I lived overseas for a time in an area that didn't use English. I loved it, enjoyed being there, but one day I noticed that I was talking to myself! At first, it was just exclamations out loud (quietly) when something happened around me. It progressed to me describing or evaluating my meal, a book, a scene I was looking at. I realized it when I noticed ppl looking at me strangely (they normally did anyway), and as I looked back wondering why they were looking at me, it hit! I had been talking out loud to myself, normal volume! Why? I figure it was loneliness; but loneliness for hearing English. I was the only one who could speak it! And then it hit me again, a new found epiphany about all those "crazy homeless" ppl who I'd seen back home, muttering to themselves as they wander around. What if, instead of (or in addition to) being mentally unwell, they were just lonely, and having no one to talk to led to them talking to themselves? Whoa.
The few interactions that I've had with homeless people gave me an impression that the thing they needed the most was human interaction. They'd be thankful if they received a meal, but they'd start talking in a way that made me think that what they needed the most was for someone to listen to them or some human interaction. It didn't seem like many people would ever stick around for more than a few seconds.
I'm talking about a very small sample size here, but still.
"I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone." - Robin Williams
One study found that lonely people also engage in more imaginary conversations than those who don't consider themselves lonely. Perhaps ending up talking to oneself out loud is somehow related?
As someone who's considered himself lonely for most of his life, I can very much relate with the idea of feeling like an outcast, like an alien, someone who doesn't really fit in or understand what others find interest in. I think, in my case at least, it was probably related to being told over and over as I kid that I was doing everything wrong, that I wasn't acting manly enough, etc. Being told I didn't fit in led me to believe it. After a long journey of rebuilding my self-worth, I'm a lot less lonely this days, but I still feel it pulling at me, especially when I'm in a situation where I feel like an outsider.
I'm a state that resonates a lot with what you wrote, thank you for that. Checking out your bio I found out you have a very interesting blog, I really liked "Unexpected Benefits of Being Vulnerable on the Internet" as it's something that I often wonder about, how we condition ourselves to say things we believe will be accepted (and to receive upvotes) instead of what we truly feel, leaving our true self behind.
The causal relationship here would be extremely interesting: Do those individuals start off with brain that is slightly differently wired than the "normie" population and become lonely because they just don't vibe well with them? Or is their loneliness causing their speech and thought patterns to diverge, because they have less opportunities to "resync" with the mainstream culture? Or a sort of feedback loop of both - or something else completely?
> Shared reality fosters social connections between people and increases confidence in one’s knowledge because it is corroborated by others. While lonely individuals report feeling disconnected from others in terms of their interests and ideas it was previously unclear to what extent this is true with respect to the zeitgeist—defined here as the widely shared perceptions between members of contemporary culture.
I kinda get what they were looking for but knowledge and description of "celebrities" seems like a poor metric for many reasons including somebody just not interested in celebrities. For example, one can be lonely but online all day and so very connected to the "zeitgeist." Or one can have many interactions with other people but never discuss
celebrities.
But, ignoring all that, the headline suggested that loneliness alters something in the brain akin to how blindness alters ones view of reality. Or maybe it's the different way of thinking and talking that leads to loneliness.
Justin Bieber, Ellen DeGeneres, Kim Kardashian, Barack Obama, and Mark Zuckerberg
The celebs in the test. I'm not sure I could say anything meaningful about Bieber other than he's a pop star from Canada. Similar for Kardashian - Instagram influencer with lots of cosmetic surgery and makeup. Is the test expecting me to know other details beyond the completely inane and superficial?
It would be even worse if they tested on athletes. I haven't watched any of the big US sports in decades. NFL, NBA, MLB - no clue. I guess I could answer a few questions about World Tour cyclists, but that's not likely to be on a test outside of Belgium or Italy.
I agree with you, so I did some quick research and: Bieber is very well known by the general population, Kardashians moreso. A large majority (70%+) watch a moderate to significant amount of live sports on TV. Anecdotally, interacting with normal people at my job agrees with this.
We're the non-neurotypical people they're talking about.
