This has actually been a trend since the 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
The simple answer is media. First television, then internet, then smartphones.
People used to actively seek the company of others - if for no other reason than out of boredom. Entertainment and parasocial relationships have filled that hole.
Another reason I might posit is declining birth rates and an aging population. Entire neighborhoods used to be filled with young families of roughly the same age. Now on any given city block in the US, there may only be 1 or 2 houses that have kids of any age in them. Smaller concentration of kids -> thinner market for playdates and sleepovers -> less interactions between families.
> Entertainment and parasocial relationships have filled that hole.
I would also add the suburbanization of American society. A neat little home in a neat little sub-division with a neat little patch of grass. You can sit on your grass in your own little kingdom, and be completely unbothered by the world around you.
It turns out, being completely unbothered is also unchallenging, and challenge drives us. And being alone and bored is enabled by television and scrolling.
Honestly, I view the suburbs as the worst of both worlds (urban and rural), with few benefits.
BTW: As an aside, this is why i think the suburbs-class loves tesla self driving so much. The one downside is the long monotony of transitting to the place where people gather to do your work. I'm not against self driving cars, but they enable suburban self-imposed isolation.
My grandparents lived in what was then rural Pennsylvania.
Everyone had a part of their house that was essentially a bar and they would have house parties all the time.
So I don't think it's sub-urbanization per se.
On a larger scale I think it's _a_ factor, but not the only factor.
It's partly a numbers game. There are definitely amicable cul-de-sacs but if you are in an apartment complex there's 100x more "neighbors" you could interact with.
Suburbs also come with the tradeoff of driving, at least in America. It's a lot easier to socialize when you can put on some flip flops and walk to a friend's place or an event than it is to drive.
It can be hit or miss in either case, and there's socioeconomic and cultural forces that make real world interactions more scarce. If more of my income goes to rent and inflation is too high why would I burn through money on going out when I can stay home and watch a show or be on my phone
Interesting experience I supposed. Mine is the exact opposite. Neighbors in the suburbs are a community , whereas in the city, it’s common for neighbors to remain strangers.
I've had far easier experience joining my neighborhood community in a city as many of my neighbors are literally walking around. My last 2 suburban neighborhood communities were on Facebook and the groups were less "lets get coffee" and more "that car that drove by is suspicious". One of my old neighbors in a city occasionally had a TV and cooler set up outside for people to drop by to watch baseball.
Prior to air conditioning the venerable front porch was the socialization locale of choice. A lot of houses in my city have a massive one and it's kinda sad to me to not see many people sitting on them virtually ever
Yes, its the suburbs, but it's because of the car-dependency -- not as much the single family detached homes.
I’m from Germany so I can’t comment on the exact dynamics of American suburbia but I grew up in a medium to small town in a single family House and we were regularly in contact with the neighbors. Eventually I moved out into the next big city and in the apartment complex that I moved into it’s completely anonymous and no contact between neighbors except the occasional head nod.
When I rented an apartment in central part of large city for 2 years, I literally haven’t never seen people from 2 other apartments on same floor as me and maybe had one chat with last one. I rent house in suburbs, at nice cul de sac, I know names of neighbors in 2 houses and had chats with 2 more. So your mileage may vary A LOT. Although large city offers many more chances to randomly step up. Reaching literal center of city and it’s life in 30 minutes on subway is much different from reaching another burbs on car.
My cultural anthropology professor used to study remote villages in Nepal. Once he told the class a story about this one village where a group of people used to socialize each night, with each family taking turns hosting dinner at their home.
Then one family got a TV, and they stopped rotating because everyone wanted to spend the evening watching TV at that one family's house.
Then the other families got TVs, and they stopped the socializing tradition altogether, preferring to watch TV at home.
Media in general is probably the real answer. We lack boredom at home. Earlier you were bored, so you signed up for sports, went on cheap trips, camping, pretty much anything to get out. Talking to older people 60 - 70+, some of them spent three or four days at the clubhouse of their chosen sport, they where constantly out of the house, because that's were you weren't bored.
