
Alienated, Alone and Angry: What the Digital Revolution Did? - SirLJ
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/in-the-2010s-decade-we-became-alienated-by-technology
======
dcolkitt
One thing to note is that Robert Putnam wrote the original _Bowling Alone_
essay in 1995. Well before most people in America even had Internet access.

The trend of declining participation in religious organizations, civic
organizations (like the League of Women Voters), fraternal societies (like the
Elks or Masons), volunteer associations, labor unions, and sports leagues has
been happening since at least the 1970s. Surveys of Americans have found a
consistent decline in the number of self-reported close friends since as far
back as the 1980s. Same for those who reported being friends with their
neighbors. Indicators of social capital like the percent of people who donate
blood have been falling since the 1970s.

The point is increasing levels of isolation and misanthropy is a manifestation
of a broader trend towards declining social capital. And that trend has been
ongoing for probably 50 years. Social media may have accelerated it, but I
don't think it would have anywhere near the same impact if Facebook was
introduced to the American society of 1960.

~~~
asdfman123
I wonder if it's a side effect of prosperity. If you're poor, you depend on
your broader family and community -- when you run out of money, when your car
breaks down and your uncle can fix it, etc. etc. and if you have to sleep in
the same room as your extended family, you're going to have "community."

However, dealing with people is difficult and inconvenient, so when you have
money you decide to leave your family and isolate yourself from other people's
problems as much as possible. You perhaps gain more peace, privacy and free
time, but it's harder to notice what you're losing.

I'm not going to dredge up the numbers now, but in the 60s in America, I think
it's probably safe to say a lot more siblings lived in the same room, a lot
more people lived in small independent farms working alongside many family
members, etc. etc. People were closer together because they had to be. People
in cities didn't have to be quite so adjacent, but perhaps they were closer
because it was normal in society to be closer.

Speculation on my part, but it probably wouldn't be hard to find those numbers
and back up the argument...

~~~
FernandoTN
From what I've seen living a privileged community in a not so privileged
country, its that culture tends to impact in a much higher degree than money
or privilege. Yes, money can buy you the privilege of skipping those awkward
interactions that make us human, but it is up to the person to actually want
to use money with that purpose.

I know very wealthy people that keep very closed ties to their families and
friends. It's true that finding real friends gets harder, but the isolation
tends to be caused by a deeper cultural norm.

E.g. in Latin America the family is given a much higher importance than in the
States or Europe. It is not rare to see young adults living with their parents
even if they can easily afford a place of their own. Even those that live on
their own tend to meet their families in a regular basis.

In the end it's all about prioritizing what is important in your life and in
every society there seems to be a common list shared by it's inhabitants, if
you end up in a place that values more independence than relations, maybe its
time to start swimming against the current in that regard.

~~~
asdfman123
Well, that's true, but my argument is that cultural norms spring from
necessity. In places where a lot of people must live adjacent, that kind of
living becomes the cultural norm and even if you're in a position to do your
own thing, you are still influenced by it.

That is, cultural norms affect people, but basic necessity also affect
cultural norms. Just like your values inform what you do, but what you do also
changes your values.

You're right in that we must make greater efforts to swim against the current,
but so many of us must in adulthood develop tools to foster community and
connection. That's hard to do, especially when you're vulnerable, there's
trial-and-error involved and you don't really have a good model for what you
"should" be doing.

~~~
FernandoTN
I have a hunch than in a couple decades this issue will be amplified. The
biggest problem we are seeing from the disposal of more social interactions
arises from not giving it its true importance.

It may be as you say that in the past interactions were fostered mainly as a
side product of the necessity to cooperate and interact with others. However
as we develop and become for independent thanks to prosperity and technology
we must not get rid of interaction for they are an end in itself.

The issue or even taboo is the lack of importance that is given to the
interactions with others just for its own sake. Maybe we will move on from
this need and become more self reliant, however in the short term it seems
that we are having a hard time adapting, especially with the increase of
suicides and drug use in younger generations. ->
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21650584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21650584)

------
CptFribble
Refrigeration, department stores, radio.

That's food, sundries, and information, the 3 main things that humans go out
of their home to get, and before those 3 inventions you had to get into your
community to get them.