30% of the population is plenty for making friends. If choosing not to watch a lot of TV makes someone non-neurotypical, that’s a pretty scary standard. 75% of the population in the US is overweight or obese. Are we defining people with healthy weight as non-neurotypical too now?
but see, we got our own celebrities and a way to talk about them. doesn't that kind of confirm the idea? the problem is just that the content of the test is to limited.
every group has their own language and people not in that group have a different one.
>we got our own celebrities and a way to talk about them
Maybe, but Gul Dukat isn't a celebrity, he's a character. The study isn't asking people about <character from currently popular movie or TV show>, but about real, living celebrities. If they asked about the #1 character in Bridgerton, whoever that is, that I think would be comparable.
It also doesn't help that they're mainly asking about current celebrities. A 60-year-old doesn't give a shit about the Kardashians or Justin Bieber. Obama probably. But some celebrity who was big 30-40 years ago would be of much more interest to them.
Unless you know them personally, there's almost no difference between a celebrity and a well-known fictional character. Either way, you're learning a crafted story about a person that doesn't really exist. Kim Kardashian the person is a real human, but Kim Kardashian the celebrity is just as real a person as Dukat, a Gul in Cardassian Union.
Traveling across the developing world, I have been astonished at how many women even in countries with limited English skills follow the Kardashians (and the young men follow Andrew Tate). Yes, on one hand celebrities are silly, but on the other hand they have a global societal impact that nerds like us might not appreciate.
My kids grew up with no TV and no Internet until they were 12 or so. When they applied at a Microsoft-area private school one question asked what celebrity they like and why. They knew of none and didn’t even know the word celebrity.
I don't understand how your comment relates to mine (or even the article). It feels like you're trying to correct me but I have no idea on what. Skimming through the other comments, I see numerous other criticisms of this article and study that you've ignored. I'm genuinely curious about why, of all the other comments, you chose to respond to mine.
From the article: "lonely individuals tend to perceive that their ideas are not shared by others"
I wonder how the current loneliness epidemic is intertwined with our current social/political climate and "us vs them" polarization.
I suspect almost everyone has some secret disagreements with their in-group, even if only by a matter of degree, but are afraid to voice that opinion. There have to be tens of millions of Americans who identify as a INSERT_POLITICAL_IDENTITY but disagree with some aspect of that group's platform, narrative or goals.
It's a wonder that anyone doesn't feel like their ideas are not shared by others.
> I suspect almost everyone has some secret disagreements with their in-group
This is assuming they have anyone close enough to even call them an in-group
I think there has been an over-emphasis on individuality and a strong resistance to conformity that has been instilled in a lot of people, which has led to a lot of those people cutting ties with anyone that has even minor disagreements with them
They are forever in search of their perfect friend group that doesn't exist, made up of only people who agree with them about every single thing
It's quite amazing how many people call themselves "free thinkers" to mean they have unique ideas, yet those ideas usually align with a huge percentage of the population.
Interesting premise but did this article _feel_ off to anyone else? Maybe it was me , but did it seem a bit redundant while also not saying a whole lot?
Probably written by a lonely person. It expresses things in unusual ways and has repetition that is not typical when compared to articles written by non-lonely people.
Non-lonely people interact with one another, continuously exposing themselves to each others views and opinions (even if indirectly).
A lonely person won't be part of this echo chamber, so their opinions will usually be self-formed and less influenced by the collective opinion of others.
It's easy to see how this creates a feedback loop. A lonely person doesn't share as many worldviews with non-lonely people, so has a harder time fitting in, which makes breaking the cycle even harder.
Is it just me, or does it feel like a significant proportion of psychological research nowadays comes to "no-brainer' conclusions? I find myself more often looking at an article and thinking, "Well, duh."
This is a genuine question. It may just be an environmental shift. Since I used to be deep in the field, I had access to any scientific journal I could think of and the latest research studies. Now I'm mainly seeing pop culture psychology. Has it always been this way?
> Loneliness corresponded with idiosyncratic [unusual, unique] neural representations of celebrities as well as more idiosyncratic communication about celebrities
must be the best argument to date for being more lonely.
Also yes, if there's a consensus on something, thinking different to said consensus would be unusual because it's not the usual. There are no value judgements in this article, so really interpreting this in any other way other than the literal sense makes you come off as defensive.
More to the article itself, I wonder which comes first, the unusual thoughts, or the loneliness?
> Chronic loneliness is linked to mental health issues like depression and anxiety, as well as physical health problems, including weakened immunity, cardiovascular disease, and an increased risk of mortality.
A lot of pshycologists make that claim but I haven't found any compelling studies that prove it. Depression and axiety is understandable because we're social animals but the physical aspect isn't convincing unless the socially isolated person is lying around in bed doing drugs and eating unhealthy food all day. In that case instead of loneliness, we should blame drug abuse. It's unclear whether drug use is causing social isolation or if the latter is causing drug use.
All the studies I've seen so far have weak evidence and most of them don't address confounding factors. I'm no scientist but I'd appreciate if someone could point to studies with strong evidence about this claim.
> the physical aspect isn't convincing unless the socially isolated person is lying around in bed doing drugs and eating unhealthy food all day. In that case instead of loneliness, we should blame drug abuse.
It's important to remember that "linked to" does not mean "causes"
You are saying "we should blame the drug abuse and not the loneliness" but "linked to" doesn't imply blame at all already
Just guessing here, but if you're depressed you're much less likely to take your health seriously. It's also much easier to abuse drug when you're lonely - look at drug use among the homeless.
Certainly, if I took away your friends and family I would expect your health to decline.
> Depression and anxiety cause elevated cortisol levels which cause all kinds of physically measurable issues.
I hadn't thought about it that way. I suppose elevated cortisal causes a kind of domino effect that ends up with deteriorated overall health.
> Just guessing here, but if you're depressed you're much less likely to take your health seriously. It's also much easier to abuse drug when you're lonely - look at drug use among the homeless.
> Certainly, if I took away your friends and family I would expect your health to decline.
This makes sense. I haven't been considering the general population because I consider myself a lonely person since I spend most of my time coding and reading books but that's now how most lonely people would be classified. Many are homeless and in much worse circumstances than I am. I shouldn't be using myself as an example for that reason.
> five well-known celebrities (Justin Bieber, Ellen DeGeneres, Kim Kardashian, Barack Obama, and Mark Zuckerberg)
It feels weird to me to bundle a tech CEO and a former President of the United States in with a pop idol, a talk show host, and a reality TV influencer as "celebrities".
Why not? They are all celebrities. Celebrity status is not really correlated to the actual work they do [although some work requires some notoriety]. Gordon Ramsey's a restaurant owner and chef but he's also been on reality TV. Malala became internationally famous for being the target of an assassination plot, not her years of advocacy for women's education beforehand.
Meanwhile I don’t listen to anyone on that list except for Charli XCX because I arrived at her music from a rave/hyperpop background and then became a stan with her last album Crash in 2022.
I was tired of BRAT though about 2 weeks after release because I listened to the teasers so much… then it blew up and even attached itself to VP Harris…
That's where that came from? Never heard of it and all I could think of was either the Bratz dolls or that "brat summer" was short for "bratwurst summer", neither of which made sense.
Amusingly, calling a devoted fan of something a "stan" is a reference to an Eminem song. A lot of these people claiming they don't know who Drake is would probably recognize the meme even if they don't know his music.
Also, not a response to you, but rather the parent, that Destiny's Child and Eminem both released their debut albums in 1997. Not being a fan is one thing, but saying you've never heard a single song of theirs goes a bit beyond being out of touch with "today's" culture unless you define today as this entire millenium and a few years of the last one, too.
I recognize 8/10 as well, but like you, can't name actual songs from most.
Same would have been true if I was tested in the mid-90s (HS and college). Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Backstreet Boys - I know the names, but can't think of the names of songs. I'd test better on alt/grunge rock of the era - STP, Nirvana, REM, etc.
And I don't think I'm particularly lonely - I happily married, have a few office friends, and see normal friends regularly. I'm not as social as I was in my 20s, but I assume that's normal.
There are many cultures. You’re on HN, so my guess is you’re connected with today’s hacker culture. I’ve heard of 6 of those names, but can’t name any song from any of them. It just means I have my own interests.
I’m 4/10 on that one as far as name recognition. Similar to you, I can only could think of one song from lady Gaga. Eminem is the only one which multiple songs come to mind, not that I could name them.
