site banner
Antonomon  2yr ago (novum.substack.com)   Edited 2yr ago   2834 thread views

The Social Recession: By the Numbers

novum.substack.com

Fewer friends, relationships on the decline, delayed adulthood, trust at an all-time low, and many diseases of despair. The prognosis is not great.

In 2000, political scientist Robert Putnam published his book Bowling Alone to much acclaim and was first comprehensive look at the decline of social activities in the United States. Now, however, all those same trends have fallen off a cliff. This particular piece looks at sociability trends across various metrics—friendships, relationships, life milestones, trust, and so on—and gives a bird's eye view of the social state of things in 2022.

A piece that I wrote that really picked up on HackerNews recently with over 300+ comments. Some excellent comments there, I suggest reading it over.

13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I have to agree with the comments on HackerNews about WFH making this worse. I am a deeply socially averse person and I would probably be miserable at the office and even I think staying at home for 8 hrs and literally never seeing most of your coworker's faces for months is a problem.

If you have a social network the extra flexibility is good. If you don't... your chances of building one via work are...slim to say the least. I moved to a new city, basically losing all my connections, so I feel this acutely.

From a career perspective I also doubt it's good to be a face on a monitor to bosses and coworkers, especially if you're entry level like I am.

From a career perspective I also doubt it's good to be a face on a monitor to bosses and coworkers, especially if you're entry level like I am.

I think it depends on whether the company is full remote. At my company there's a new guy I'm familiar with. I have no idea where he live. His manager is in Montana, the other senior guy on his team is in New Orleans, and at most they all met each other once at the offsite. (Probably in 2023 there won't be a $3-5k/person offsite due to cost cutting.) I can't see how it's hurting him.

I suspect it would be different if his manager and half his team were in NYC, while he was just a face on the monitor from wherever. Highly recommend against that if you're entry level.

Yep. It's great for people who are already established, who don't need what the office provides for some people.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats