The idea is that knowing there are lonely people out there can help you cope with loneliness a little.
This is a minimum "viral" product for my upcoming project that allows meaningful connections between anonymous people using audio.
With such fantastic response, I think I got a form of validation that there is a market demand for connecting the lonely souls.
One thing that always bothered me is how much wasted potential there is in tools like Omegle or chatRoulette. On paper they sound amazing, and a few years ago back when they started and not everyone was aware, I remember having two or three amazing (and entirely SFW) interactions with some random people from around the world. It was genuinely exciting in a super legit way. And then, yeah. It turned into what it is today. I wonder if there is any way to ever do it right.
I totally feel you. There is magic in connecting people from all over the world with the power of the internet, but it gets ruined by the few who spam and abuse the platform. I hope to prevent this by not offering any vanity feature right now (no pictures or cam) and by making it super open, instead of a 1:1 chat. The holy grail would be to put this behind a paywall and only those who need this service the most would pay to use it, guaranteeing some standard of behavior
I think you need some moderation technique for any community - mores are not inherent in a society, they are formed through dialogue and enforcement. Digital communities are not immune to this dynamic. The digital tools could help you enforce rules more efficiently but someone still has to formulate the rules and adjudicate tricky situations.
The good thing is that the prior experience of lesser-known and more-famous online communities/media outlets has given the next entrant in this space plenty of accumulated wisdom to capitalize on.
Paywalls are part of the solution but they can't be the only one because there's always the tradeoff there between making the cost high enough to weed out the majority of bots and fly-by-night spammers, but also low enough that it's not a significant barrier to entry for community growth.
You get me. I am torn between releasing cool features to help people feel connected and holding them back until I have established some sort of code of conduct. Move fast and break things along the way, or try to do it right, especially when the people on the platform would bias towards the vulnerable ones. The engagement I am seeing right now feels magical, and I am afraid if I don't move fast enough, people would lose interest and not come back.
Simple up/down thumb feedback and some graph theory... See if you can find large components of positive interaction, and only connect the people who get more than a couple down-thumbs to each other.
And maybe a 'did this person show you their penis?' feedback toggle for good measure.
People WILL lose interest and not re-engage - that's the default state for any social network. You have to figure out why they would come back - is it to re-connect with someone they spoke to, or to read some new content on the site, or to express again how they are feeling? And how do you make this all easy through the features you build?
You can start with some basic Code of Conduct that let's say Github, Reddit or Twitter uses - no need to reinvent the wheel. Then you can modify it as time goes to suit what's working or not for your community.
If you have a good model for iterative improvement that puts the user in the loop somehow, it'll be reflected in your engagement stats.
Using Call of Duty (a military game) with voice chat was oddly similar experience. You can match with two other teammates, then you chat as you help each other succeed in the game, naturally building rapport. Then the game round ends and… that's it, you'll never talk to those people again. It's very abrupt and makes the whole interaction feel weirdly transactional.
Recently in LoL I've been sending a friend request to anyone I have more fun with than the average random, and queueing with friends whenever possible. It is a little awkward, but definitely nicer than just randoms. Some players I'll play a few with then unfriend, if I learn that they're generally dislikable.
Wonder if you could ask them before the round ends, "y'all wanna play another?"
Thanks for sharing the link! This stood out to me the most: "Correspondents rarely confess to the sort of skanky, self-destructive behavior found on Group Hug (“I slept with someone I work with. He’s married. I’m friends with his wife.”). And why should they? There’s no guilty thrill of public catharsis. Tired.com isn’t another outlet for exhibitionists. It’s an unexpected invitation to quietly complain about the same old same old to a stranger who might actually listen."
Complaining to strangers who might actually listen, instead of seeking the guilty thrill of public catharsis... Something I am definitely taking note on
Someone had a very good point that the wording seems to only imply that the loneliness is caused by lacking the listed qualities when in fact, some are lonely because of their strong attributes (good looking, smart, wealthy). I made an update so that all future messages will "attribute" to these qualities, instead of these qualities 'holding them back'.
Thank you, anonymous user!
A person claiming to be lonely because they are too smart/wealthy/good looking sounds incredibly narcissistic. I highly doubt that is actually the issue with their loneliness.
the algorithm works this way:
The geolocation acquired by the webpage is in the form of latitude and longitude. Let's say it is lat: 10.123456, long: 30.123456
I want to approximate it to 3 mile accuracy (diagonal of a box, so in one dimension, would be sqrt(3^2 /2) = 2.12 mile in lat or long). 3 mile, in geographical coordinate would be equivalent to : 3 mile / 3960 mile (Earth radius) * 180 deg / pi rad = 0.0434 degree.
I divide each dimension by 0.0434, and round it to a whole number (essentially, mod 0.0434). Then, I multiply that number by 0.0434 and save that as the location.
This means that a user's location can lie anywhere inside a box with 3 mile diagonal length at that geolocation.
If you see inconsistency in my logic, please let me know.