I grew up on 90’s and early 2000’s college radio, and am now a Doom/psychedelic rock kind of guy, and spend a good amount of time and money curating what I love.
I am disconnected from pop culture. It has repeatedly failed to deliver what I enjoy, and typically comes bundled with advertisements so I have no reason to pay attention to it.
These artists are definitely popular, but I doubt they are the most popular. The list doesn't fully match up with the most streamed artists list on Spotify, for example.
Both Google results and Spotify "most streamed artists" stats are heavily gamed, but in different ways and by different groups, so no surprise they diverge.
I thought they were saying they _had_ heard of 8 in 10? Strangely Karol G was also new to me. I'll resist searching for the name - I enjoy not knowing things sometimes.
Doesn't this just mean that some people don't connect with this kind of music. I don't. Possibly my loss but there's a lot of music out there and life is short.
Same result here, never heard about karol G and Charli XCX but to be fair, I find most modern pop music to be very manufactured and boring. People like Max Martin can create a lot of hits but it makes the music rather uninteresting.
Just listened to Brat from Charli XCX and yeah, not missing much.
I feel that when it comes to Music, being in sync with pop music is more of a generation thing.
On the other hand, I wouldn't describe myself as lonely... I'm not super social (I've worked remotely for 13 years because I don't particularly like working in an office) but I do meet up with friends 2 times a week (used to be more but with a kid at home, there's less time).
Charli XCX is a standard-issue pop singer. She's a brunette. She's probably best known for doing the singing bits on "Fancy", the only Iggy Azalea song you know (if you know any at all).
> Does that make me very disconnected with today's culture?
Just disconnected with pop culture. I only know 6 of the names on that list and can only name Brain Damage by Eminem off the top of my head. I don't know what Taylor Swift sounds like though I have probably heard a few of her songs in my day to day without noticing. Just don't worry about it and do what makes you happy.
Something that's been talked about every so often is that there aren't representative (generational) pop icons for the past few generations (probably from millenials onwards).
One theory from Japan, that I still remember and think is most likely, is that the democratization of entertainment since the 80s and especially from the 90s onwards with the invention of the internet has eliminated the very concept of pop culture.
Back in ye olde days a person's choices for entertainment were fairly limited, basically a small regional selection. People in the same locale ended up consuming the same entertainment and thus gravitated towards forming similar tastes and directing their fervor on that small selection of entertainment.
Entire generations identify with icons of their time like Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck, Marilyn Monroe, Ingrid Bergman, Elvis Presley, and so on. Entire generations sang "the song of their people" so to speak.
Today, though? Everyone can access any entertainment they want from anytime anywhere. The entertainment consumed by one person is very likely completely different from that consumed by a person right next to him; entertainment has been democratized. There is no longer a "song of our people" because everyone has a "song of me", there are no longer generational icons because everyone has their own icon.
The intense political push from the Left to make any form of social cohesion and loyalty undesirable also hasn't helped. The dismantling and removal of tradition, religion, and nationalism/patriotism from society means there can't be a "song of the people" from outside of entertainment either.
So no, I don't think you're disconnected with today's culture. Rather, today's culture doesn't value social cohesion and unity as much as it does freedom and power. Everyone has their own icon and song, everyone is their own generation.
Maybe Gen Z, but I'd say Millenials definitely had their generational Pop icons. Those icons simply did not live a good life once they left the spotlight. Like, most people I know don't really want to talk about Brittney Spears nor Micheal Jackson, even if they loved their music.
But I agree with your core point. There is no "Spongebob" of animation for Gen Z (except for... Spongebob. Maybe). There's no Friends, nor Breaking Bad of the 2010's/2020's. There's barely any individual movies that break the cultural zeitgeist period.
>The intense political push from the Left to make any form of social cohesion and loyalty undesirable also hasn't helped. The dismantling and removal of tradition, religion, and nationalism/patriotism from society means there can't be a "song of the people" from outside of entertainment either.
we can have social cohesion without resorting to nationalism nor religion. It's just that when you give people infinite choice, we diverge at best to the pareto principle. But 20% of society not being in the know is still a lot of society you fail to connect with.
