[SpicyLemonZest]

Those men are very real, but it's not obvious to me that the Internet is the cause or even exacerbating the issue. There are desperately lonely men in subcultures that don't heavily use the Internet too - they just end up doing drugs or crimes, which is worse for everyone involved.

[chongli]

I think this is different than the usual case of lonely men. The interactions that take place on these platforms can create the illusion that a person is in a relationship with the content producer. It's similar to the illusory relationships some people have with celebrities but it's much stronger due to the interactivity. It's much more dangerous than a lot of things, though perhaps not as dangerous as hard drugs or crime.

And just because someone is engaging in this kind of activity online rather than going out and committing crime does not we as a society should encourage it. In all likelihood, we may see some of these men have mental breakdowns due to disillusionment and then they can become extremely dangerous. It's these disillusioned, lonely men who are highly vulnerable to joining the incel movement and potentially committing terrorist attacks.

[chillwaves]

The internet and social media as a whole, and technology as a whole, has made our society less social. The screens are more compelling than what's off screen. People are holed up with their screens.

We are unhealthy and have unhealthy views of each other, what happiness is, what beauty is, what success looks like.

[archibaldJ]

I think this is largely due to the fact that all the existing and thriving (post)modern social-network-as-businesses start off with cost structures that restrict themselves to serve the advertisers and medium/large businesses in a long run, and not the end users.

This reflects:

- the chasm between paid-to-use and free-to-use services in terms of frictions introduced during user on-boarding.

- the hyped-up vc eco-system that pour insane amount of cash into internet products that display crazy growth curve and that helps to destroy competitors to achieve maximum market coverage - so everyone wants crazy growth curve.

And the result is that existing social-network-as-businesses whose services majority of the human population use are simply not designed to serve the people.

Screens are more compelling than what's off screen only when what's off screen are less compelling than screens.

I want to believe that people learn.

And I want to believe that we as a civilisation are gradually shifting towards a reward system where wealth is accumulated by those who contribute to helping others to learn things (e.g. StackOverflow and Coursera just received another round of funding recently! So that's super cool!), and, on a long run, humanity's collective progress to enlightenment.

This is why seeing recent advancements in psychedelic and consciousness research (e.g. by John Hopkins, Imperial) always brighten my day =)

And I'm just super happy and grateful that great thinkers on consciousness (like John Yates, Roger Penrose, Joscha Bach) are getting a lot more media exposure in recent years! (And this is all thanks to the internet & new media!)

So cheer up mate! Always look on the bright side of life! (as much as possible, while appreciating the intricacies and emptiness within)