What's your creative solution to solve the loneliness epidemic?
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Public transit isn’t for socializing, it’s for traveling. Public spaces like parks, libraries, squares, etc that don’t require payment to use are for socializing.
Oh I thought you meant socializing during transit, sorry. I forgot to consider in other places parks are not a maximum 15-minute walk away
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Keep people in adjacent cages on a big rectangle of concrete next to a swamp so they get all the social time they need. Kid Rock plays to keep up morale every Friday night.
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Why u need creative? If u actually wanna fix it all u need is a shared social activity with a regular attendance of everyone. And would u look at that we just reinvented religion and church.
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This post did not contain any content.wrote on last edited by [email protected]
Spend less time online, do less digital activities.
I do more IRL, in-person, activities. Any kind of activity most of us somehow forget we used to do well before Internet and digital was a thing can still be done without the Internet and without a computer of any kind.
In-persons is intimidating but it also helps keep away the armies of online trolls and haters that online thrive to hurt other people. Provided one behaves like a decent human being, it's very rare people IRL will hate on anyone for goofing up or for not agreeing with them. It's ok.
I also do as much as I can the analog way, without anything digital. It helps. Be it to write or sketch, or do stuff with my hands. Heck, even me using a paper agenda instead my phone will regularly trigger surprised/interested questions from people that otherwise would probably never have talked with me to begin with
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- Sport and art
- low cost and free places to do sport and art
- linked together by public transit and clean, safe places to walk, run or cycle (or scoot or skate or whatever)
- a shorter working week, so people have time to do the above
- a higher minimum wage, so people can afford the (ideally low, if necessary) costs involved
So, e.g., lots of parks with publicly accessible five-a-side football pitches, ping-pong tables, basketball courts, skateparks whatever - that's your sport. The parks also have bandstands or outdoor theatres, where there's space for that.
Public libraries with rooms people can hire (or use for free) for book clubs, sewing circles, art classes - that's your art.
Good thing about the above is that all these ideas already exist in lots of forms, you just pick whatever works best for your current situation.
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As any other problems, it's an issue with political will
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Have minimum delivery fee to force people to visit physical store over "online shopping" and promote farmer marker and city-centre (village-centre) shopping so people interact with each other
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End-up US style suburbanization, these nice house in a quiet area are great to sleep-in but means you're away from every social activity, and when you're too young/too old to drive it turns into house arrest
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Increase subsidises for non profit-club, especially for the one having under 25 and above 65 members If you go playing scrabble, theatre or practice Karate you stop being lonely
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Carpooling parking and lanes to push worker to interact with people living nearby
wrote on last edited by [email protected]deleted by creator
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Lets cap the population of cities to 10 000 and make everyone live in a small town.
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Legitimately stop treating phones like a necessity. Leave them at home more. Treat apps more like accessories and less like doorways.
Opt more for going in person to places to do things. By bike or transit whenever you can. Go to public events at your local parks and venues. Attendance is its own form of support, too. Anything we can do to purposely put ourselves in front of other people who share different perspectives than ourselves is good for us.
I think a lot of people don’t realize that there is a sense of responsibility when it comes to putting ourselves out into the world. If you think you’re capable of helping others, simply being a positive person in a public place, even just to have some fun meeting with friends, is a step in the right direction to building a better world. Nature will eventually setup a situation for you to be called upon. But this never happens from in your house or apartment.
For that first point let’s bring back phone booths, but somehow make them work with in the modern world.
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Structured way of spending a lot of time in the same environment with other people with similar goals. "Go out on your own and make friends" doesn't work for many of us, additional free time will not help.
There's a good reason most people make long-term friendships in school and university, we need a similar space where we are surrounded by the same people every day (even though we may not like all of them).
I have no idea what could it be since our society frowns upon such ideas.Before Covid the office kinda took this role, however it was a gamble and not voluntary.
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This post did not contain any content.wrote on last edited by [email protected]
For a lot of people in suburbia, the entire concept of indoor "third spaces" is mostly "pay to play" at the end of a drive. A big exception to this is/were shopping malls, but those aren't always close by. To get to more a functional social fabric, we have to provide more convenient ways of interfacing with our neighbors that don't always require money to change hands.