Refrigeration allowed the growth of larger, depersonalized grocery stores.

Department stores were the first iteration of buying sundries at a place run
by people you don't know.

Radio was the first non-local information source available on demand.

For most of human history, people lived in communities and had to interact
with each other to live their lives. In the last 100 years out of 10,000 we
suddenly don't anymore, and we're still figuring it out. And that's before you
consider the impact of the Internet.

This has been a long, slow burn, and I worry that humanity won't be able to
grow up fast enough to figure it out before we do something really stupid.

~~~
adamsea
I would argue its gross inequality more so than those technologies.

In other countries with less economic inequality I believe studies show more
happiness and social cohesion.

~~~
dbspin
Not surprising that suggesting social inequality might play a part gets you
instantly downvoted. Despite being as plausible an explanation as other (more
right wing) possibilities - 'diversity', 'women working' that proliferate in
this thread. Its uncomfortable for highly paid tech workers to accept the
reality that inequality damages social cohesion.

Nevertheless, If inequality is a major cause of this kind of alienation, it's
a particular kind of inequality. Specifically people living in competition,
and confronted by the impact of competition in close proximity. Some
desperately unequal societies in South East Asia don't seem to have the same
level of social dysfunction, while Japan which is relatively flat has enormous
amounts of alienation, mental health issues, relationship decline, and of
course suicide.

------
harryf
I don't believe the digital revolution "did this to us". I think it's simply a
mirror and and amplifier what was already there.

On social media, for example, we get to see the projections of what people
want to be and the underlying darker sides of their personality (narcissism,
selfishness, etc). This was always there but latent or hidden... stuff that
happened behind closed doors that only families knew about. Now it's public...

Meanwhile the alienation or isolation... as a European, what freaks me out
every time I'm in the US is the dependence on cars for everything. That in
many places it's not possible to walk to the grocery and get fresh air... That
you're in a permanent state of semi-isolation, breathing air-conditioned
oxygen with the only human contact being with people that are paid to smile.
Contrast that with visiting a city like Kiev where, in the evening after work,
the city parks are filled with families enjoying the sunset (when the weather
is warm).

I've have the theory that Internet adoption has always been fastest in the US,
compared the the rest of the world, because it's the only way to get any kind
of "real" connection to other people. The driver - loneliness - was always
there, the product of car dependence, television and an entrepreneurial
culture that tends to want to monetize any kind of human interaction, even
friends (Amway, pyramid marketing).

Ultimately I think it's a good thing, that this stuff is becoming visible and
we're realising there is a problem. That's the first step to find the
solution.

~~~
Juliate
> I don't believe the digital revolution "did this to us". I think it's simply
> a mirror and and amplifier what was already there.

You saying the same thing and its exact contrary.

Of course it's always been there. That's not the point. The point is that the
so-called revolution/empowerment is promoting the worst out of us collectively
and individually, instead of taming the beast, and helping the best.

Taming the beast, the destructive human passions, for the common good, which
is the very point of "civilisation".

Edit:

> and we're realising there is a problem

It's been thousands of years we've realised, we know there is a problem.
People have discoursed/written about it so much in the past.

~~~
asdfman123
It's almost like saying, "Cars aren't responsible for polluting the
environment. Our capacity for pollution has always been there."

Well, of course it has, but small nudges are responsible for a big part of the
course of history.

But I completely agree with them on the isolation of car-based American
culture.

~~~
corodra
Yea, but if we're going to follow the logic of the article, the Harris Poll’s
Alienation Index had American alienation at 29% in 1966. Car culture and the
general structure of most towns were already mature at that point. I think the
reliant of blaming car culture in America is a red herring to point away from
not just the digital revolution but also the 90s media blitz. Late 80s and
especially the 90s saw a real rapid change in the way we consume just about
anything and everything. The VHS tape really came into power in the 90s,
meaning most people didn't have to go out and sit in a large room of strangers
to see hollywood movies anymore.

While I do understand (and personally do like) places being close together so
I can walk around. Don't pretend that city life is the perfect solution.
There's the Rat Park experiment that showed utopian cities are not the answer
and it plays out in the human psyche as well. People who live in cities are
not necessarily happier than those in rural communities. There's a few NGOs
that do happiness surveys across the globe. While living in a city may make
you richer and maybe even technically healthier in some aspects, very few are
happier than their rural counterparts.

Just saying, it's definitely more complicated than just "car culture".