That would leak if there are multiple data points. In the extreme case, two points just either side of the 3 mile circle resolution would locate precisely (where the two circles touch).
Given N points within M meters or so, which is roughly what you get for multiple measurements of "home" with an error on the measurement, I think you could have a reasonable stab at deriving the location from an estimate of the error on the geolocation plus which circles they fell into. All in same circle makes near centre more likely than near edge.
edit: daily check in, so all the above needs is a tendency to check in from roughly the same location each day.
This information isn't personally identifiable by itself. Even combined with your original HN comment, the information leakage cross section and associated risk is minutely small.
I understand the concern about your privacy, but in practical terms what outcome are you afraid of in this instance?
Getting less lonely inherently requires some degree of trust in and vulnerability to other human beings.
It's tragically sad when privacy fears prevent someone from living a colorful, stimulating, and deeply fulfilling life.
In case you're open to unsolicited advice: Develop the skill of Discernment. When the "privacy threat" part of your brain activates, take a moment to analyze the degree of the threat and intentionally choose your response accordingly.
EDIT: doh! Gotta turn on location services for Safari.
Looks great, would like to give it a whirl. But under "Share with the World", I can't get the button to become enabled with something other than "Loading...". Turned off the pi-hole in case there was a DNS query getting blocked, no joy. Safari 16.2, macOS Ventura 13.1.
Do you see the green message after you submit your location? If you keep seeing the red message, then it means the location has not been submitted, so the survey would not be available.
Please keep me posted here if you keep experiencing it so I can solve it for you and future users :)
You may want to dynamically change the radius and or add skew. Not that I care, but my entry (in Preston, WA) draws a neat circle around... a short private road, centered on my house. There's about 100 people in that circle, which is not a lot, and I'm not even in the real boonies.
You can always start with tiles from https://openstreetmap.org Or use one of the commercial providers which offers free tiers. There are quite a few smaller providers that are not super expensive.
You can always setup your own tile server. It's not that hard and can be cheap (if you don't count your time). I recommend, checking https://github.com/onthegomap/planetiler
I was very lonely for my college years because I lived in a religious uni that was far away from any city, partly because the mission school I went to (went to school outside of America) offered tuition scholarships to go there. Within the first year of leaving to an actual city, I lost my virginity, had my first successful relationship, and generally found my place in the world. People underestimate how much mundane things like "changing your location" can do about loneliness (hint: cities are much better than rural and suburban places for that kind of thing)
I feel you! The prime motivation to create this webapp (and the future project that is in the oven) was from my extreme loneliness during grad school. I never thought that I would be someone to experience loneliness because I thought I was a generally happy person with quite a few close friends I can talk deeply with.
I thought, why is it that in this today and age with ultimate connectivity, there is not a reasonable way to make new friends? I agree physical location plays a huge role because you feel the most connection when you are in person with someone. But with remote learning and working on the rise, this loneliness situation will only get more pervasive.
I think there is a better digital medium/channel/mode of interaction/environment that can abstract as much of the genuine human connection from real-life interaction as possible, and the current social media landscape is severely lacking at it.
I am building Lonely World to learn as much about the loneliness 'market' if you will, and validate my hypotheses for the better digital social platform. I am happy so far that people have cheered me on my mission.
I currently also experience this difference between rural areas and the city. Recently left my hometown for the second largest city in Germany. It's crazy how different I feel. Way more open about myself. I don't have a problem connecting with people anymore. It is quite weird - I thought I was an introvert before.
But it also makes me question whether my long-term relationship (8 years) has been a good fit for me and the thing I really always wanted.
So, ironically, I just moved to Singapore from the US last year. I think if it wasn't for my wife-to-be who is Singaporean, I'd be pretty lonely here too. I think the point I should have made isn't just "move" but rather "move to a place where you'll feel more comfortable." Of course, you have to be lucky enough to land in a spot that works, and most people can't move every few months once they've decided X place isn't working for them.
Another example of converse: I was happy in high school (that mission school in palau), but moving to the university in TN absolutely stiffled me for those five or so years. I guess another way to phrase my point is "place does matter," and don't discount external factors for being the reason you are lonely. We in America often attribute a lot to internal factors such as attitude, outlook, mindset, etc. And, yes, internal factors are important. However, life really is a balance of external and internal factors, you need to optimize both to the extent you can. I feel like self-help talks and media emphasize internal focus because that is (supposedly) the thing you do have control over. That said, if you can get a "ticket out of town," even to just visit a new place, don't discount what it could do for your internal issues like loneliness.
Be careful with this: people moving away from home to universities are some of the most at-risk for feeling lonely, for developing depression and suicidal tendencies.
It can absolutely help some people, but for others it can make them feel like they're more alone than they've ever been, because while their anxieties and social struggles still exist, they no longer have any support structure of a family or friends from home around them.
this reminds me of the game Kind Words by popcannibal, like just a chill place where people share their frustrations and just wanna be heard. https://popcannibal.com/kindwords
i do recommend adding an option for people to change the scope of their location, such as limiting to just state/region, country or continent for privacy reasons.
