>>2434194I think this is a blatant example of the social atomization that capitalism has created. If you think about it, social media has been shoved down our throats to such a sickening degree to a point where it has now influenced our social interactions with eachother, encouraging us to be performative for the sake of clout as opposed to genuinely forming human connections with eachother.
In a recent study put forward by Columbia University Irving Centre:
https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/news/just-how-harmful-social-media-our-experts-weigh
<Although there are important benefits, social media can also provide platforms for bullying and exclusion, unrealistic expectations about body image and sources of popularity, normalization of risk-taking behaviors, and can be detrimental to mental health. Girls and young people who identify as sexual and gender minorities can be especially vulnerable as targets. Young people’s brains are still developing, and as individuals, young people are developing their own identities. What they see on social media can define what is expected in ways that is not accurate and that can be destructive to identity development and self-image. Adolescence is a time of risk-taking, which is both a strength and a vulnerability. Social media can exacerbate risks, as we have seen played out in the news.
<For those vulnerable to developing an eating disorder, social media may be especially unhelpful because it allows people to easily compare their appearance to their friends, to celebrities, even older images of themselves. Research tells us that how much someone engages with photo-related activities like posting and sharing photos on Facebook or Instagram is associated with less body acceptance and more obsessing about appearance. For adolescent girls in particular, the more time they spend on social media directly relates to how much they absorb the idea that being thin is ideal, are driven to try to become thin, and/or overly scrutinize their own bodies. Also, if someone is vulnerable to an eating disorder, they may be especially attracted to seeking out unhelpful information—which is all too easy to find on social media.So combine THAT with idea that you have these "alpha bros" and right wing grifters who are also fucking with young men, no shit they're going to be more vulnerable to social atomisation, that they become more isolated from talking to eachother. Now thankfully we have institutions to debunk the propaganda, but given how deep the pockets of fascists can be they're going to be screwing us over for quite some time.
Sadly, this isn't a new phenomenon and has been an ever increasing one. Bookchin points this out in "Our Synthetic Enivornment" in reference to urban life:
"<Actually, the urban dweller today is more isolated in the big city than his ancestors were in the countryside. The city man in the modern metropolis has reached a degree of anonymity, social atomization, and spiritual isolation that is virtually unprecedented in human history. Today man's alienation from man is almost absolute. His standards of co-operation, mutual aid, simple human hospitality, and decency have suffered an appalling amount of erosion in the urban milieu. Man's civic institutions have become cold, impersonal agencies for the manipulation of his destiny, and his culture has increasingly accommodated itself to the least common denominator of intelligence and taste.”
This in the
fucking cities. Centres of cosmopolitanism and social spaces, cultural diversity and an open plethora of people and places to go and see. And this was written in the 1960s. So sadly, things haven't changed much. But in terms of the "loneliness" this is also an illusion-
The absolutely isolated individual has always been an illusion. The most esteemed personal qualities, such as independence, will to freedom, sympathy, and the sense of justice, are social as well as individual virtues. The fully developed individual is the consummation of a fully developed society. The emancipation of the individual is not an emancipation from society, but the deliverance of society from atomization, an atomization that may reach its peak in periods of collectivization and mass culture."
"The notion of "independence," which is often confused with independent thinking and autonomy of behavior, has been so marbled by pure bourgeois egoism that we tend to forget that our freedom as individuals depends heavily on community support systems and solidarity. It is not by childishly subordinating ourselves to the community on the one hand or by detaching ourselves from it on the other that we become authentically human. What distinguishes us as social beings, hopefully with rational institutions, from solitary beings,
presumably with minimal or no institutions, are our capacities for solidarity with each other, for mutually enhancing our self-development and creativity and attaining freedom within a socially creative and institutionally rich collectivity"
In other words, it's not wrong to feel lonely, but loneliness is a capitalist ploy made to further alienate eachother not only from the MOP but from society and ourselves.
Think about it: social spaces such as libraries and parks and LGBTQ centres are consistently under attack by right wing forces. A glaring example is that found in the USA.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2023/10/19/university-lgbtq-centers-disappearing/71147364007/https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2025/03/19/tracking-the-trump-administrations-attacks-on-libraries/ https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czx7kez4vx2oThis administration is literally trying to prevent you and your friends from touching grass, taking class, and tapping ass.
These are places where communities and like minded people engage, and instead of having any social aspirations to collectively create- you have a whole generation of wanna-be youtubers, encouraging a life of hapless consumerism and sedentary activity.
So what's the solution? Unironically, encouraging people to touch grass and form social groups both online and offline, and actually encourage friends to be better socially as opposed to clowning on them for being socially awkward. Another aspect which can help in this form of mental health is encouraging physical exercise. As socialists, we ought to be
socialising, that means improving your rhetoric, covertly performing your own mass-line and organising social events from waxing poetic at pubs, to starting a fitness club, or just working on the friendships you have and encouraging group activity.
CREATE SOCIAL SPACES, encourage their use, and fight like hell to preserve the ones that exist. Simultaneously, one must practice vigilance to prevent this social atomisation from spreading. The more lonely we are, the more the fascists will win.
Bookchin writes in urbanisation without cities the sort of communities ancient athens had, as a means to create a truly participatory system (incredibly flawed as it was)
<The Athenian citizen would have mocked the entrenched bourgeois myth that the free man is an atomized buyer and seller whosechoices are constrained by his own psychological and physical infirmities. He would have seen beyond the arrogance of this self-deception into the pathos of the bourgeois citizen's clientage to the powerful, his aimless pursuit of wealth, his reduction of life to the acquisition of things… Such a despised bourgeois being, he would have concluded, is no less archaic than the Erinyes, who must be freed from
their primality as mere forces and reconstructed by reason and justice into the "kindly ones."
<To the Hellenic citizen of a polis, leaving all its mythic origins aside, the monad would have seemed as prehuman as the folk community seemed prepolitical. Individuality meant citizenship. And, ideally, citizenship meant the personal wholeness that came from deep roots in tradition, a complexity of social bonds, richly articulated civic relationships, shared festivals, philia, freedom from clientage and freedom forcollective self-determination through institutions that fostered the full participation and everyday practice of a creative body politic.
To be such a citizen, one had to live in a polis-a city that possessed an agora, a space to convene general assemblies of the people, a theater to dramatize the reality and ideology of freedom, and the ceremonial squares, avenues, and temples that gave it reverential meaning. To remove any of these elements that made up this whole was to instantly destroy it.
These fascists want to stop you going to drag shows, saunas, libraries, reading clubs and keep you as tik-tok addled zombies with little to no game. They want to turn you into soulless /v/irgins and misanthropes. The woman in the video deserves better, but her tears can only get her so far. Such loneliness means she's either gonna turn into some redscare IT girl, or wind up digesting some bourgoise feminist schlock. It sucks starting a new friend group, but it can be done- so long as you focus on achieving quality, not quantity.
tl;dr
TOUCH GRASS, AND ENCOURAGE YOUR FRIENDS TO DO SO. ALLOW YOURSELVES TO BE VULNERABLE WITH EACHOTHER. ONLY THROUGH THE FIRES OF FRIENDSHIP WILL WE STAND A CHANCE OF STOPPING FASCISM >>2434426Those guys are the biggest fucking losers I've ever had the misfortune of meeting.
imagine not challenging yourself to do outdoor shit with an enthusiastic human being who loves life.