~~~
plytheman
This is a little aside from the topic at hand but do you have any links or
literature to expound on the 90s media blitz you mention? I was born in 87 and
so grew up with only a faint impression of the 80s through what was lingering
into the 90s. From talking to people older than me and looking at various
media I can't help feeling like society took a hard turn in the 80s and
through-out the 90s to where we are today. I've largely thought that it was
due to a combination of technology and corporations/consumerism but I've never
read or heard anyone else make that link until your comment.

~~~
asdfman123
Well, I think it's probably that we live in an economy that has been
exponentially expanding for centuries. Workers are producing more, information
is flowing faster, and everything is just moving more quickly.

I think what we have is the result of trying to optimize for sales and
profits. You must always sell more this quarter than last quarter. It's just
picked up, year by year over the decades.

Besides, I've always heard that society took a hard turn after WWII. All those
factories had to keep producing something, so they reconfigured to producing
consumer goods.

------
cmdshiftf4
Not a hint of attribution to new-media clickbait farms, the head of which is
Buzzfeed, who've eviscerated attention spans, long-form journalism and its
funding, and pumped the internet full of low-effort, divisive content merely
created to generate outrage for ad-clicks.

>What you think doesn’t count very much anymore. The rich get richer and the
poor get poorer. Most people with power try to take advantage of people like
yourself. The people running the country don’t really care what happens to
you. You’re left out of things going on around you.

All of the above will increase with more exposure to what is going on in the
world, which is provided by the internet, and all of which will further
inclined to be agreed with by journalists reporting on it in a biased manner
done for the purpose of generating ad-revenue from outrage driven clicks.

You can argue that the new digital era has alienated people simply by
existing, but the new media is the ultimate culprit after having spent the
last decade stoking tension in atomizing society based on uncontrollable,
biologically determined factors and creating a sense of victimhood and
entitlement amongst each of their subdivisions.

~~~
lxwang
If the new media is an inevitable byproduct of the digital era simply
existing, which is how things look to me, it still makes sense to follow
things back to the root cause. How many examples are there of successful media
organizations that don't at some level run the same way as the one you're
lambasting? Being owned and funded by a government or a multibillionaire to
serve as their propaganda outlet are viable but have their own problems that
might or might not be worse.

------
scottlocklin
The alienation in the US very obviously has nothing to do with the internet,
and in fact, I'd say the internet helped people be less alienated. I say this
because pretty much every country is as online as the US is, and doesn't have
the problems the US does.

The US is alienated from widespread fear of crime, immigration (aka the actual
sociological results of Robert Putnam, rather than the yammerings of some
Buzzfeed wanker), poisonous oligarch funded divisive politics, and the general
disintegration of anything resembling a family life or social fabric in US
society. There are various obvious ways of decreasing social alienation in US
society; the problem with that is, most people aren't going to like it. The
opposite of alienation and social atomization is basically conformity and
homogeneity, and that's bad for business; and especially bad for the oligarch
types who engender this kind of alienation.

Fiddling with the internet in a futile attempt to decrease social alienation
is like buying a tank top to increase your physical fitness.

~~~
aantix
>Fiddling with the internet in a futile attempt to decrease social alienation
is like buying a tank top to increase your physical fitness.

Disagree. For the innovators out there, please keep fiddling.

Funny how I can interact with strangers in the real-world and sometimes walk
away refreshed but I am not sure there's a single time I have ever read a
stream of tweets from strangers and felt anything but anger and nausea?

Reading unrefined emotive sentences has the damning effect of "this is a
proclamation, this must be true!"

Where-as if you had the conversation with a stranger, you would realize there
are dramatic pauses, "umms" where they aren't so certain of their statement,
trailing inflections in their voice where they're actually asking a question
instead of making a statement.

Most people are not sophisticated enough to write in a way that accurately
conveys their emotions.

So the tweets all read as grand proclamations.

And it sucks. Participating in these "social" sites cause stress.

Keep iterating. How can we experience online, the emotion of in-person chats?
Video chats are from perfect and come off stale and more akin to the
experience of a CB Radio.

Async video group chat - all participants record video clips/responses? Along
with fairly accurate transcriptions of the video, so that the content can be
searched?

