government to solve problems that are tearing apart
the fabric of society, then whose role is it? Who is going to do it? Maybe no
one. Maybe we're all screwed.

~~~
fogzen
Here’s a radical idea: don’t use Facebook if it makes you feel bad!

~~~
daodedickinson
Quitting Facebook doesn't cure the social bankruptcy, though. The only cures
seem to be joining cults and gangs and militaries and other groups with high
costs and low standards.

~~~
Jtsummers
You develop social capital by fostering relationships with other people. By
being responsible, and having positive interactions. You'll develop that
capital not just with them, but also with the people around you and them.

If you have a positive relationship with someone, and they think well of you,
then their friends and family and colleagues will accept their voucher
(assuming they have a positive relationship with those people).

You want to do this starting from zero? I've done it, though not with the
intent of developing social capital. I was just tired of being lonely.

Seek out people to do things with. I started attending mass again. I went to
Bible studies. I joined a soccer team (I sucked at soccer, still do). I went
to movies and dinners with people. When they invited me to an event, I'd say
yes unless I _really_ had something else to do (could legit be cleaning the
apartment, but usually meant travel or work or obligations to other people).

Be responsible, be honest. When they invite you and you say yes, you show up.
Do not be a flake. You will get a reputation as a flake and your social
capital will go down the drain.

As you meet more people, foster deeper friendships and connections with those
who it makes sense to. Do not force it. Several people I met this way had very
similar technical interests to me, we developed a stronger connection over
that and I got a new job. Others have similar academic or travel or other
interests, and we connected over that. Others, we just have mutual respect for
each other and cared about the other's wellbeing.

Take charge. Initiate and plan events. Doesn't have to be all of them, but
some of them. Don't drop a hint, "Wouldn't it be fun to go to the beer
festival this weekend?". Send out the invitation, do the planning. Set the
times. People show or the don't. Start doing this, they'll start showing. And
when they don't, let it flow over you. Don't take it as a personal rejection
(even if you may not it to be that). Enjoy the day, and meet people at the
event.

Over time this becomes more natural if it feels weird at the start. And don't
think about it from a social capital perspective. Just focus on the doing
things with other people, especially things you enjoy, aspect.

And once you have the initial circle, especially if you take ownership of it
by leading the call to gather and do things together, it'll expand. People
will bring in people from their other social circles. Some will stick around,
some won't. Merge your various circles. I have colleagues and friends, I
invite both to movies and things. This moves people from the "associate" or
"acquaintance" categories to the "friend" category when we hit it off.
Sometimes they bring people and those are the ones I connect with.

~~~
twoquestions
This is some of the best advice I've read wrt repairing one's social circle.
Most advice begins and ends at "Go to church" or if you get lucky "Find a
sport or club" which is of profoundly limited value if you're not a member of
the dominant religion and/or don't know the area well.

I had to go through a similar process starting from nearly zero, and it was
not easy. I did it by running D&D, as everyone around wants to play a game,
but nobody wants to go through the effort of running one. All of the above
advice applies.

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pwaivers
"In America today you would say that the clans have polarized, the villages
have been decimated and the tribes have become weaponized."

This is an interesting statement, but doesn't really have any facts backing
it.

~~~
WhompingWindows
I agree that the article is oddly bifurcated. It starts with numerous
statistics listed out in a laundry-list fashion. Then it proceeds into
unfounded speculation with no statistical backing. The traditional and more
effective argumentative approach is to make a Claim, then provide Evidence to
support it, and Reasoning to tie them together logically. Here, the author
starts with heaps of evidence, then moves into unrelated claims/reasoning.
Lack luster writing, which I have come to expect from David Brooks, a writer
who is so out of touch with the currents of mainstream America that he is
forced to be some strawman Republican writing on a left-leaning NYC newspaper
who few from either side agree with.

Time to replace him with a more skillful and adept opinion columnist.

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seem_2211
In modern Western culture we've killed God and I think we're learning what the
consequences of that mean.

~~~
remir
People left the church because it was stuck in a obsolete understanding of the
world and did not offer people satisfactory answers to their questions.

Past a certain point, if a religion wants to survive, it must renew itself,
otherwise it risks becoming irrelevant.

I bet there would be more people in church if the pastor said: hey, forget
about the Bible, forget about the angry, prideful and violent "man in the sky"
of the old testament. Forget about the old laws. Forget about the Pope.

Instead, go within. You don't even have to pray or bow down to anybody. Just
be silent and still your mind. Jesus told us that the "kingdom of heaven" is
within us, so that's what we going to explore today. And if you don't believe
in Jesus, then that's cool, too. Let's go beyond beliefs and dogma and simply
connect with ourselves and be present in the moment.

~~~
Noos
This is like going to a chess club and suggesting they get rid of all the
rules about chess, all of the history of the game, all of the books advising
people how to play it, and that annoying ranking thing, and giving them the
board and pieces. Then you tell them to make up their own game and sit back
and watch the social connections form.

It generally doesn't work, because you can be present in the moment playing
golf or sleeping in much more easily. if you try and make a chess club
essentially without chess, why bother?

~~~
remir
If chess clubs are dying around the country because people lost interest in
chess, that doesn't mean they aren't looking for something else to play.

When Jesus spoke about churches (ekklesia), he wasn't referring to a building,
an organization or leadership structure or rules. He did not speak about
"sunday school", singing songs, or any or that.

He was talking about a spontaneous gathering of people who felt "called out of
the world to follow him and serve God". It's not like he told his disciples to
go ahead and start this "Christian" religion and build the buildings that
people would go to every Sunday like clock work.

We are the product of culture and memories. A lot of people have a negative
association with religion for a lot of different reasons, but that doesn't
mean these people are not spiritual and would not appreciate meeting other
like-minded individuals in a non-judgmental environment.

~~~
vlehto
I think it's deeper than that. Lots of religious people don't go to church.
Many who go, do it just because of habit or some personal principle of "I'm
church going Christian".

Churches are not drawing people in, not even their prime focus group. Despite
indoctrinating kids from the crib.

The few mega churches that actually work, are obvious scams. Jordan Peterson
doesn't go to church because he doesn't feel like the preacher actually
believes in jesus.

There is something deeply fucked up within Christianity that makes it
difficult to sell. I can't put my finger to it.

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trgv
> Weak social connections have health effects similar to smoking 15 cigarettes
> a day

Uh huh

~~~
ranie93
So when the youtube comments say that the video gave them cancer, they aren't
exaggerating!

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marikio
Wrote an article about addressing this just days ago...
[https://medium.com/@marikhazan/should-tech-have-nutrition-
fa...](https://medium.com/@marikhazan/should-tech-have-nutrition-facts-
eb9ead1dbb2b)

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bsder
I wonder if there are any lessons to be learned from other times and places.

"Cry, the Beloved Country" seems to spring to mind ...