That game is real cool! There was a comment on its Steam page, describing the game like, this is a game that shouldn't exist yet it does. The fact that this game is selling shows that there is a market for a product like this. People are lonely out there.
I made something similar during Covid to help people cope, but it was specific for people who played Sky: Children of The Light game. The game launched right before Covid hit us and it helped people to went through the isolation.
https://thatskywish.netlify.app if you wanted to give it a try. It follows the same principle that allows people to leave message for a friend anonymously.
Thank you for mentioning this. I moderate the content of this site once per week so there might be some message that temporarily pass through or I missed. I have removed some of the harmful messages.
I wonder if loneliness == being alone... many people report being lonely in a crowded place, being lonely in a marriage, or being lonely at work. But this leads to the conclusion that the solution to loneliness may not always be 'meeting people'.
And it definitely got way worse during/after pandemic. I would suggest you check out some Reddit forums if you are curious to know the other half of the population. r/ForeverAlone, r/lonely, r/loneliness, r/alone, r/LonersEmpire
I'm also an introvert and am usually happy to be alone. On the weekend, I'd much rather stay in and do my own thing with my cats than go anywhere or meet anyone.
But I do have bouts of longing for connection with other humans sometimes. It can be difficult to reconcile. Even if I make plans to go out and make friends or meet an existing one during one of these slumps, by the time the planned day rolls around I usually have to force myself to actually do it. Once I force myself out there I have fun, but it takes so much effort to actually do it and not stay in my own little world reading or coding or whatever.
I think I've come to terms with the fact that even though I really love being alone, I do need to put in an effort to make more meaningful connections over the long term.
> Maybe i dont have an issue with it because I'm an introvert?
As an off-the-scale introvert and socially anxious person, I’ll just say that loneliness and introversion aren’t incompatible because the degree to which you are depleted or energized by the presence of others is not a binary variable. Rare is the person who needs no human interaction.
But as others have alluded to, loneliness may be a catch-all for many emotional states and mental health conditions. A sense of self-alienation can be read-out as loneliness and even the most committed introvert can experience that.
After I pinch and zoom to my location and tap on a circle the map seems to jump to a random place in the world. Also the slider is really difficult to drag on iPad os.
It jumps to random places because a new person just logged their location! I wanted to make the whole experience dynamic and real. It worked well when there weren't so many people logging their location all at the same time haha
I will need to add features to: make toggle more user friendly; and have option to make the map jump around or not.
I just turned off map-jumping for now. You should now have uninterrupted map-scrolling experience. Please refresh the page for the updated version. Sorry for the confusion :P
The comments were by genuine people, answering the survey questions.
YC startup school videos had a concept called 'hair-on-fire' problem. There are many lonely people in the world whose 'hair-on-fire' problem is loneliness, and they are willing to try things to make it go away.
I think my app managed to tap into their needs, and I am honestly more glad that they have found it somewhat useful than that they shared me their locations for my app.
I logged myself into it, but clearly I was only logging only where I was at that point. I had the option to manipulate the database to pretend there were people there, but I chose not to. So, I had about 10 logs where I lived, and 1 log where my parents lived when I first released it haha
I posted this on Reddit forums for lonely folks (there were 4~5) and got 1000's of engagements there, out of which about 20 people logged their locations per day. It trickled to 0 after about a week. At that point I had ~150 logs.
I learned a ton from that experiment, namely: 1. People do like this stuff, 2. Website needs to have better UI/UX and be faster because they reported not being able to view the site due to server overload (was using free Streamlit hosted webapp), and 3. people's attention span is short. I am getting awesome engagement now after having posted on this forum, but I am at the same time ready for it to tank down just a week later. It is kind of like releasing a movie: it can have a huge box office weekend, but it will not sustain that because it is the same content and not too many people watch the same movie over and over again. The only way to avoid that is to offer new features that people can actually interact with, I think, so the iteration never stops.
The whole story so far has been genuine, including all the datapoints on the website, messages, and the fact that I relate to the lonely souls out there since I have personally been through one during my PhD. I think the authenticity resonated with the people and led them to interact with what I have built.
> Only approximate location is uploaded (~3 mile accuracy).
I believe where this is done by other services they account for the density of population in a geographic area. (IIRC there was an article posted here a few years ago)
In my case a 3m radius would mean I’m one of 4 households, for example.
The nearest town with 100k inhabitants means that places such as Greenland are completely excluded, since its largest town by far only has a population of 18k
well, a different threshold could be chosen. or a list of exceptions. so for greenland it would always choose the capital or the biggest town. or make it user configurable. ideally i would just like to enter the name of the nearest town myself, regardless of size or location. maybe provide a dropdown list of nearby population centers and let the user choose their preference.
Neat idea, but I find the fact that so many people are depressed to be even more depressing, especially since there's no real way for them to connect.
If the site had a secret sauce, it would be the ability for the users to connect with each other in a meaningful way. Maybe sending each other affirmations of some sort? Sort of like the Sarahah website (https://sarahah.top/). I hope you can crack that code to build something people really engage with.
I think I have the recipe for the secret sauce, which I am running tasting sessions in my head and my partners haha
Definitely, there is a need to actually TALK to people, not just shouting into the void. I think there are plenty of forums/text messaging apps out there. I am trying to solve with voice, but a bit nuanced from Clubhouse, Discord, or Twitter spaces. Hope to add the feature soon here!
Loneliness is increasing rapidly, and it is becoming a major issue.
Studies show that it can lead to or increase the risk of
increased obesity, substance use disorder, risk of depression, cardiovascular disease, risk of high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.
It is also something people feel great shame over.
I remember when i started my loneliness group on Facebook.
I then posted it existence in a large group for immigrants.
One admin messaged me to say how pathetic and dumb it was
and recommended shutting down the group right away.
"Just go out and meet people.
it is not hard"
He was an extreme extravert who spent most of his time networking
with new people he meets or perhaps he knows.
He cannot imagine the it being a problem.
The idea that tendencies for extroversion and introversion somehow perfectly line up with partisan pandemic politics is quite a terrible take. It's also unreasonably hostile towards a lot of people and you might want to consider what motivates you to post such a comment here of all places.
In Europe, it wasn't very partisan? You had left wingers holding rave parties masked as "political demonstrations dropping the bass to drop the patriarchy" just as much as you had right wingers holding rave parties masked as "political demonstrations dropping the bass to drop the jewish conspiracies".
What the discussion about loneliness almost never talks about is skills that people that are lonely might lack or any mental health issues they might have. I had a very strong social anxiety 10 years ago. I never left the house. I lacked the skills to cope with that. (Therapy in that case helps.) If you're lonely because you don't know how to connect with people, that's an even easier skill to acquire (i.e. read "say what you mean"). I am quite good at connecting with people nowadays and don't feel lonely anymore because I learned how to tune in to my needs, how to communicate with other people and get my needs met. Took a lot of reading, practicing, failing and therapy, but imho that's a viable way to solve that on an individual basis. The modern society is way too disconnected because of false beliefs and easy traps to fall in to (apps "solving" your problem being the problem).
What if I framed it as “helping people with what I can offer”? I am one person with one set of experiences. I would not claim to know what causes loneliness for everyone, and the helping hand that I offer might be of no help to many. But I try my best, based on my personal experience of loneliness and what I had wished to be there when I was lonely, maybe I can build something for that other person who may be going through something similar and they would cope with it faster and better that I had.
That is all. I am no messiah claiming to have a panacea for loneliness, but just a human being offering help to other human beings.
Sorry, I wasn't thinking about your app ;) I'm talking about social media apps, texting apps etc. I think your app could actually help someone feel good, maybe not in the long run, but a small moment of connection could go a long way. So keep at it and good luck!
I also suffered from a bad case of social anxiety. It probably does not work for everyone, but what really helped me was just going away for 4 weeks. I just returned from my holiday and forced myself to stay in hostels. I was terrified before (having to socialize with unknown people, blegh), but it has been amazing and am really looking forward to doing something like this again.
Again, I know it does not work for everyone, but sometimes throwing yourself in the deep, away from your own comfortable home situation, works wonders.
I see this advice a lot, and it's probably good advice, but my experience differs.
When I travel solo, I become much more introverted. I think that being in your own head has a stickiness to it, so if you're in it for a while, it's hard to snap out of it. You can also be quite weary after a day on the road.
You might also find solo travel difficult when you're around other people. I love solo travel when I'm in nature, but Friday nights in cities can be dreadful.
Still, you will meet people. You don't have to be extroverted, just open to talk. If you're not curious, other people will be. They'll throw you the ball. You just have to throw it back. Bless these people.
Maybe look at the culture of the people where you are traveling to if looking to break out of a shell of your own creation. Sitting at a bar in Ireland good. Sitting at the same bar in Sweden or Seattle bad.
I have a story related to this. It wasn't a bar, I was in Germany traveling without set destination by train (thanks, 9 euro ticket).
However, the stereotypically cold Germans were actually highly receptive of a random stranger talking with them. I was invited to changed destinations a few times to hang out in random cities, and started a couple friendships.
Of course those were also people taking advantage of the 9 euro ticket, so there's a lot of selection bias here. :)
I read that exposure therapy is one of the most solid tools in psychotherapy. So what you're doing is is exactly that! Travel helped me as well, coincidentally. Going alone on a train tip to the arctic circle for example. Staying in hostels. I met so many new people, that was really awesome. I'm glad to hear your doing better!
I also think that if you're avoidance strategy is withdrawing from social life, changing your location and not staying in all day is the key ingredient. You can't get your needs met at home.
I think the most important thing is just putting yourself in those uncomfortable situations. Even if it's awkward, even if you feel embarrassed for whatever reason, you'll have learned a bit more about how to interact with people. So next time will be less awkward. Then the time after that, less still.
This is what helped me, when I was in that position.