~~~
nradov
Why do you allow yourself to feel anger and nausea over something as trivial
as a _tweet_? Social media is just entertainment and a game, not something
that sensible people actually take seriously.

~~~
toyg
Oh boy, I have to tell you about this old guy from New York...

~~~
squish78
I wonder how many millions of productivity hours have been lost in the past 3
years as people direct all of their emotional energy at the president

------
durnygbur
> The Americans who marked this decade most visibly with their anger and
> impotence are, of course, young white men.

Not that young anymore, another "lost generation"? Lost in clicks, taps,
swipes, likes, and upvotes. The only truly innovative invention of social
networks is the psychological one, yet not done by the pschylogical
professionals - how to mercilessly monetize and exploit the dopamine injection
cycle of a human. Shall we invent a way to block on demand the dopamine
inflow, the same way we block ads and shut down the lights in a room?

> It seizes some of the best, noblest human instincts — to share, to know, to
> connect, to belong — and harnesses them to a degrading system of profit.

This just screams "Tinder" (for a male) with their premium plans, "boosters",
and whatnot. Yet here I am - contributing my time and intellectual ability on
a website from a country where I will never live or work, which on my entry
attempt will assume I'm an intruder, ie. I'm trowing both into a black hole.
Please upvote.

Internet with social networks enabled something new. Massive global crowd for
whom English is the _lingua franca_. The creativity of this crowd is consumed
by American corporations sucking them into their outsourcing centers (or even
better more recently - free labour with a promise of becoming an influencer),
and the spreading of language is choked by the copyright lobbies. Don't take
as granted having your language as a _lingua franca_ , Anglosphere, be timid -
30 years ago we would speak French and you'd be out of this conversation.

~~~
Sumaso
In 1999 we'd be having this conversation in French? Really?

Honestly if you think social networks are just for people who speak english
you gotta take a look at the world a bit more.

~~~
pnutjam
German was the language of science prior to WW1.

Don't worry, the US is trying it's hardest to torpedo it's outsize influence
on culture, language, and finance.

~~~
durnygbur
> German was the language of science prior to WW1.

I would say well into the WWII even. Especially in the Central Europe, regions
under influence of Austro-Hungary, and half of Balkans. Then Germans with
Austrians... well... fucked everything up definitely and irrevocably.

------
mensetmanusman
Jonathan Haidt has an excellent article that changed my mind on this topic:

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/social-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/social-
media-democracy/600763/)

I think the problem with social media is that the loud crazy voices that are
usually confined to the corner streets in cities can now shout all the way
around the world.

A simple fix would be to limit the distance a ‘voice’ could travel to
geographic boundaries that are a function of population density.

~~~
wostusername
Sounds like what Yik Yak tried to do.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yik_Yak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yik_Yak)

------
NPMaxwell
"Harris Poll’s Alienation Index... asks whether respondents agree with these
five statements:

What you think doesn’t count very much anymore. The rich get richer and the
poor get poorer. Most people with power try to take advantage of people like
yourself. The people running the country don’t really care what happens to
you. You’re left out of things going on around you.

Harris then averages the rates of agreement to reach an index... In 1998 ...
the score was 56%. In 2008 ... 58%. [2018], it was 69%"

The rest of the article is trying to unpack why answers to those questions
changed

~~~
BurningFrog
The one fact-checkable statement there is false. The rich do get richer, but
the poor also get richer.

~~~
nothrabannosir
I would love some help clearing up something I never quite understand: does
that depend on whether it's corrected for purchasing power? How does this
relate to e.g. the idea that you have to work more hours on a minimum wage job
to buy a house? So is it fair to e.g. express the price of a house in "burger
flipping hours" instead of dollars, and see the price go up, implying that the
poor do get poorer?

