this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
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I get this sentiment, but the best way to combat this feeling is to build community.
Get to know the people around you. It starts small by just ditching the headphones in public and saying hello (and maybe some small talk) every time you encounter someone. Then start offering and accepting help, plan events, and keep track of their life milestones. People will be so pleasantly surprised when you remember things about their lives.
And you will probably be surprised at how many interesting people you pass by every day while keeping your head down. Over time, some of them will begin to reciprocate. Remember, they are probably also starved for community.
Capitalism wants us isolated, sad, and reliant on their products/services. The antidote is strong community.
That sounds horrible. It’s just society with extra steps.
It’s actually fewer steps. Society is just late-stage community.
Our brains evolved for living in groups of ~30-100 people. These communities are small enough to all know and support each other through life’s inevitable struggles. A healthy society is made up of thousands of these smaller, tight-knit communities, not just millions of individuals.
Our brains are not happy alone—not for extended periods. Reducing all our social interaction to anonymous chats (like this one) and passing hundreds of nameless faces does not fulfill your social needs and will leave you feeling lonely.
It is work, and you will encounter people that suck and/or won’t reciprocate, but if you keep at it, good people will reveal themselves. I promise it’s worth it.
I’ve been told that humans need community and social contact, but when I was living in the woods for 18 months, only really interacting with my remote coworkers, and spending my time doing yard work and home improvement I was at my happiest and healthiest.
Honestly, even seeing hundreds of people a day is my idea of hell.
You don't need to know well all those dozens of people; it's just more about not being total strangers. We would ideally have 1-3 very close friends and then a slightly wider circle of the next ring, and so on.
I would say your level of exclusivity is very rare. Few people can tolerate that little contact for that long. There is certainly a middle ground for everyone's satisfaction and it's great that you found yours but the majority of friendless society is lonely. Maybe you jive with your remote coworkers more than other people do with their regular company.
Nope. Dealing with coworkers is a mask I’ve rehearsed for decades.
Thank you. This is what I've been telling people. I'm currently trying to build community as we speak - so far, it's great. But a lot of people are set in a more isolated mindset, so it's tough to "jailbreak" people out of this.
I whole-heartedly agree, and yet it is virtually impossible to do such a thing as "build community" at this point, at least in the United States. There is like a pervasive anti-community dark magic / anti-matter sort of thing