I did this when I was younger. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you have a specific plan on how you’re going to challenge your fears each day. I stayed in hostels for four weeks and only really managed to talk to a couple of people. The rest of the time I was by myself.
Yeah, few people understand that basic human communication abilities are actually not given, but learned. If an individual lacked the necessary comrades in their youth they might actually be incapable of forming proper relationships, at all. The skills do come with practice, but that requires a great deal of discomfort, since you're knowingly putting yourself in situations which most likely do fail miserably due to your lack of social skills. Their fear of social situations is not unfounded but very real.
> If an individual lacked the necessary comrades in their youth they might actually be incapable of forming proper relationships, at all.
I think the struggle for a lot of adults is not in the interaction or in the start but in the maintaining relationships.
This is easy in school and university because of the free time and co-location, the challenge is to do it when we all go our separate ways.
In that sense I do feel like I lack the skills and the mental CRM system to keep walking those friendship footpaths before all the weeds and time make these footpaths slowly vanish.
That's a point the book I mentioned actually touches. We're not in tune with our needs and don't work on our problems, so we focus on work, social media etc. But we lack the focus on what makes life worth living. It's human connection, being in tune with yourself, nature. You have to make the time to focus on these things. We are very easily distracted by non-important things. We have to put in the work to stay connected (to others and ourselves) and get our needs met, simple as that.
So what I'm saying is: not sure it's a skill problem (it might be if we're talking about staying connected to what you need) but a societal problem
The Hedgehog's dilemma is relevant for loneliness.
From Wikipedia:
"The hedgehog's dilemma, or sometimes the porcupine dilemma, is a metaphor about the challenges of human intimacy. It describes a situation in which a group of hedgehogs seek to move close to one another to share heat during cold weather. They must remain apart, however, as they cannot avoid hurting one another with their sharp spines. Though they all share the intention of a close reciprocal relationship, this may not occur, for reasons they cannot avoid.
Arthur Schopenhauer conceived this metaphor to describe what he considers to be the state of the individual in relation to others in society. The hedgehog's dilemma suggests that despite goodwill, human intimacy cannot occur without substantial mutual harm, and what results is cautious behavior and weak relationships. With the hedgehog's dilemma, one is recommended to use moderation in affairs with others both because of self-interest, as well as out of consideration for others. The hedgehog's dilemma is used to explain self-imposed isolation."
It's probably wrong with respect to hedgehogs, but then, it's a metaphor, and what it's trying to say about human relationships makes sense to me in some way.
The more intimate you are with someone, the more you're also aware of their pain and hardships. Intimate relationships involve conflicts and require compromises you would be able to avoid or not get into in a more distant relationship. They involve vulnerability and trust.
The vulnerability and trust and the deep emotional meaning that intimate relationships have can make those conflicts all the more painful. Sometimes the compromises required or the shared pains can amount to damage.
Of course that's not the only side of intimate relationships, as the metaphor also says. I'm not sure I'd agree with the interpretation that we (or most people) should be wary or moderate with closeness to other people. But I do get the idea that it's not without a significant cost that wouldn't be there when keeping a greater distance.
Where each of us falls on the spectrum between the joys and pains (or even damage) of close relationships probably depends both on personality and our experiences.
I 100% agree with you that greater intimacy leads to greater risk of being harmed.
The thing I don't agree with is "human intimacy cannot occur without substantial mutual harm". That sounds a bit too absolute to be true and is also not my personal experience. But it might be just the way philosophers talk, or maybe "harm" has another definition here and includes things like "changing the partner" that one would not define as "harm" in another context?
> The hedgehog's dilemma suggests that despite goodwill, human intimacy cannot occur without substantial mutual harm
Appreciating this is a short summary, I think it would be good to show why the hedgehog analogy is a good one. Reading this I inferred that this was just a given, that because we have this analogy of hedgehogs it must therefore be true for humans. It would be good to know why.
I made the mistake of organizing a meetup through reddit once. The people that showed up were weird and socially awkward. Not saying that to hate on the site, it's just something I'll definitely never do again. Meetup is slightly better because it's more of a mixed bag but you still regularly get creepy or annoying people.
The problem with all these sites for using them to meet people imo is that they're too open. If you spent the time to get to know everyone you want to meet it would probably be fine but at that point you'd have spent hours upon hours forming virtual friendship, which to me defeats the purpose of casual meetups.
I'd love a site that lets you set strict and sophisticated filters. Maybe with the option to quiz users and sort out those who can't give interesting answers to certain questions. Not sure why no one's attempted to make that yet, the obvious advantage of the digital world is that we can go through large numbers of individuals, filter the noise and match exactly the ones that are suitable for each other based on shared interests. Yet the best we got is swiping left or right based on someone's photoshopped profile picture?
Wouldn't this strongly select for only desperately (for lack of a better word) lonely people? For everyone else, simply talking to strangers in real life is less friction than tackling some online quiz.