Or is that already incorporated in the concept of "purchasing power", and are
you now double correcting for something?

~~~
throwaway1777
Purchasing power and inflation adjustment are usually accounted for properly.
When people say “the poor get richer” they’re talking about the global poor,
like folks who live on $2 per day. That number had drastically decreased. But
in the western world the “poor” working for minimum wage and middle classes
have seen almost no gains while the rich have seen massive increases in both
income and wealth.

------
zcw100
Social media is a straight jacket. You can say anything you want but no one
cares what someone in a straight jacket has to say because you can't actually
do anything.

~~~
hadiz
A software engineering position at Uber in SF seems to be something of value
to most people on HN. I know someone who quit that position to focus on her
Instagram career. She was not a mode or anything, one day she just announced
she's turned vegan and voila, she was an influencer. Now she owns a house in
West Hollywood. All within 8-10 months.

~~~
odshoifsdhfs
Is she pretty? I'm not trying to be sexist, and I don't even use IG, but my gf
does and a while ago I worked in a product targeted at IG 'influencers'.

When researching, basically your success as an influencer had to do pretty
much solely on your looks (or your photoshop skills) rather than your message.
(for both men and women). You can be a 'vegan' influencer or a 'I eat meat
still dripping in blood' influencer, and the most important 'variable' on your
success was how attractive you were.

(outliers existed, but mostly they were 'connected/endorsed' by some big brand
or celebrity already)

~~~
dsypa
There is nothing wrong with being sexist. Reality is sexist. She is only
successful because she's an attractive female. And there's nothing wrong with
that. Not everybody is equal.

~~~
dang
There's something wrong with posting flamebait comments to HN. Please don't.

------
iamleppert
I look back on a time when the world Was so young A beautiful ecology A
flowing river and a bright beautiful Sun was enough Now I don't really know
anymore Satisfied with only the land and the trees Instead we mass-produce
machines I really wonder if there can ever be a Place for a little A little
bit of Romance '83

I thought that love and kindness were The things we all need A bit of
sensitivity Just living life simple was the thing to Believe in I don't really
know really know anymore Sharing all the human feelings deep inside Instead we
hide behind machines I really wonder if there can ever be a Place for a little
A little bit of Romance '83

------
tempsy
This was a strange decade for tech.

Seems like a lot has changed, but at the same time the companies we were
talking about in 2010 are the same companies we're talking about today e.g.
FB, Twitter, Apple, Google, Netflix, even Uber all existed in 2010 and are
just a more polished version of their 2010 selves.

~~~
buboard
i dont know about strange, stagnant, yes. when things stagnate they rot

------
majos
This reminds me of a book I read about the history of extemporaneous poetry
(pretty much freestyling) in Latin America and Europe, and its decline:

> The verse improvisations of Cantabria are at best dormant. Women and men
> skilled at creating them are still alive, but the context that produced them
> is virtually extinct. That context was a world in which the lives of one’s
> neighbors were the chief, virtually the only, entertainment; a world in
> which personalities and eccentricities were savored. To some of their
> neighbors in adjacent valleys the attacks on differences in appearance,
> births out of wedlock, poverty, and impotence seemed uncouth and brutal. But
> running through the recollections of the older men and women I talked to
> were phrases like, ‘nobody was offended’, ‘they took it in good humor’, ‘it
> was part of the fun’, or ‘we all looked forward to it’. In 1942 Cossio wrote
> that the people of Polaciones knew no moral laws. One could also say that
> they had been able to maintain their own laws, different measures for what
> could be said and done and what was considered an offense.

Attribute it to the internet, car culture, personalized media, whatever, but I
don’t think it’s ever been easier to decide you dislike the people around you
and find another community, perhaps virtually.

In turn this easy access to frictionless interaction makes people less and
less tolerant of what would have been everyday interaction in the past.

I don’t remember where, but I once read something that said the great appeal
of fame is not just being adored, but being adored _and not having to
reciprocate_. We seem to be moving in that direction.

------
tarkin2
The internet offers superficial social interactions.

It gives reasons to ignore the people in our surroundings. And them, us. We
physically socialise with fewer people.

Our social skills decline.

We can choose to completely ignore those of different opinions. We were once
forced to socialise with them. No longer in our digital bubble.

This fractures social cohesion.