Communal boredom is where a lot of our creativity comes from.
Yes the post's title calls to mind that 'Bowling Alone' was already detailing loss of cohesion nearly 30 years ago.
People are alienated, y'all.
People form communities when they have shared stressors that they work together to manage, but what remnants of that lifestyle remain today is little more than a skeuomorphic throwback to more vulnerable times.
Everything about modern life is designed so you do not have to directly depend on anyone for anything. You can instead be entirely dependent on a series of distant and unaccountable corporations to get through the day.
"playdates" is in itself a tell. That didn't used to be a thing. Kids would just... go out and find their friends and play. No parental scheduling or coordination required.
my 94 yo gpa is calling his homies ALL DAY LONG. ill see my best friends between once a week to once a month and texting comes and goes. if i got a phone call i assume its an emergency
> First television, then internet, then smartphones
i like vr so i sometimes wonder if itll catch on and if were in the "we know one or two people with a tv" era of the early 40s. theres certainly seems to be a financial incentive since it seems like tvs and phones have gone about as far as we can take them. its also certainly seems like a another leap down the isolation path as well
luckily i think most people reject vr bc it sucks to wear something on your face
edit: grammar (still bad but better)
Older people grew up socializing constantly so they can just start talking to strangers like they've known each other for years, especially if they are from the same town.
I volunteered at an old folks home from age 10-16 or so, this was back in early/mid 90s - before the Internet stole my attention - and the old people were of the Greatest Generation cohort (maybe some of the oldest from 1800s). I really enjoyed those talks and have always liked talking with old people since. I can sit with any of them and just talk for hours but rarely ever do this with younger/my aged people. They just chit chat about everything and silence is never awkward, they could talk about anything from the weather to big social/political issues with an open mind. Unfortunately, I fear this is ending soon as this latest generation of old people is kind of vile and not really seeking positive conversation (wild generalization but it's my experience). Instead they tend to want to tell you how to live, what to believe, who to vote for, etc. and then judge/ridicule you when you don't comply or voice a differing opinion.
FWIW, I also think it's largely because boomer's collectively lost their minds and started acting out when their parent/grandparent generation was gone. It's like they didn't want to disappoint them so were acting on good behavior, but now their true colors show.
tbf part of the reason boomers are assholes is directly a result of the parenting of the greatest generation.
Maybe. I think they had good intentions though, but it just turned out they spoiled the generation. I don’t think this was obvious until way past when the damage was done. The fact they provided so much for them and they ladder pull from their own kids is when it became apparent.
When my dad does this it’s mortifying
When I do it though it’s very cool and fun!
Of course I don’t call women “girl” or try to order in languages I don’t speak
Someone commented once about the Trader Joe’s people always flirting with everyone, and a) that’s probably true but b) is just being nice to random people these days so intimate and invasive that it’s equivalent to getting hit on? That would explain people cringing
> my 94 yo GPA is calling his homies ALL DAY LONG
Our modern day equivalent is being on HN or Reddit all day long
It's a negative feedback loop too. There used to be people out doing things so when folks got bored they'd go find them.
Now entertainment and social media sort of fill that gap (not really) but enough that there's less people out. Less people out mean it's less entertaining, so less people go out etc.
And when you do find people out, they're wearing headphones and/or their nose is in a screen, and if you try to talk to them they look startled and annoyed like how dare you speak to me in a public place. The culture is just gone.
Everything happened so quickly too. All it took was a couple of decades.
Incredibly pedantic, but I think that's describing a positive feedback loop where the previous result amplifies the next result further.
Putnam did followup work investigating the causes.
https://www.puttingourdifferencestowork.com/pdf/j.1467-9477....
I think Bowling Alone did a great job of describing the phenomena. I don't think it did a great job of explaining why it was happening.
It doesn't, for example, cover the privatization of public spaces, it doesn't mention mass white flight from cities to suburban sprawl due to people wanting to preserve apartheid, nor does it cover the rise in wealth inequality or the weakening of labor laws or the obliteration of pedestrian friendly infrastructure.