Perhaps this is a predictably orange-pill response, but we need to change zoning in a big way. Each suburban development has the street plan and infrastructure to support small businesses and common spaces, walking-distance from everyone's front door. All it takes is to allow small-scale commercial development in corners of these collections of tract-homes and, just like that, you can have something like a functional village. Beyond that, encouraging more development of community recreation space, both indoor and outdoor, would go a long way to provide a place for people to mingle.
Edit: strip-malls don't count. They're often at the very edge of residential areas, and are tied up with way more capital than what I'm talking about. That's why they're made up of franchises, require ridiculous amounts of parking, and contribute to "stroads" and all the knock-on effects and hostile architecture that requires.
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no more social media
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Fighting fascism, together.
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For starters, Ubi, and then expansive and free public transit for all and accessible for all including disabled people, more free places to just go and exist, no facism and more community. That's just for the beginning though
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Increase taxes on places that sell take home alcohol and decrease tax on alcohol sold from licenced venues.
It should be cheap to go out.
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Have those AI friends play matchmaker between their human companions, solves both problems.
AI would be a good matchmaker between people who were honest, but I think that doesn't address the main problem with online dating. That problem (at least for heterosexuals) is that there are a lot more men than women participating. I think women don't like online dating because they get harassed by creeps and they're worried that even someone who seems nice will turn out to be a creep in real life. Creeps will be willing to lie to a matchmaking AI because they don't actually care about compatibility and just want the "one weird trick" that gets women to have sex with them.
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Fighting fascism, together.
what if we kissed next to the nazi we just curb stomped?
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I began offering weekly board game gatherings and dinners for the public, and, aside from the rocky start (no one at the first 2 events), every gathering has always gotten a minimum of 3-8 people here in West Allis, WI!
I've been using this website in conjunction with a Facebook group: https://gamenight.host/@wa_bgn
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Step 1
- Demolish all housing - everyone is homeless now
Step 2
- Mandate that everyone design their own silly costume - this is all you're allowed to wear
Step 3
- Legalize and subsidize all the fun drugs - everyone gets a weekly allowance of shrooms, ecstasy, etc
Step 4
- Loneliness is officially replaced with several other problems
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Structured way of spending a lot of time in the same environment with other people with similar goals. "Go out on your own and make friends" doesn't work for many of us, additional free time will not help.
There's a good reason most people make long-term friendships in school and university, we need a similar space where we are surrounded by the same people every day (even though we may not like all of them).
I have no idea what could it be since our society frowns upon such ideas.Before Covid the office kinda took this role, however it was a gamble and not voluntary.
It doesn't have to be structured. It just has to give opportunities for repeat interactions, and maybe a promise of future interaction with the same person, in that low pressure environment.
Dog parks have a bunch of dogs mingling, so their owners will often have the opportunity to get to know each other.
Neighbors who see each other often have an opportunity to get to know each other. That goes for work neighbors, too, even if they work for another employer entirely (but in the same building or something.
Regulars at a coffee shop, restaurant, bar, or gym might learn to recognize each other and go from exchanging pleasantries to actually getting to know each other (and the staff).
Church isn't as big a thing as it was a few generations ago, but any kind of social meetings, from support groups to volunteer associations, give the opportunity to work together for a common goal.
This is where hobbies and free time come in. And I'm not going to knock video games and other hobbies where you might interact with people online, but there is something fundamentally different about repeated in-person interactions. So it's worth making sure that your routine includes regular interaction with people in low-stakes settings.
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Spend less time online, do less digital activities.
I do more IRL, in-person, activities. Any kind of activity most of us somehow forget we used to do well before Internet and digital was a thing can still be done without the Internet and without a computer of any kind.
In-persons is intimidating but it also helps keep away the armies of online trolls and haters that online thrive to hurt other people. Provided one behaves like a decent human being, it's very rare people IRL will hate on anyone for goofing up or for not agreeing with them. It's ok.
I also do as much as I can the analog way, without anything digital. It helps. Be it to write or sketch, or do stuff with my hands. Heck, even me using a paper agenda instead my phone will regularly trigger surprised/interested questions from people that otherwise would probably never have talked with me to begin with
Took up Yoga and BJJ for physical activity. Volunteering with a charity a friend of a friend runs handy out seasonal survival supplies to homeless. Creative outlet next but I'm indecisive there so far.
My friend pool is recovering by going outside to the same places repeatedly, can confirm.
