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.
There’s also the disturbing rise of “femcel” groups like /r/FemaleDatingStrategy, which seems to mirror the toxic ideology and tactics of incels. A large part of that is basically women doing the PUA thing to get a trophy husband, though that’s largely in economic terms (salary might be prioritized over looks).
You mean to tell me that wasn’t just a false-flag bit the incels were perpetuating? Those are fuckin real?
Oh yeah, classic case of “the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor”. I went through that subreddit a while back and was shocked to see how toxic and fucked up a mirror they’d made of incels.
Lots of advice on abusive relationship tactics and how to be effectively controlling and manipulative. It read like a bunch of sociopaths trying to outdo the redpillers. I sympathized somewhat because I got the sense that many of them were victims of abuse and considered it a way to ensure they wouldn’t be victimized again.
Serious “fight fire with fire” vibes.
Edit: Looks like that subreddit is dead now, and they’ve moved on to another platform. Maybe they were risking a ban due to all the rabid transphobia.
Subscribers: 255,604
Sub Description: Effective dating strategy for women that know what they want and prefer to be able to take control of their dating lives. Also includes strategies to maintain a relationship that benefits you. Plus tips on how to deal with some of the negative strategies from men that you encounter.
Totally normal approach to dating. A relationship is a zero-sum game for domination and control. So why not play to win?
Really disappointed I didn’t see more complaining about the current meta. It’s totally pay-to-win.
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.
There’s something to be said for the pressures on those people not to be relegated to the lower classes. It’s probably not conducive to forming and maintaining healthy relationships.
There’s also indirect effects caused by the squeezing of the lower class. As someone living paycheck to paycheck, my more financially comfortable friends are constantly wanting to do some expensive shit, or take a trip or something, that I can rarely afford. It’s also difficult to find the time and money to visit friends who don’t live near me.
So the state of my material conditions is frequently depriving them of the vast benefits of my company.
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?
Yeah honestly idk how people do it. I found my partner through school and honestly and can’t think of any other way I’d meet someone? I don’t really go anywhere.
May I ask how long have you been together for?
Coming up on 4 years soon so I’ve been out of the dating game for a long while
Good Good
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.
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.
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?
I’d be content with like a FWB or even a fling or whatever, but I can’t even get that 🤷
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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What do you mean material conditions? The class system at large? Sure, ultimately, but it’s alienation that would be the more specific Marxist term, and maybe some post-modernism would apply here as well to explain phenomenal like how much consumerism is involved in relationships now eg. a nice date means eating at an expensive restaurant
Removing some aspects of alienation should help, definitely. I used to live in a large cooperative house where I felt the most connected to others in the same state as me. As opposed to the competition and awkwardness of school and work otherwise. I also feel more connected when with my extended family back in the old country, where multi-generational housing is more common, and old traditions like farmers’ markets still exist.
It is unfortunate that just physically being around other people is both difficult to make time for and often impractical in the atomized and alienated work/school conditions that people are forced into if they’re in any sort of economic precarity.
Simply put, we shouldn’t have to live like that.
Yeah.
It’s a vast intersectional problem and material conditions are of course a big part of that.
Alongside that and riding that problem is the way capitalism has bent dating as a concept into something like rapid fire resume reading sessions.
Okay, I’m gonna be the bad guy here and use this post to say something I’ve been wanting to say: I think a lot of online leftists are a bit too optimistic about how much socialism will fix interpersonal problems.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m sure abolishing capitalism will be an overall net positive for humans mental health. But I see a lot of people here assume that they’d have totally awesome social and love lives if it weren’t for capitalism still being a thing and I can’t help but roll my eyes a bit, it strike me a bit like incel logic, or basement dwelling AnCaps who think they’d totally be John Galts of industry if it weren’t for taxes.
Again, socialism would likely help, but you can still be an awkward and/or maladjusted weirdo who can’t talk to girls under socialism. I’d rather be a friendless weirdo in a society where I also don’t have to deal with the stresses of looming poverty over my head, and yeah maybe I’d have an easier time making friends if I had more time off and lived in a city with better PT. But I think a lot of the bullshit that makes me an anti-social dork wouldn’t be automatically improved by me living in a dictatorship of the proletariat.
As for dating and romance, again capitalism sure ain’t helping, but I also think there’s a lot less material incentive to get in a relationship these days and as a result a lot of people are finding they’re happier single and independent than in a mediocre relationship. The boomer phenomenon of married couples who fucking hate each other but stay together out of fear of “being alone” inspired a lot of younger people to try and learn how to be okay with being alone so they wouldn’t end up finding boomer “I hate my wife” comedy funny. Again maybe socialism would make it easier for people to network and find relationships that actually work for them, but I think some of it is also just an evolution of how humans feel about family building and cohabitation.
Would socialism be able to fix everything as it exists right now? No, obviously not. But socialism will change the conditions that cause these issues to arise over time. I think its fair for people to acknowledge the fact that capitalism and class society is the ultimate root of these problems and it is the fault of no single individual.
Exactly, it’s like the development of a vaccine. It won’t cure the permanent damage or disability that’s already been done, but it will drastically reduce the occurrence of such damage in the future.
Not just that, but our foundational social structures have been completely upended by capitalism. We are simply not meant to live like this and socialism will help us start to repair the damage. We are supposed to live communally, our isolation at the expense of capital has done incalculable social damage.
I think it’s more that socialism is a prerequisite of fixing interpersonal issues on a large scale. You can’t stitch the wound while the knife is still in it.
I don’t think is that comrades think that socialism will given them a harem or anything that incel profess, but that it will give the freedom and capacity to people to have the opportunity to socialize more and by that making deeper connections with other people.
Incel was probably too extreme of a comparison. My point is, while socialism would perhaps make it easier for individuals to confront these problems, a lot of the leg work to actually improve their situation still falls on the individual. I may have an easier time working on not being a basement dwelling troglodyte under socialism but i still would have to do the bulk of the work myself.
I imagine it would at least making working on yourself feasible, which might be enough. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to put some kind of self-improvement on the back burner because of the pressing need to focus on becoming more employable. I think having more free time and energy would do wonders for people’s personal development.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to put some kind of self-improvement on the back burner because of the pressing need to focus on becoming more employable.
what kind of self-improvement had to go on the back burner?
Reading theory for starters. For long stretches of time, I just don’t have the mental bandwidth. Working, trying to find a new job, etc seem to leave me mentally drained more and more frequently.
Learning new things, developing hobbies, meeting new people. Going to the gym regularly or eating healthier. I have limited time and energy at the best of times.
For a recent example: I opted out of a reading and discussion group I’m really interested in, in favor of reading and learning about writing resumes and doing better in job interviews.
My point is, while socialism would perhaps make it easier for individuals to confront these problems, a lot of the leg work to actually improve their situation still falls on the individual.
ok, and people are unable to do that legwork under capitalism, but they’d have much better ability to do that legwork if they weren’t being destroyed by capitalism.
I agree
maybe it won’t give you a harem but i’m built different
🙄
We’d need to cure incel type thinking and teach them on how to care for themselves so that they can actually care for women. Seeing women as objects of desire rather than people with their own wants and needs is antithetical to the socialist project. That is not to say that more secure resources will certainly make things easier for everyone.
It clearly is a collective problem in the west and when socialists are in power and see problems, we want to solve them. A portion of resources dedicated towards training psychologists to improve the interpersonal relationships of everyone would be a massive boon to everyone’s experience of socialism.
I think the majority of it is due to either the reductionist cultural narratives about gender, or not feeling comfortable or proficient going out and making the ask.
Either way, a gender gulf.
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.