Instead, it pins it all on 'television' which, sure, but there's a reason why people gravitate towards entertainment that is served to them much more cheaply per-hour than not. It's a little like saying the problem with small pox is that the boils are painful, not the underlying virus systematically destroying your body.
In my personal experience in community organizing, the main pain points people have are 1) that they have day jobs that exhaust them, 2) the traffic sucks and they don't want to drive to our meetings, or 3) they need to pick up a second shift or another job to cover their basic needs. And even to those points, it's hard to get a public space where you can regularly meet that doesn't charge a lot of money, to provide food/refreshment, to maintain an ongoing potluck which requires a lot of coordination especially when it comes to preferences/dietary restrictions, etc. It's almost never out of a lack of interest. People desperately want community but there are so many barriers in place.
Was the flight out of the cities to "preserve apartheid" or did many people simply want the suburban lifestyle with a yard and bigger house?
I don't thin racism was the dominant factor for people moving out of the cities. Today the suburb I'm in is packed with immigrants.
Regardless, I don't think you're being very charitable.
This has been written about broadly by social historians. This book, in particular, is illuminating: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691133867/wh...
Some other links:
https://news.iu.edu/live/news/24906-research-ties-persistenc...
https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2021/10/white-flight...
https://psmag.com/news/ghosts-of-white-people-past-witnessin...
There's also this rather infamous quote by one of the most powerful Republican strategists in the 80s, Lee Atwater: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater#:~:text=Later%20in...
I won't quote it here but it's very telling.
The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein is another good source on the topic, covering how racist governmental polices played a role.
That's been on my to-read list for a long time. I've read in brief about red-lining and loosely regulated mortgage providers but it'd be good to dive in much deeper. It's almost always so much uglier and much more deeply dystopian if and when you choose to dig past any surface layer of popular history towards more rigorous historiography.
In places like Detroit racism was very much the primary reason in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s at least. Some of it was just personal racism, pure and simple. See "blockbusting" techniques used by realtors who would hire a black mother to walk down the street with a baby carriage to give the impetus for white people to sell quickly and cheaply. Or a black family moving into a house, the white neighbors trying to push them out via lawsuit for breaking a racially restrictive covenant, then losing so that all the white people left the neighborhood (e.g. read about Orsel and Minnie McGhee in Detroit, I was the primary author of the National Register nomination for their house).
The racist pressure to move was also a structural issue supported by the Federal government. Redlining meant you couldn't get loans to buy houses in certain neighborhoods, and those neighborhoods were exactly where black people lived. Literal walls could be constructed between two similar communities of different races so that the white side could be higher rated and have better access to loans (e.g., the Birwood Wall in Detroit). A ton has been written about the topic, I can't really do it justice, but the idea that people just wanted a bigger house was not the case. A lot of Detroit actually consisted of single-family homes with yards anyhow, so it was literally white people leaving a house for a very similar one.
I'm wondering how much of it was racism, and how much was people simply being aware that the "worse" areas of town had lots of crime (which they associated with the color of the people living there, not knowing any better) and they didn't want that crime to come to their area.
If I'm walking a street at night and I see a guy with attributes associated with poverty, I'm more likely to switch to the other side of road than if he's wearing a suit, just saying.
Racism might be part of the reason, but you have nearly entirely white cities like Portland that also experienced their own explosive suburban growth in the same time period.
Also, if "suburbanization" was really the explanation for the decline in community, you would see a clear pattern where people (regardless of race) in the suburbs have fewer friends and social lives and people in urban areas have more. But the opposite is largely true!
You don't think the racial make-up of Portland had anything to do with racism?
That's honestly a little wild that people don't realize exactly what principles Oregon was founded on and the role Portland played in all of it.
One, the Portland municipal government explicitly admits to racism during white flight: https://www.portland.gov/bps/planning/adap/history-racist-pl...