My thinking is talking to random people is... random. We can do this outside the internet, don't really need an app for that. Being able to prescreen is less friction than spending time meeting uninteresting people. And having no barriers seems to be a recipe for that in my experience, it attracts those who're desperate because they can't meet people any other way. So if I want a way to remove those people, I'd want to have a higher barrier, not lower. Is the idea flawed?
I don't know if it's a flaw per se, but you're not only removing uninteresting people, but also interesting people who aren't interested in taking online quizzes.
> Being able to prescreen is less friction than spending time meeting uninteresting people.
This is probably true for some individuals (e.g. those with social anxiety, or those who work 16 hours a day or something), but certainly not all. Even uninteresting people are often moderately entertaining for a short while, which is much more than I can say for taking an online quiz.
Additionally, there's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem regarding the reputation of the group itself. If I can be pretty sure ahead of time that being admitted to the group will be worth it, then I will probably suck it up and take the quiz. This pretty much requires someone who is already a member convincing me. Otherwise it might well turn out to be a ghost town, or full of holier-than-thou nerds, or just not a fit for whatever other reason. I wouldn't want to go through a prescreening process just to find that out -- easier and more fun to just stick with meeting randos.
131 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 205 ms ] threadThe good thing is that the prior experience of lesser-known and more-famous online communities/media outlets has given the next entrant in this space plenty of accumulated wisdom to capitalize on.
Paywalls are part of the solution but they can't be the only one because there's always the tradeoff there between making the cost high enough to weed out the majority of bots and fly-by-night spammers, but also low enough that it's not a significant barrier to entry for community growth.
And maybe a 'did this person show you their penis?' feedback toggle for good measure.
You can start with some basic Code of Conduct that let's say Github, Reddit or Twitter uses - no need to reinvent the wheel. Then you can modify it as time goes to suit what's working or not for your community.
If you have a good model for iterative improvement that puts the user in the loop somehow, it'll be reflected in your engagement stats.
Wonder if you could ask them before the round ends, "y'all wanna play another?"
This is a nice visual framework, can I ask what it is?
https://slate.com/culture/2004/07/the-perplexing-success-of-...
Complaining to strangers who might actually listen, instead of seeking the guilty thrill of public catharsis... Something I am definitely taking note on
https://web.archive.org/web/20120207131807/http://grouphug.u...
I want to approximate it to 3 mile accuracy (diagonal of a box, so in one dimension, would be sqrt(3^2 /2) = 2.12 mile in lat or long). 3 mile, in geographical coordinate would be equivalent to : 3 mile / 3960 mile (Earth radius) * 180 deg / pi rad = 0.0434 degree. I divide each dimension by 0.0434, and round it to a whole number (essentially, mod 0.0434). Then, I multiply that number by 0.0434 and save that as the location.
This means that a user's location can lie anywhere inside a box with 3 mile diagonal length at that geolocation.
If you see inconsistency in my logic, please let me know.
Given N points within M meters or so, which is roughly what you get for multiple measurements of "home" with an error on the measurement, I think you could have a reasonable stab at deriving the location from an estimate of the error on the geolocation plus which circles they fell into. All in same circle makes near centre more likely than near edge.
edit: daily check in, so all the above needs is a tendency to check in from roughly the same location each day.
This information isn't personally identifiable by itself. Even combined with your original HN comment, the information leakage cross section and associated risk is minutely small.
I understand the concern about your privacy, but in practical terms what outcome are you afraid of in this instance?
Getting less lonely inherently requires some degree of trust in and vulnerability to other human beings.
It's tragically sad when privacy fears prevent someone from living a colorful, stimulating, and deeply fulfilling life.
In case you're open to unsolicited advice: Develop the skill of Discernment. When the "privacy threat" part of your brain activates, take a moment to analyze the degree of the threat and intentionally choose your response accordingly.
Looks great, would like to give it a whirl. But under "Share with the World", I can't get the button to become enabled with something other than "Loading...". Turned off the pi-hole in case there was a DNS query getting blocked, no joy. Safari 16.2, macOS Ventura 13.1.
You don't need a token to use this map, as long as you keep the usage to a reasonable limit (I think it says 1,000,000 tiles per month)
You can always setup your own tile server. It's not that hard and can be cheap (if you don't count your time). I recommend, checking https://github.com/onthegomap/planetiler
I thought, why is it that in this today and age with ultimate connectivity, there is not a reasonable way to make new friends? I agree physical location plays a huge role because you feel the most connection when you are in person with someone. But with remote learning and working on the rise, this loneliness situation will only get more pervasive.
I think there is a better digital medium/channel/mode of interaction/environment that can abstract as much of the genuine human connection from real-life interaction as possible, and the current social media landscape is severely lacking at it.
I am building Lonely World to learn as much about the loneliness 'market' if you will, and validate my hypotheses for the better digital social platform. I am happy so far that people have cheered me on my mission.
But it also makes me question whether my long-term relationship (8 years) has been a good fit for me and the thing I really always wanted.
If you move to a new place without any contacts, and you don't speak the local language, and the locals are not famous for their warmth, you struggle.