I'm a millenial myself (36 years old next year... I'm getting too old for this), and while I can think of some "popular" names of my generation like Linkin Park, Dragonforce, Emma Watson, Brittney Spears as you mentioned, Mario, Pokemon, World of Warcraft, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, The Simpsons, Futurama, and so on, none of them can compare to ye olde icons of ye olde generations like Star Trek and the people I mentioned before.
Celebrities and pop culture sensations of olden times defined entire eras that we can still clearly identify to this day, but that just doesn't happen anymore because large numbers of people aren't forced to coalesce around a small handful of works and figures.
>we can have social cohesion without resorting to nationalism nor religion.
Can we? The way I see it, in removing and villifying tradition, religion, and nationalism/patriotism they were simply replaced by inferior substitutes and surrogates. The chief examples being "science" ("Trust the Science.") and politics (Obama, Trump, Farage, et al.) as the receptacles of peoples' desires to be fervent about something.
>none of them can compare to ye olde icons of ye olde generations like Star Trek and the people I mentioned before.
Well a lot of that comes with time. None of the people nor ips you describe are more than 30 years old. Star Trek is over 50 years old. We don't know which are gonna last 20-30 more years. Pokemon is going strong, but HP has been dipping for a while, and The Simpsons is well past its prime.
I think it's also simply because we are more globalized. Is Pokemon and Harry potter bigger than Star Trek ever was? Absolutely. But it's also easier than ever to globally broadcast anything anywhere, especially when offering localization for more access. I don't see this as a bad thing.
>Can we? The way I see it, in removing and villifying tradition, religion, and nationalism/patriotism they were simply replaced by inferior substitutes and surrogates.
Sure. The world is larger and brands bigger than ever. But when things globalize, that creates a need for smaller, more local community values. Bringing back third places would help more than trying to make the next Star Trek.
Now, will people be receptive to such activity? I don't know. It's not up to me to figure out what people like or want. But those places being defunct answers the question for us without even trying. And I wager there's more than enough community to create out of those that do.
> The intense political push from the Left to make any form of social cohesion and loyalty undesirable also hasn't helped. The dismantling and removal of tradition, religion, and nationalism/patriotism from society means there can't be a "song of the people" from outside of entertainment either.
Funny, because I don't think there is a "song of the people" on the right at all, while every leftist I know are all in on Charlie XCX and Brat Summer.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the abstract here, but doesn't this also suggest that lonely individuals more readily reach their own conclusions about common ideas and concepts? I can't get away from the thought that all this confirms is that groups tend to converge their thinking and speech through regular contact, and that different social groups (including groups of one) will diverge in thinking over time.
well, it didn't say their descriptions were WRONG, just different. The insinuation is that highly social people were informed by what their peers think and say, so their descriptions will likely mirror other socially connected people. The lonely people would just have to come up with it on their own.
I know there's a tendency to dismiss groupthink as negative and wrong and bad, and for huge amounts of people that's true, but for small social groups it's often a sign that you've all become familiar with each other, experienced the same things and are just similar in general, and in terms of selecting for safety, these are all markers of who you will likely feel safest with.
there's a hypothesis that singing and instrument usage like drums came about as a way for a community to show cohesiveness and immediately find out who strangers are. By the time you've learned their songs you're not a stranger anymore, but if you can't sing or talk like they do, you're very likely a stranger to be wary of. Makes a lot of societal evolutionary sense.
> Lonelier individuals were also more likely to use unusual language when describing well-known celebrities and to describe them in ways that were not typical for their group.
How is that surprising? If they are lonely, they are not part of the group and intergroup communication (including shared values, opinions, gossip etc).
The text fails to define "unusual" in a meaningful way other than "not part of the majority". It's like saying "we found that the minority tends to vote differently than the majority".
Indeed, I struggle to even imagine what "use unusual language when describing well-known celebrities" even means! Maybe like using "musician" rather than "artist" or some other combination?
edit: Ok, I've read through the paper, and still have no idea. Apparently the responses to questions were compared as semantic vectors using cosine similarity in Google’s Universal Sentence Encoder space. Or something lol.
and interestingly they say they share their data, but after looking through the data I don't see what I'm looking for, which is closest-approximate words for each celebrity.
Very unsurprising but perhaps still valid research that needs to be done to be known. A better conclusion might have been: increasing socialisation increases homogeneity of language use.