Two, the state itself has passed multiple anti-Black exclusionary laws and was founded as a 'white utopia': https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/exclusion_laws/#...
> Any free Black person who refused to leave would be subject to lashing, a provision that was known as "Peter Burnett's lash law."
> The second exclusion law was enacted by the Territorial Legislature on September 21, 1849. This law specified that “it shall not be lawful for any n** or m*** to enter into, or reside” in Oregon, with exceptions made for those who were already in the territory.
> Voters [...] approved the exclusion clause by a wide margin. Incorporated into the Bill of Rights, the clause prohibited Black people from being in the state, owning property, and making contracts. Oregon thus became the only free state admitted to the Union with an exclusion clause in its constitution.
This, too, is covered extensively: https://www.oregonlive.com/history/2020/06/oregons-founders-...
And more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53996159
I honestly don't know if you could've found a worse example.
> but you have nearly entirely white cities like Portland that also experienced their own explosive suburban growth in the same time period
Yes, it was exactly my point that Portland was already the whitest metropolitan area in the country. And yes, I am well aware of the extensive redlining (my grandparents lived in Vanport before it was destroyed). And yet they still had people explode out into the suburbs through the 50s and 60s.
This is a counter-example to the thesis that urban flight was purely a racist response to "preserve apartheid".
No one is arguing that racism didn't exist. But suburbanization happened everywhere around the world where cars were introduced (even places with almost no diversity). To blame suburbanization as a purely racial phenomenon is not true.
What they're describing is well documented, but my understanding is that the reality is a blend of what you're describing and what they're describing.
To this day there's significant social pressure to not acknowledge how much racism and racial division played a role in them growth of suburbs in the US, but ultimately it's the documented history which is revealed to those who research the topic.
In many cases individual families were not overtly racist but they were caught up in the economic effects created by racist dynamics and felt they had no choice to go along. If property prices in your neighborhood are decreasing, because neighbors are leaving, and you have the means would you not feel compelled to leave to somewhere with rising property values? Real estate firms intentionally tried to create waves of fear to get people to rush to move, selling low, and then profiting on selling to newer Black families.
It was common for suburbs to have deed restrictions limiting areas by race, and for a while federal housing guidelines would not underwrite developments that did not racially segregate.
At the same time there were massive amounts of state & federal funding pouring into suburbs and highly disruptive unpopular overhauls occurring in cities while cities were also losing tax revenue. For people with the option the future of good living seemed like it was in the suburbs independent of segregation, but part of what fueled the frenzy was the racial segregation.
People also moved to suburbs in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.
Cars enabled people to have free standing houses and work became decentralised, which was also due to cars.
Many people prefer to live in a free standing house.
> It doesn't, for example, cover the privatization of public spaces, it doesn't mention mass white flight from cities to suburban sprawl due to people wanting to preserve apartheid
That's because, contrary to the way it's often depicted, the 20th century was overwhelmingly a flight from rural areas to cities. Suburbs were an outgrowth of that, but the reality is that rural areas were hollowed out the most. (Also, community engagement in rural areas with lots of sprawl was even higher than in cities).
> that they have day jobs that exhaust them
The median adult is spending 5+ hours on their phone a day. This is what is exhausting people. Everyone is essentially working a second job that involves lots of reading and attention and social engagement. It's a parasitic draw on our lives.
> they need to pick up a second shift or another job to cover their basic needs.
Maybe that's true for some people, but the data usually shows that income and free time is inversely related to community time. Poorer people are making more time for friends and family.
I can see what you're trying to do - reframe this problem as another outgrowth of class struggle. But it doesn't really explain the reality. A steelworker in the 1920s coming off of a 10-hour shift would still find the time and energy to go out dancing. A software engineer in 2026 is going to get off of work at 5pm and watch 3.4 more hours of screen time in a day.
>the 20th century was overwhelmingly a flight from rural areas to cities
You're talking about an entirely different phenomena. The move from rural areas to cities and exurbs happened in the 50s/60s with cheap mortgage rates, WWII-provisioned education, and large sweeping social services being enacted. White flight is a phenomena that started in the mid-60s to 80s that specifically coincided with integration.