The problem is that there is no step by step solution that works for everyone. We all have different ways to put ourselves out there.
Another example of converse: I was happy in high school (that mission school in palau), but moving to the university in TN absolutely stiffled me for those five or so years. I guess another way to phrase my point is "place does matter," and don't discount external factors for being the reason you are lonely. We in America often attribute a lot to internal factors such as attitude, outlook, mindset, etc. And, yes, internal factors are important. However, life really is a balance of external and internal factors, you need to optimize both to the extent you can. I feel like self-help talks and media emphasize internal focus because that is (supposedly) the thing you do have control over. That said, if you can get a "ticket out of town," even to just visit a new place, don't discount what it could do for your internal issues like loneliness.
It can absolutely help some people, but for others it can make them feel like they're more alone than they've ever been, because while their anxieties and social struggles still exist, they no longer have any support structure of a family or friends from home around them.
i do recommend adding an option for people to change the scope of their location, such as limiting to just state/region, country or continent for privacy reasons.
this is a really cool idea
https://thatskywish.netlify.app if you wanted to give it a try. It follows the same principle that allows people to leave message for a friend anonymously.
Wish that we have more website like this.
I recently open sourced the star animation at https://github.com/adityapurwa/starflies if you want to take a look.
Maybe i dont have an issue with it because I'm an introvert?
And it definitely got way worse during/after pandemic. I would suggest you check out some Reddit forums if you are curious to know the other half of the population. r/ForeverAlone, r/lonely, r/loneliness, r/alone, r/LonersEmpire
while I may not win in the office for being and introvert it sounds like i win outside the office :-P
But I do have bouts of longing for connection with other humans sometimes. It can be difficult to reconcile. Even if I make plans to go out and make friends or meet an existing one during one of these slumps, by the time the planned day rolls around I usually have to force myself to actually do it. Once I force myself out there I have fun, but it takes so much effort to actually do it and not stay in my own little world reading or coding or whatever.
I think I've come to terms with the fact that even though I really love being alone, I do need to put in an effort to make more meaningful connections over the long term.
As an off-the-scale introvert and socially anxious person, I’ll just say that loneliness and introversion aren’t incompatible because the degree to which you are depleted or energized by the presence of others is not a binary variable. Rare is the person who needs no human interaction.
But as others have alluded to, loneliness may be a catch-all for many emotional states and mental health conditions. A sense of self-alienation can be read-out as loneliness and even the most committed introvert can experience that.
Like the concept.
I will need to add features to: make toggle more user friendly; and have option to make the map jump around or not.
Thank you for feedback!
But a nice idea :)
YC startup school videos had a concept called 'hair-on-fire' problem. There are many lonely people in the world whose 'hair-on-fire' problem is loneliness, and they are willing to try things to make it go away.
I think my app managed to tap into their needs, and I am honestly more glad that they have found it somewhat useful than that they shared me their locations for my app.
I posted this on Reddit forums for lonely folks (there were 4~5) and got 1000's of engagements there, out of which about 20 people logged their locations per day. It trickled to 0 after about a week. At that point I had ~150 logs.
I learned a ton from that experiment, namely: 1. People do like this stuff, 2. Website needs to have better UI/UX and be faster because they reported not being able to view the site due to server overload (was using free Streamlit hosted webapp), and 3. people's attention span is short. I am getting awesome engagement now after having posted on this forum, but I am at the same time ready for it to tank down just a week later. It is kind of like releasing a movie: it can have a huge box office weekend, but it will not sustain that because it is the same content and not too many people watch the same movie over and over again. The only way to avoid that is to offer new features that people can actually interact with, I think, so the iteration never stops.
The whole story so far has been genuine, including all the datapoints on the website, messages, and the fact that I relate to the lonely souls out there since I have personally been through one during my PhD. I think the authenticity resonated with the people and led them to interact with what I have built.
I believe where this is done by other services they account for the density of population in a geographic area. (IIRC there was an article posted here a few years ago)
In my case a 3m radius would mean I’m one of 4 households, for example.
something like this: https://citiesnear.com/me
If the site had a secret sauce, it would be the ability for the users to connect with each other in a meaningful way. Maybe sending each other affirmations of some sort? Sort of like the Sarahah website (https://sarahah.top/). I hope you can crack that code to build something people really engage with.
Definitely, there is a need to actually TALK to people, not just shouting into the void. I think there are plenty of forums/text messaging apps out there. I am trying to solve with voice, but a bit nuanced from Clubhouse, Discord, or Twitter spaces. Hope to add the feature soon here!
Studies show that it can lead to or increase the risk of increased obesity, substance use disorder, risk of depression, cardiovascular disease, risk of high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.
It is also something people feel great shame over.
I remember when i started my loneliness group on Facebook. I then posted it existence in a large group for immigrants.
One admin messaged me to say how pathetic and dumb it was and recommended shutting down the group right away.
