As others have mentioned, the decline started long before social media and the Internet. When I was a child, in the 70s, my parents often had other families and couples over for dinner, and we often attended small dinner parties, too.
As an introvert, I absolutely loathed these gatherings and was frustrated by how powerless I was in avoiding them.
Recently, I have been reading over my mother's old letters she wrote to her parents at that time, in which she described the effort and social anxiety that went with this tradition. It was not something my parents enjoyed, but rather an obligation they felt they had to uphold. Someone invites you over, then that goes into an unspoken balance sheet, and you are required to reciprocate. She often spoke of "owing" dinner to people. I don't think she enjoyed it at all, though there were a few couples I can remember who were good friends of theirs, and those meetups were always a pleasure to listen in on. The rest were simply a drag.
I should note that their life in the 70s (in a middle-class college town) was not some idyllic paradise without the Internet, either. Everyone was constantly falling ill with colds or flu, and days were spent running dreary errands to shop for boring things that we now can get with a click. The rotary-dial telephone that hung in the kitchen was the heartbeat of the house, since replaced by Facebook and smartphones. My parents were always busy and exhausted.
It's very interesting because this is obviously still the reality for elite people; they have to attend all these events to maintain their political positions.
It's hard to believe that Mark Zuckerberg enjoys having to step off his Yacht to meet with Donald Trump. Not because of animosity, but simply because it's a lot of work and there is a lot at stake.
I think the insight for regular people is that regular people within the same social class nowadays have nothing to gain financially or career-wise from each other; so they don't see as much benefit from getting closer to each other.
My experience is that it's impossible to get close to software engineering colleagues; they're way too cynical and sometimes very jealous. And we can't really help each other anyway. My experience with other software engineering colleagues is that you can't trust them. I've been back-stabbed by colleagues which I tried to help on 2 occasions; including a very bad case which essentially destroyed my career through lies and sabotage. Let's just say I will never give another referral for a ex-colleague or developer friend with a current employer ever again.
I have a couple of software engineer friends who I've had for years who I consider close but I only met them online (including a few video calls); we worked on several projects together over many years, none of them worked out financially, unfortunately. I think if we had succeeded, we may have met each other in real life and become close enough to invite each other over to each other's houses... But I guess we're all just in that hustling mindset still and we live in different countries and lack the financial freedom to choose where we live. A shared successful business would certainly have helped to bring us closer.
I think you need to have achieved a certain level of financial comfort and your network should bring a certain amount of social value to justify inviting people over or attending events.
The social benefit has to pay for the stress and hassle, then enjoying people's company is the bonus that seals the deal to really make it worthwhile.
My experience with friends is that there's nothing to talk about besides complaining about all the problems we face and how crooked everything is. We're just simmering in our own misery.
Unfortunately, rich people don't want to befriend me either because they think I want something from them besides friendship; and they're right, do does everyone else in their lives! They don't appreciate honesty.
It's similar with my spouse in a way, but at least there are other things you can do with your spouse besides talking!
Society is in a very bad place IMO.
I think, objectively, I'm a decent and interesting person to befriend, yet the only person I ever met in my life who I can call a friend (besides family members) is my wife. So 15 years of adulthood yielded only 1 true friend out of maybe tens or thousands or hundreds of thousands of people I met. I don't think that's unusual; I think that's the baseline of how hard it is to make true friends when people do not have a financial motivation to be nice to each other in our current low-trust society.
vertnerd · · focus · HN ↗
As an introvert, I absolutely loathed these gatherings and was frustrated by how powerless I was in avoiding them.
Recently, I have been reading over my mother's old letters she wrote to her parents at that time, in which she described the effort and social anxiety that went with this tradition. It was not something my parents enjoyed, but rather an obligation they felt they had to uphold. Someone invites you over, then that goes into an unspoken balance sheet, and you are required to reciprocate. She often spoke of "owing" dinner to people. I don't think she enjoyed it at all, though there were a few couples I can remember who were good friends of theirs, and those meetups were always a pleasure to listen in on. The rest were simply a drag.
I should note that their life in the 70s (in a middle-class college town) was not some idyllic paradise without the Internet, either. Everyone was constantly falling ill with colds or flu, and days were spent running dreary errands to shop for boring things that we now can get with a click. The rotary-dial telephone that hung in the kitchen was the heartbeat of the house, since replaced by Facebook and smartphones. My parents were always busy and exhausted.
jongjong · · focus · HN ↗
It's very interesting because this is obviously still the reality for elite people; they have to attend all these events to maintain their political positions.
It's hard to believe that Mark Zuckerberg enjoys having to step off his Yacht to meet with Donald Trump. Not because of animosity, but simply because it's a lot of work and there is a lot at stake.
I think the insight for regular people is that regular people within the same social class nowadays have nothing to gain financially or career-wise from each other; so they don't see as much benefit from getting closer to each other.
My experience is that it's impossible to get close to software engineering colleagues; they're way too cynical and sometimes very jealous. And we can't really help each other anyway. My experience with other software engineering colleagues is that you can't trust them. I've been back-stabbed by colleagues which I tried to help on 2 occasions; including a very bad case which essentially destroyed my career through lies and sabotage. Let's just say I will never give another referral for a ex-colleague or developer friend with a current employer ever again.
I have a couple of software engineer friends who I've had for years who I consider close but I only met them online (including a few video calls); we worked on several projects together over many years, none of them worked out financially, unfortunately. I think if we had succeeded, we may have met each other in real life and become close enough to invite each other over to each other's houses... But I guess we're all just in that hustling mindset still and we live in different countries and lack the financial freedom to choose where we live. A shared successful business would certainly have helped to bring us closer.
I think you need to have achieved a certain level of financial comfort and your network should bring a certain amount of social value to justify inviting people over or attending events.
The social benefit has to pay for the stress and hassle, then enjoying people's company is the bonus that seals the deal to really make it worthwhile.
My experience with friends is that there's nothing to talk about besides complaining about all the problems we face and how crooked everything is. We're just simmering in our own misery.
Unfortunately, rich people don't want to befriend me either because they think I want something from them besides friendship; and they're right, do does everyone else in their lives! They don't appreciate honesty.
It's similar with my spouse in a way, but at least there are other things you can do with your spouse besides talking!
Society is in a very bad place IMO.
I think, objectively, I'm a decent and interesting person to befriend, yet the only person I ever met in my life who I can call a friend (besides family members) is my wife. So 15 years of adulthood yielded only 1 true friend out of maybe tens or thousands or hundreds of thousands of people I met. I don't think that's unusual; I think that's the baseline of how hard it is to make true friends when people do not have a financial motivation to be nice to each other in our current low-trust society.