[johnnyanmac]

>Why would people in general shift their preference towards isolationism?

Because it's convinient. It's always because it's convinient. We've had so many issues in society happen because the alternative is more convinient.

And yes, isolation is convinient. No worries about interpersonal insecurities, no worries about troublesome encounters, entertainment can be tailored to your tastes instead of as a compromise of the group, and minimum social pressure to do what you are not comfortable with.

I can ask the contrary, why wouldn't people shift towards isolationism if they otherwise had their own automomy and comfortable living.

[noneparticular]

I would surmise that the answer would lie in just how comfortable people can make themselves without any other sort of interaction. My first instinct would be to say that there are many that wouldn't, if the migration into large and expensive metropolis's such as New York, London, Paris, or Tokyo are of any indication.

For the ambitious, it's quite unlikely for one to strike greatness without support from others. Anyone is capable of anything, but no one is capable of everything. That ability to connect and network with others so that their skills and resources can be utilized to achieve feats that would otherwise be impossible alone. And I doubt that those without any sort of ambition are the majority.

Plus we saw major advances towards that sort of reality during the Pandemic, and yet those changes haven't had quite the staying power in society as some had predicted. More and more people are congregating again in various ways.

Hence why I say that I doubt that we'd see some dystopian reality where people are going to be plugged into VR all the time.