>The median adult is spending 5+ hours on their phone a day. This is what is exhausting people
There's much to be said about the behavioral manipulation and dark patterns in apps and devices, sure. But I don't think television inherently was employing Skinner-boxes to get people to watch and that's what I was specifically speaking to. Regardless, that dark pattern of it is class struggle related if that's the direction you want to frame it (I see it more as just MBA-brained corporate sociopathy) because it seeks to extract capital from its users while externalizing all negatives onto the users themselves.
>Maybe that's true for some people, but the data usually shows that income and free time is inversely related to community time. Poorer people are making more time for friends and family.
Obviously. And this is clearly related to the fact that the more impoverished you are, the more you need to pool resources to survive. The pain points I illuminated are for individuals who are still showing up to community organizing work and much of what we do in these spaces is effectively providing enough mutual aid for them to survive.
> A steelworker in the 1920s coming off of a 10-hour shift would still find the time and energy to go out dancing.
You have proof of this? That they wouldn't just go home and get shitfaced or otherwise incapacitated? All steelworkers, per capita, were going out dancing regularly? And even so, this wasn't because they were economically incentivized by the rise of labor unions to be in community with others, building power and fighting for better rights? The 30 years of post-Reagan neoliberal expanisionism has effectively neutered unions - and that's something that wasn't covered either by Putnam.
I suspect another thing largely missed by Putnam was the rise of online social spaces. Connecting with friends via the phone, on Discord, in video game spaces - that's community. It's just different from the community envisioned by people in more elderly generations. The fact that you're even commenting on HackerNews is effectively proof against Putnam's claims.
You don't connect with your friends on these platforms, mostly. You connect with amorphous anonymous mobs of people. Like on HN, you aren't my friend, just someone posting, and your username is interchangeable with the one attached to any other reply.
Nobody's commented on your most important point: "city" does not equate to "community involvement." Suburban people statistically volunteer more and join groups more than rural or urban people, and rural people are more likely to meet in person with their groups than suburban or urban people [0].
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/09/28/how-urban...
I'm not sure how much that is age correlation. Suburbs are older and usually have more parents, so they're more likely to volunteer in clubs and organizations. Even in my urban area the most frequently volunteered at organization is the PTA and most of the soup kitchens and senior centers have volunteers in their late 30s to early-50s.
Community engagement isn't also quite the same thing as friend groups. This is making me interested in doing a similar analysis.
> I can see what you're trying to do - reframe this problem as another outgrowth of class struggle. But it doesn't really explain the reality. A steelworker in the 1920s coming off of a 10-hour shift would still find the time and energy to go out dancing.
I doubt that steelworkers around 1920 typically went out dancing after their shifts. Back then, there was a lack of radios or sound systems, and live music was likely reserved for more upscale establishments. The average worker would more likely have gone to a beer hall or pub to have a drink with his mates.
I haven’t been able to quickly find any statistics for the U.S. that go back that far, but in Germany, around 67% of 18- to 25-year-olds were still consuming alcohol regularly in 1973, whereas that figure had dropped to about 28% by 2023. I’m not suggesting that this trend is inherently negative, but there is, at the very least, a correlation with a decline in social activities.
> Now on any given city block in the US, there may only be 1 or 2 houses that have kids of any age in them.
Thats why we plan to move to the burbs. Lots of ethnic enclaves where kids go around the neighborhood on their own and play.
My controversial idea for urban planning: age and demographic based zoning.
There is lots of urban planning in the US that is poorly optimized. Walkable neighborhoods close to parks and schools are often filled with retirees, whereas young families are often crowded into newer neighborhoods at the edge of town with little infrastructure nearby.
You wouldn't even have to do much pressure to move the needle. Cities are already putting in millions of dollars to place their parks and schools, and etc. Offer tax incentives that encourage young families to move into family areas, singles into single areas, and retirees into retiree areas.
