So there is a loneliness epidemic caused by capitalist alienation. However, I wonder if lack of material conditions also adds to this. I just keep seeing lots of my broke guy friends depressed because they can’t find a partner and it is so hard for them to meet new people. This makes me wonder if their financial situation is the main reason.
Yes. This can be answered by a simple question.
If you are continually working to just barely survive, where are you supposed to find the time, energy, and money to date or go out to find a partner or friends?
Also where are you supposed to go to make friends? Third places have been all but destroyed, and unless you like going to a bar (you have to spend money), or get extremely lucky, then you’re completely out of luck.
Neoliberalism has been particularly efficient at atomizing people and replacing many social and cultural things with products to be consumed. Low income obviously contributes to loneliness but its truly an epidemic across all income levels.
Absolutely, but one factor that is overlooked on the matter of romantic relationships is the manufacturing of unreasonable beauty standards, especially of women, most men are looking for a “trophy” wife, and that limits much of the people who they look for to begin with, or reduces the motivation to start because they feel that “lowering their standards” is a failure so why even bother?
So I think that it is a cumulative pile of factors that reaches that point, by the side of women toxic masculinity, regular systemic misogyny, in particular domestic abuse, could probably play a factor on the issue too.
Other things are as I believe you mentioned, the tendency of capitalism to individualize peoples lives and for sure not having the means to go out and do things that are viewed as couples things like dinning out going to the movies, or going to the bar,or equivalent,with your friends as well, and the fact that being broke makes you put most of your energy into not being broke, and the rest of it into managing how to.survive on such few resources
What is “women toxic masculinity”?
Could be the rarer-in-comparison potential for some women to paradoxically demand toxic behaviors out of men in their relationships, or worse(which I have personal experience with), women performing the same kind of lack-of-consent, ‘if you don’t want to fuck you’re less of a man/a b[redacted]/a f[redacted], this that and the third’ flavor nonsense-- F.D. Signifier has spoke on this a little, but always clarified that it is way rarer than the male-spurred exercise of toxic masculinity; so I rly don’t know how much bearing this notion of “women toxic masculinity”(sic) has on the issue.
Either way, I consider it an issue less pertinent to politics and more to interpersonal dynamics, which all those factors are FUBAR right now mostly because a still-substantial percentage of men aren’t willing to work on themselves in ways to actively dismantle the toxic paradigms they’re living with.
It could definitely play a role. Emily Nagoski’s book puts forth the “dual control model” of sexual motivation. You have the accelerators, which are things what get you all hornt up, and you have the brakes, which are things that you have to urgently take care of before you can prioritize having sex. If you’re not financially secure in modern America it will be hard to relax enough to have sex. If you press on the accelerator and the brake really hard for long enough you can get a kind of incel situation going on. It’s not a good place to be in.
What do you mean by “pressing the accelerator and the breaks at the same time”?
Present people with situations that are sexually relevant but leave them without the bandwidth to properly deal with them due to other external circumstances like not being able to pay their rent and food and medicine at the same time
Which are these sexually relevant situations?
Not necessarily; you definitely see lonliness in a lot of labor aristocrats and petite booj who aren’t living paycheck to paycheck. I think it’s more that imperial core society is more alternating than it ever was.
Also, I hope this isn’t too pedantic, but the only way for there to be no material conditions is if there is no material: being broke is a material condition.
I haven’t read this one yet, but Ghodsee’s “Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism” might be interesting to you. I’ve listened to some of her interviews and she still peddles some lib propaganda here and there, but her points on gender equality and material conditions (which directly impact relationships) are still pretty good IMO.
It’s definitely not the only factor, but in a society so individualistic that the mere act of organising anything that aren’t consumption-based events is viewed as weird or dangerous, I reckon the barrier for entry gains a monetary dimension. A while back when I was morbidly looking at dating advice, a lot of it was “join something,” which usually was a gym, a sports club, some hobby group, and sadly most of those take money and time, things we have to ration radically just to survive. There’s effectively no “free” place to meet people irl (because if it became popular it’d immediately be commodified), so your only options are either work or some service place.
But I’ve heard political parties are great places to meet like-minded people ;)
I also have a bit of a beef with the monogamous life partnership expectation being such a normalised thing, as if not being in a relationship made people some kind of failure. If you look at it objectively, relationships are not magic, are actually a load of responsibilities and definitely are also affected by material conditions. If a person is too tired, broke or depressed to meet new people, how likely are they to be able to maintain a whole relationship? But now I’m volcel vanguarding.