Loneliness and then anger results. This anger can and will be directed by
those willing and able.

------
christiansakai
If anyone wants to be more aware of this issue, I recommend the book Amusing
Ourselves to Death, and also Technopoly, both by Neil Postman.

------
mihaaly
It may have done it to some of us, to those who were doing great perhaps even
dominating and shaping local groups but to the rest it was a huge relief
finding likely minded unavailable in the immediate geographical vicinity,
allowed those alienated locally finding community elsewhere.

I believe the article is seriously biased and criminally incomplete, shortly
incorrect.

~~~
nailer
Well yes, it's buzzfeed. Just flag it when you see the domain, you don't need
to take the bait.

------
acd
I think that we consume a lot more content through computer recommendations
algorithms. These filter bubbles makes us more alienated towards different
opinion and views than our own preferred way of viewing things. Thus the more
we consume media through filter bubbles the more alienated we become.

Plus technology is replacing human interactions. For example: Bookstore vs
online bookstore Renting movies at a video store vs online Movie streaming
Spontaneous interactions at cashiers being replaced by software.

Not one of these one interaction may make us more alienated but summed
together they make something bigger. A question to ask is what technology
replaces?

Also people are a little bit less religious nowadays and religion serves as a
gathering point for local community where people come together and meet.

~~~
basch
Predictive algorithms exist to re-feed us the past. Nostalgia is comfortable,
safe, familiar, and easy. Not only do "people who like also like" type
suggestions trap us in what we already know and like, but content producers
themselves use data of what is liked to make more of the same. Artists have
been replaced by marketing data science.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-30a0-9a0a-3ff76e8bfe58)

------
thrownaway954
The more information you have, the more you have to worry about and anger
about.

Quoting the great Cypher, "After nine years, you know what I realize?
Ignorance is bliss".

------
jdkee
“ And yet, the journalist Jon Katz argued, the country was on the verge of
something even greater than prosperity and progress — something that would
change the course of world history.“

From the infamous Jon Katz of Slashdot fame. Oh the memories.

------
scarejunba
I'm sure that all the people who have this feeling have an external locus of
control. Listen, social skills are just skills. If you're feeling alienated,
go fix it.

I'm not. Pretty happy. And I use lots of social media.

------
mnm1
The criteria for alienation are listed as:

> What you think doesn’t count very much anymore.

> The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

> Most people with power try to take advantage of people like yourself.

> The people running the country don’t really care what happens to you.

> You’re left out of things going on around you.

2, 3, and 4 have been true since the beginning of America and probably since
the beginning of every country that has ever existed. Two has been objectively
verifiable in the last 50 years in America and can even be graphed out. Three
is also objectively verifiable to some extent on a case by case basis. This
isn't a matter of opinion. These are terrible criteria to judge alienation
with. Any person who is aware of his society and culture would be aware of
these things and would agree with at least 3-4 of them in America.

------
plughs
I agree broadly but I think the real cause is overlooked.

When I was young, everyone in our town read the <Town Name> Times. They may
have passionately disagreed with it, they may have thought it was too right or
left, but they all read it and could at least have discussions from a common
starting point.

Now that is gone. Right-wing boomers read only news sources aimed at right-
wing boomers. Left-wing millennials read only news sources aimed at left-wing
millennials. Of course they are hopelessly alienated from each other. One side
reads that unemployment is at an all time low, one side reads that income
inequality is at an all time high, and both are convinced that the other side
is fundamentally incapable of reason.

So they all sit in their echo chamber and get angrier and angrier at anyone
outside of it, fed day after day by a media whose only real interest is more
clicks, more ads, more money.