It sounds kind of crazy, but we more or less do this for student areas around colleges.
I don’t have a direct response to your zoning idea but have observed in European cities there seems to be less age segregation.
You should read actual studies on what you're suggesting rather than investing in "controversial takes" that are categorically wrong.
People are cynical about your idea, but it's not like it has never been done in society. There are in fact apartment complexes that focus on elderly demographics. Retirement homes are just that. What's a school but a bastion for a bunch of kids of similar age to socialize together (and should a random adult wander onto it, there'd be a lockdown).
Urban planning around these situations would be nice. But the very least we could do is build more third places that tries to attract that last middle demographic to come together; that mid 20's to 40's adults too old for college campuses but too young (and not on social security funds) for older gatherings. That's sort of what some bars can be, but a wide open space with less pressure to spend $15 on a "cheap" beer would be nice.
we already have it, it's called the Villages.
People stay in the same house their whole lives though. Your young family zone is going to be a retiree zone in 30 years and that’s where the schools and parks will be then. Can’t realistically ask people to uproot and move 3 or 4 times in their life, that’s a very expensive proposition.
Ethnic enclaves?
Yeah, I don't think the age disparity is talked about enough. Admitedly I'm in this weird "youngest millenial" bracket where, growing up, I was always much older than my parent's friend's kids. But even in general with young adult life: once you leave college, everyone around you feels "older".
There's maybe 1-2 other people around your age at work, unless you actively chose the massive internship to employment pipeline of MAANG, Big 4, or your industry equivalent that was still actively training employees. Not really for me; my first gig was pretty young, but going to a large corporation for much higher pay: it was a satellite office with 2-3 other people my age than a bunch of seasoned veterans.
Neighborhoods are the same way too. Even today, I can make small talk with my neighbors. But they are some 15+ years ahead of life with two young kids. Different vibe from a single dude in his 30's.
I don’t think it’s as simple as that. It seems like people are increasingly exhausted and disillusioned with life.
What you seem to be implying is people are lazy and choosing TikTok over real relationships. But I also think people choose TikTok because it’s low effort and they don’t have much gas left in the tank.
> It seems like people are increasingly exhausted and disillusioned with life.
The interesting part is what causes what. Are people exhausted and disillusioned because they aren't experience life the same way as previously, or aren't they having these experiences because they are exhausted and disillusioned.
This might be controversial, and I'm not saying it has to be the case, but I believe at least part of it is due to lack of sunlight / outside movement (vs all day in office, car, train, home with stuffy air and sometimes not even openable windows) and nutrition (too much processed and fortified food, not enough protein for many people).
I'm trying to focus on both in my life, and I have become much happier as a result.
>seems like people are increasingly exhausted and disillusioned with life.
Counterpoint, people are TOLD and CONVINCED that they are exhausted and that life is way harder than it is.
Capitalism loves someone who is "too busy" to make stuff or avoid buying stuff.
Our lives are all about reducing friction and making everything easier.
Relative to 20-30 years ago we are so lucky and privileged. It's nuts how the victim mindset has spread.
I've lived all over the place and one thing I've seem priliferate is this mindset of "I'm a victim, doing this is too hard, so I just won't for X and Y reasons" while folks order Uber eats.
The baseline for what is acceptable has dropped so, so far. And I'm sure people will reply saying I just don't get it. Lol.
I think people are actually increasingly exhausted and disillusioned with life, but that increase is basically entirely due to spending hours doomscrolling and similar behavior.
Real housing prices are the most expensive they've been in recent history, but sure it's almost entirely doomscrolling.
One could argue that both parents having to work is much more difficult than when one person could support a household. Houses, healthcare and education are objectively much more expensive as well. It's not "victim mindset", it's literal exhaustion because everything is much more expensive. There's also no way to retire vs pensions and other baby boomer offramps.
Life has become increasingly expensive. Safety nets that used to be there, aren’t anymore. We’re surrounded by enshittification. Social divides, and antagonism between social groups are high.
Your contempt for humanity is blinding you to real issues people face every day. Yes, some things have gotten better over the years, but some things have gotten a lot worse.
I don't need people to tell me. My rent and paycheck are a very convincing argument in and of themselves.
>I've lived all over the place and one thing I've seem priliferate is this mindset of "I'm a victim, doing this is too hard, so I just won't for X and Y reasons" while folks order Uber eats.
There's a lot I can do by myself. But at the end of the day, someone choosing not to ghost me for a hangout or take the time to get together regularly is a 2-way street. Even pre-pandemic, it's been said people are flakier than ever.
There are systematic reasons to explain this, but on a micro level: "just work harder" is not a solution to friendship.
> It seems like people are increasingly exhausted and disillusioned with life.
Is life today bleaker or harder than it was during the Great Depression? People still made time for each other.
What if it is the media that is making people exhausted and disillusioned? Not the other way around.
I’m not arguing that today is the worst time to ever exist in the history of humanity.
I’m arguing there are legitimate reasons why people are exhausted and disillusioned with the current state of the world.
No one's saying there aren't legitimate reasons to be disillusioned with the world - but that's not mutually exclusive from people socializing or having community. If anything, it's one reasons people are so exhausted and defeated to begin with.
There's a reason people call it "doomscrolling", and it's not because it's healthy escapism. Bad news and defeatism is psychologically addictive, and platforms have financial incentive to pump your brain full of negativity. Regardless of how bad it is outside, the internet is not a protective bubble - it's an opium den.
Yes they are. People are blaming it almost entirely on scrolling social media.
In the Great Depression there was community and hope. People could band together, form unions or political movements.
Today, computers allow for mass dystopian control. Cameras and algorithms everywhere with no chance of appealing to an actual human.
There are multiple kinds of suffering, and even if more people have sufficient nutrition and health than in the great depression, it's much harder to see hope for the future today.
It’s bleaker because everyone knows a lot more. People back in the day were for lack of a better word- naive. They had no idea what others were doing outside of their neighborhood and what was in the newspapers. There are incredible, chronic hidden pressures in the world now even if you individually disengage from social media and the like.
I think the media influence went far beyond just pacifying or entertaining.
The relentless satire is what really did it. It was all written by some of the smartest yet depraved and depressed people who found a home in comedy. What did we think was going to happen?
Satire is all well and good, but what are we doing when we no longer take anything seriously anymore? Social media, but particularly reddit, continues to be an echo chamber for these mentally castrated and bitter people who couldn't challenge the comedy with a life that was actually any better than what was being mocked.
No longer take anything too seriously anymore?
That was a very 90s 'thing'. Today people, especially young people, are exceedingly lacking in levity. Everything is serious.
I've heard that everything is nihilistic. Things are funny when you're life's good. Things are serious when your life's not good but following them will to make it good. Things are nihilistic when your life's not good but gambling has a chance of making it good and that's the best option you see.
Example of past generation seriousness: investing - put all your money in housing or the stock market and you'll get rich and comfortable. Example of current generation nihilism: everyone wanting to be an influencer. Some people will become successful and some more will get by but most will fail at that, by the mathematics of it. Or literal gambling as in the rise of Kalshi - if your life's crap with $0 or $1k but wouldn't be crap with $100k, why not put it all on 100x odds? Or something like looksmaxxing: will doing xyz to your jawline somehow result in success? Probably not, but it might and you weren't going to be successful otherwise anyway.
GP is wrong anyway, comedy's always been about saying what everyone is secretly thinking.
> comedy's always been about saying what everyone is secretly thinking
That actually was my whole point. How do you think they're saying what you're thinking? Where did you get those thoughts from? Comedy has been a tastemaking machine for a very long time.
People used to snap out of it around middle age, but I think that point is only getting younger. The illusion has been broken with recent politics. You can't satirize the already absurd while still being funny. The game has changed, but I still see a lot of defensive humor anyway. It's just sad really.