There’s also some Parenti quote somewhere about standing for “the people too tired to have sex when they come home,” but I can’t find it right now.
The quote
In the United States, for over a hundred years, the ruling interests tirelessly propagated anticommunism among the populace, until it became more like a religious orthodoxy than a political analysis. During the Cold War, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.
– Michael Parenti, Blackshirts And Reds
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It’s a whole combination of factors. This is a big part, not knowing where to meet new people is always hard.
Capitalism also commodities relationships, people can be trained by capitalism to view relationships in an entirely transactional way, this is how we get things like incels.
Another factor is that a lot of places for people to get to know each other are bloody expensive. It costs money to get to know someone. So some people just “can’t afford” to date. This works in terms of time too, where people are “too busy working” to get to meet new people.
My financial and living situation is 100% the reason I haven’t tried. It was always one more goal to get to as the posts keep getting moved. Now I am at an age where I don’t even know how to start if I wanted to. I know a lot of guys like this. Sadly some of them go the incell route on what the cause of it. Those that have I cut off from because it’s not worth trying to argue with that level of toxic bullshit.
May I ask how old are you?
Its technology creating a negative feedback loop where people who lack real social interaction seek it online, often finding enough parasociality they don’t have to challenge themselves to deal with the failures of real social situations.
Blaming “technology” is and has always been a fool’s errand. Technology is inherently neutral. It’s just something humans do, always have done and always will do. Some dude figured out that shaving a stick into a sharp point makes a primitive spear. Some other dude figured out that you can scrape certain things against each other and produce sparks easily that can start fires on demand. Some would argue that families, tribes, villages, etc. sitting around a camp fire speaking, sharing stories, etc. was absolutely essential to humanity’s social development. I wonder if other humans at the time thought “oh no! This fucking fire thing! It’s gonna make all of us gather and sit around it!” Whoever it was that discovered how to make fires with flint and such (probably multiple people(s) independently, but whatever) changed social interactions forever. We can look at that now from our current position and say “well, that was good though.” Sure. And who says social media can’t also be good? Maybe we just have to adapt to it the way humans have always adapted to increasing technology. It’s silly to ignore something which has always happened (dramatic changes in social interactions due to increased technology) just because we’re in the middle of it and staying the same or going back feels preferable. I don’t even disagree… I grew up before the internet was in every home and was an adult practically before I had a cell phone and smartphones didn’t even exist. I know my memories of back then feel good to think about, but that doesn’t really matter to the here and now. And it doesn’t mean we can’t adapt and harness emerging technologies.
Whether you intend to or not, you offer no solutions. You just saying “technology,” by which I have to assume you mean streams online, games, discord, lemmy, reddit, etc. (social media very broadly), is the reason implies, logically anyway, that less technology would keep things the same. Ok. But it exists. And it’s not just gonna go away anytime soon. Are you proposing we restrict the way companies can develop apps and such? Ok, I agree. Are you proposing we do something like nationalize Twitter (and deport Elon) so that a government agency can directly regulate and enforce rules on there as far as blatant lies and shit that Elon allows? I’d agree. Just saying technology is bad broadly or even in the case of media or social media is at best a diagnosis but no solutions beyond the implied one of “thing is bad. Ban thing” (the logical conclusion if someone doesn’t offer their own solution).
Technology certainly can, in a given moment, be bad for certain people or everyone. We can’t just complain about progressing technology though or demand “to go back” or whatever because that doesn’t solve anything, even if it’s a valid feeling to have.
Further, I’d argue that the reason you didn’t include solutions (beyond not feeling like it which is always possible, so this entire post is more of a rhetorical effort) is because we approach everything from a fundamentally individualistic standpoint. “Can I fix this problem of Facebook? No. Fucking technology sucks!” That’s a logical conclusion to reach using that viewpoint. So the viewpoint must change.
[Insert digression to Marx’s Capital Vol I and Luddites. If you know then you know and if you don’t then go read the chapter. It’s interesting and relevant].
The problems are experienced individually but must be solved socially. That’s my pithy little summary.
I don’t think the issue is technology at all. If everyone had enough resources, they would choose in person interactions over online. However, it is more accessible to people to pay 30 bucks a month on internet service that it is to buy a $10k car and having to pay $10 every time they want to go anywhere, plus insurance, registration, etc. Also, having to pay for the activities and having to pay for meals and travel expenses, etc. Interacting online is just more attainable for everyone.