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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.

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Interesting read. I also enjoyed the comments.

Generally people are less likely to socialize if they (real or perceived) have low social standing. So people who cant keep up with the joneses financially will retreat sooner. I also think obesity plays a role here for the same reason. Im a MD and even though I know the official obesity stats, Im still shocked when I walk around the hospital. The number of really obese young people, who I almost never notice in the city. I think many of them feel so much shame, they retire entirely from social life.

But if obesity rates are so high wouldn't the stigma go away a bit?

The average weight is up, but where the numbers have really gotten stretched is at the upper end. Rates of morbid obesity (defined as a BMI over 40) have increased from essentially 0 to nearly 10%.

Yes, as someone with lower achievement than most twigs in my extended family tree, attending family functions is like spending an afternoon poking myself with the sharp end of paperclip. (Interacting with groups of equal status doesn't feel this way.) I imagine the effect must be much stronger for total fuckups, who are inferior to everyone. This can easily start a vicious cycle, where people with below average prudentia end up plummeting because they need extreme prudentia to break out of the trap.

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