You can infer (with various degrees of fidelity) a lot about people by their communication patterns: age, gender, education, hobbies, reading habits, news sources, place of origin or residence.
And obviously, socialization.
This study suggests socialization is a(n inverse) proxy for loneliness, and there's surely some truth to that, but it is not the same thing.
"Our findings provide evidence that loneliness is associated with deviations from the zeitgeist, specifically when it comes to perceptions of well-known celebrities"
Soooooo... thinking differently than the majority of people may lead to loneliness, because those who think differently than the zeitgeist have a hard time connecting with the majority of people because of the way they think?
I was a standup comedian in the 1980s and was occasionally asked why “my people” were so funny, and it’s odd because there are a lot of things that are funny about us, but not the real answer to this one. We had to be, for thousands of years, or we died. If we had humorless dumb ones (and we do, but not as many, again, because of what happened to them, as well as quite a number of our best) they didn’t do as well.
I was also a clinical psychologist for a few years, and could say more on this, but some other time.
Jewish humor, gay humor, autistic humor… they’re all more similar than they are different. You learn, from atypical experience, to see everything one degree off and you have a story that people will listen to and eventually they might even like you. You see things three degrees off and you shut up so no one else knows. You get six degrees off and even you don’t know, but everyone else does.
This is why the male oriented dating communities call it “goofmaxxing” or “jester maxing” to get good at comedy for the purposes of attracting others.
The need to become funny for literal survival is among the worst of all humiliation rituals that most of us will be forced to do. I want people to be funny because they like being funny - not because they will literally not breed or be killed without it!
There’s also being funny not quite for attracting others, but for avoiding alienating people one has already attracted. As someone surely autistic somehow, I find myself making frequent jokes because I know my interlocutors don’t want to hear about the subjects I’d really like to talk about, so joking seems the least-offensive and least-effort part I can play in socializing. When I saw Mike Leigh’s 1987 short film The Short and Curlies, about a young man who reacts to every single thing with a little joke, I very much recognized myself.
Lonely people are weird because there's no social feedback loop, a lot of teachings are "self-taught" (for example how not to be an asshole), and even in engineering there's a "different" way self-taught engineers think
For a lot people this lack of a feedback loop started as children. In the worst cases, where there's child hood abuse and neglect, any seeking out of positive feedbacks either goes unheard or punished
The feedback loop reinforces itself in the short-term because being lonely and staying in the "hell you know" is better than dealing with the social failure, which might "prove" you don't belong in society and it will never change
Breaking the negative feedback loop is the hardest thing to do especially being born into it
Hence why the term “oversocialization” is more real than ever. Autists don’t deserve the hell they get just because everyone else around them was over socialized. It’s telling that these days, the majority of real advancements in the world are done by people with ASD. Maybe the world should try being nicer to them.
terms like "oversocialized" suggest you spend too much time on imageboards and you would do well to get off those sites. same with "humiliation ritual"
That's hard because of negativity bias. 90% of the world can be nice, but that 10% will stick out like a sore thumb. That strategy of "be nice" works on a micro level, but not macro.
> Breaking the negative feedback loop is the hardest thing to do especially being born into it
And it doesn't happen overnight. It's taken myself five years just to be at a level where by you can defensively stand for myself and look at myself in the mirror and be pleased at where I am. The only support being my mother.
Well, exactly. Parents poster is pointing out that the cause is ambiguous. Actually, technically, they are attributing causality to the opposite direction, but in practice, I'd say it gets the point across.
> Lonely individuals tend to think and talk in an unusual way, study finds
That's not really what this article finds... the title is "Loneliness corresponds with neural representations and language use that deviate from shared cultural perceptions", but even that title is too general when it's only talking about a handful of pop-culture celebrities.
And also, remember when a researcher says "loneliness" they mean "self-reported loneliness," I know a lot of people with very little companionship who might insist they are a 0 out of 10 on the loneliness scale.
There's so many different ways to interpret this data:
Perhaps people who are willing to admit they are lonely (usually something that's very mildly frowned upon in my experience) are more willing to break with social norms. Or perhaps having wild takes on reality results in you becoming lonelier. Or perhaps a few outlier individuals really pushed the average. Or perhaps people who are less lonely are generally more knowledgeable/well-informed about these individuals. Etc etc.