I don't know how we come back from it. I'm not sure we do. It scares me
frankly.

~~~
ryanmercer
>When I was young, everyone in our town read the <Town Name> Times.

Speedway Town Press, delivered free to every house in town. Me and several
friends started delivering it around 12 for 3 cents a paper and every kid
would always read it because they wanted to see the honor roll announcements,
school event photos etc.

Our principal retired when we were in 2nd or 3rd grade then in 6th grade we
read about it in the town press, some of us wrote a letter to the editor that
was then in the next addition and got us all letters from his widow.

We knew our neighbors by name (adults knew each other by first name, kids knew
adults by Mr surname/Mrs surname). If you were going out of town for vacation
you told the neighbor and they'd take your mail in, with they key they already
had, and even feed/water your dog for you.

Neighbors would drop by to visit each other, often being invited in if it
wasn't nice out.

I don't even know what my neighbors look like now. If you lined 5 people up I
couldn't tell you if any of them were my neighbors or just random people.

My neighbor across the hall leaves their keys in their deadbolt at least once
a week (Seriously, at least once a week. Twice just this week I've come home
to see their keys in the deadbolt. Flat out will not answer the door because
"oh my god a stranger"). Car key, apartment key etc. They've been doing this
since they moved in in July. I have no idea what they look like despite the
fact that I've stood there knocking on their door more than a dozen different
days for multiple minutes each time trying to tell them they've left their key
in the deadbolt. The first time I actually walked around to their windows and
knocked on the window in a room that was lit "hey you left your keys in the
door", nothing. Knocked on the door some more, nothing.

I truly miss a time when we were more interested in the people around us than
strangers online.

------
Damogran6
"Instead we got Baby Yoda" I don't see this as a bad thing.

If this is an age of weaponized communication, perhaps it's not bad to learn
how to moderate it's intake?

------
scoutt
I don't agree even if the article tries to be _optimistic_.

Could it be that the "Harris Poll’s Alienation Index" is now being answered by
people who is more _aware_ about what is going on in the world? The source of
information is not the mass-media anymore.

After 20 years of mass-internet, is still a matter of SNR. I didn't care about
the life of Britney Spears in 1998, I don't care now about pewdipie.

It will pass when the next generation will develop a natural filter for
bullshit. That will be the plateau.

------
caiocaiocaio
A pretty good consolation for the alienation and rage Buzzfeed is telling me
about is being able to go to Buzzfeed and find out which Friends character I'm
most like.

------
yosefzeev
Poppycock and fiddle-faddle. We allowed these things and did it to ourselves.

------
rishiraj8824
Why it's BuzzFeed news on hackernews?!?!

------
ForrestN
This gets close but misses the obvious reason for any recent spike:

“ It’s easy to speculate about the reasons for this increase: a financial
crisis that awakened Americans to the widening gaps between rich and poor; an
opioid epidemic caused by corporate greed; entrenched racism and sexism;
bitterly divided partisan politics; and, of course, technological change”

It’s not “partisan politics,” we feel alienated because we are witnessing the
attempted dismantling of modern democracy by a transnational network of would-
be fascists. We feel alienated because a man who admitted on tape to being a
serial rapist was subsequently elect4d president. We feel alienated because
the police are murdering innocent civilizations with shocking regularity, as
are Private individuals with guns. Non of this is “partisan”... the government
and its allies around the world are openly hostile to the interests of the
public. That is, well, alienating,

~~~
dang
Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. This is going the wrong way down a
one way street.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
ForrestN
So funny to return to this after reading through the fact-free chaos of the
‘socialist website” Assange disinformation and the attending praise of
Wikileaks.

Hopefully one day we can go through a collective process of settling on what’s
true and what isn’t, and prioritizing true stuff! I heard this happened at a
grand scale, the enlightenment, I think it was called?

------
atomashpolskiy
Digital my ass. So it's all Zuckerberg's fault now?

How about the fall of Soviet Union and communist block? Which events (although
being good for people) were abused by certain groups to:

\- end the public debate on whether capitalism is the right way to run the
society,

\- enable unprecedented power concentration in a single country,

\- and make money and greed govern practically all aspects of human life?

Lots of clever thoughts in the comments, but I'm really surprised no one
brings this one up.

~~~
atomashpolskiy
I'll add that it's really fucking sad, that one of the greatest achievements
of human society (Internet is basically a huge collective effort), is
demonized for somehow unleashing lowly human nature and similar nonsense. It's
just a medium and, in some cases, a mirror.

------
muzzletov
This article is bs. We were all that in disguise. Do some bout it. Bye.

------
erikerikson
It's really important that we blame the internet companies. Otherwise we might
have to take responsibility for ourselves. Better to be victims.</snark>