"Just go out and meet people. it is not hard"
He was an extreme extravert who spent most of his time networking with new people he meets or perhaps he knows. He cannot imagine the it being a problem.
Yes probably :) But also an asshole, if you allow me to be polite.
Extraversion is not an excuse to not having the bare minimum of empathy.
That is all. I am no messiah claiming to have a panacea for loneliness, but just a human being offering help to other human beings.
Hopefully I can go further than making people feel good momentarily. I will think and work endlessly for that end.
Again, I know it does not work for everyone, but sometimes throwing yourself in the deep, away from your own comfortable home situation, works wonders.
When I travel solo, I become much more introverted. I think that being in your own head has a stickiness to it, so if you're in it for a while, it's hard to snap out of it. You can also be quite weary after a day on the road.
You might also find solo travel difficult when you're around other people. I love solo travel when I'm in nature, but Friday nights in cities can be dreadful.
Still, you will meet people. You don't have to be extroverted, just open to talk. If you're not curious, other people will be. They'll throw you the ball. You just have to throw it back. Bless these people.
However, the stereotypically cold Germans were actually highly receptive of a random stranger talking with them. I was invited to changed destinations a few times to hang out in random cities, and started a couple friendships.
Of course those were also people taking advantage of the 9 euro ticket, so there's a lot of selection bias here. :)
I also think that if you're avoidance strategy is withdrawing from social life, changing your location and not staying in all day is the key ingredient. You can't get your needs met at home.
This is what helped me, when I was in that position.
I think the struggle for a lot of adults is not in the interaction or in the start but in the maintaining relationships.
This is easy in school and university because of the free time and co-location, the challenge is to do it when we all go our separate ways.
In that sense I do feel like I lack the skills and the mental CRM system to keep walking those friendship footpaths before all the weeds and time make these footpaths slowly vanish.
So what I'm saying is: not sure it's a skill problem (it might be if we're talking about staying connected to what you need) but a societal problem
From Wikipedia:
"The hedgehog's dilemma, or sometimes the porcupine dilemma, is a metaphor about the challenges of human intimacy. It describes a situation in which a group of hedgehogs seek to move close to one another to share heat during cold weather. They must remain apart, however, as they cannot avoid hurting one another with their sharp spines. Though they all share the intention of a close reciprocal relationship, this may not occur, for reasons they cannot avoid.
Arthur Schopenhauer conceived this metaphor to describe what he considers to be the state of the individual in relation to others in society. The hedgehog's dilemma suggests that despite goodwill, human intimacy cannot occur without substantial mutual harm, and what results is cautious behavior and weak relationships. With the hedgehog's dilemma, one is recommended to use moderation in affairs with others both because of self-interest, as well as out of consideration for others. The hedgehog's dilemma is used to explain self-imposed isolation."
The more intimate you are with someone, the more you're also aware of their pain and hardships. Intimate relationships involve conflicts and require compromises you would be able to avoid or not get into in a more distant relationship. They involve vulnerability and trust.
The vulnerability and trust and the deep emotional meaning that intimate relationships have can make those conflicts all the more painful. Sometimes the compromises required or the shared pains can amount to damage.
Of course that's not the only side of intimate relationships, as the metaphor also says. I'm not sure I'd agree with the interpretation that we (or most people) should be wary or moderate with closeness to other people. But I do get the idea that it's not without a significant cost that wouldn't be there when keeping a greater distance.
Where each of us falls on the spectrum between the joys and pains (or even damage) of close relationships probably depends both on personality and our experiences.
Appreciating this is a short summary, I think it would be good to show why the hedgehog analogy is a good one. Reading this I inferred that this was just a given, that because we have this analogy of hedgehogs it must therefore be true for humans. It would be good to know why.
The problem with all these sites for using them to meet people imo is that they're too open. If you spent the time to get to know everyone you want to meet it would probably be fine but at that point you'd have spent hours upon hours forming virtual friendship, which to me defeats the purpose of casual meetups.
I'd love a site that lets you set strict and sophisticated filters. Maybe with the option to quiz users and sort out those who can't give interesting answers to certain questions. Not sure why no one's attempted to make that yet, the obvious advantage of the digital world is that we can go through large numbers of individuals, filter the noise and match exactly the ones that are suitable for each other based on shared interests. Yet the best we got is swiping left or right based on someone's photoshopped profile picture?
> Being able to prescreen is less friction than spending time meeting uninteresting people.
This is probably true for some individuals (e.g. those with social anxiety, or those who work 16 hours a day or something), but certainly not all. Even uninteresting people are often moderately entertaining for a short while, which is much more than I can say for taking an online quiz.
Additionally, there's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem regarding the reputation of the group itself. If I can be pretty sure ahead of time that being admitted to the group will be worth it, then I will probably suck it up and take the quiz. This pretty much requires someone who is already a member convincing me. Otherwise it might well turn out to be a ghost town, or full of holier-than-thou nerds, or just not a fit for whatever other reason. I wouldn't want to go through a prescreening process just to find that out -- easier and more fun to just stick with meeting randos.