> And also, remember when a researcher says "loneliness" they mean "self-reported loneliness," I know a lot of people with very little companionship who might insist they are a 0 out of 10 on the loneliness scale.
That seems reasonable. Lonliness is a subjective phenomenon. There are people who don't interact as much as other people but feel content about it and aren't lonely. There are people who are desperate for interaction and get a lot but who are never satisfied. I can't imagine any other way to measure this than by asking.
But there are also people who believe they are fine alone but are negatively affected by it, and people who have lots of friends and interaction but nonetheless lack connection. People aren't very good at judging their own emotions.
Not having a better way to measure doesn't mean this measure is sufficient.
"People who self identify as lonely" is a different class of people from "people who are negatively affected". It's worth researching both groups. This study happens to be about the former.
> Not having a better way to measure doesn't mean this measure is sufficient.
It necessarily does mean that. Empiricists (such as scientists) must work with the tools with which they are equipped. Sure you're not going to get deductively-true results out of it (true for any scientific field), and certainly psychological findings are on the emphatically less-certain side of the scientific fields, but that doesn't imply that results aren't meaningful.
Granted, scientific reporting is so terrible the hedging the (good) scientists engage in to reflect this uncertainty invariably goes out the window. But c'est la vie.
"There are people who don't interact as much as other people but feel content about it and aren't lonely."
Yet the difficulty about self-reported degrees of loneliness, is that it doesn’t tell you how resilient a person’s contentedness is. Put that person in a crisis situation, like a suddenly precarious financial situation or a serious illness, and they might feel that they desperately crave human contact and were masking it before.
All of what you mentioned looks like a possible contributing factor, but this one stood out to me:
> Or perhaps people who are less lonely are generally more knowledgeable/well-informed about these individuals.
I'd go as far as saying, people who are less lonely are more interested in those individuals in the first place. Celebrities are social objects. There's nothing inherently interesting in life or personality of any specific celebrity - what makes them interesting is that other people know about them too, so discussing them is a way to bond with others, have fun, etc. Lonely people do less of that, so they have less of a motivation to care about celebrities in the first place.
> Prior work even finds that celebrities that generate common ground between strangers are disproportionately discussed in conversation, suggesting shared celebrity knowledge can provide a “foot in the door” to forming ties with others
Heh, I know that studying obvious things is the "bread and butter" of scientific study, but it's still funny to read sometimes...
"Hello, fellow coworkers! How about the local sports team, did you see them play last night?"
Seems logical. If you're into medieval re-enactments, you'll have a much harder time connecting with people than being into the NFL. It'll be a blast once you find that group, but you're finding a needle in a haystack.
It's a bit why there's common advice (that I'm ambivalent on) in "if you're lonely, get a dog". Not just for the social factor, but because dogs are an almost universally loved pet and instant icebreaker for other pet owners or pet lovers. that first step to socialization is harder than ever.
only if you aren't keen to share them with your friends.
if you watch an obscure show or movie or read a rare book, most people will be eager to share it with their friends, and their friends will be eager to learn about it. It's not the preferences or experiences that make you lonely, it's whether you trust your friends enough to share them.
truly, nothing is more fun than finding a cool movie and then showing your pals, who then also love it. That's the best!
Feels like fancy neuroimaging being used to scientifically justify excluding people who don't conform to mainstream social norms. Classic case of using tech to medicalize being different. Also kind of makes sense from an evolutionary psych perspective - groups have always tried to identify and push out "others" for survival. But maybe in 2024 we can do better than using million-dollar brain scanners to shame people who see the world (oh sorry, “famous” people) differently?
I've heard many unique, difficult or important profiles or roles as being described as 'lonely' in a 'lonely at the top' kind of way (but not limited to primacy). This would include artists, entrepreneurs and leaders, Q-School graduates...
The article has some weird stuff in it which makes the whole thing seem ridiculous (did we really need two paragraphs detailing the effects of loneliness?). The paper frames it much better:
So they tested disconnected individuals against connected individuals in the perception of socially constructed objects (celebrities). And they found that people who don't socialise much don't share that socially constructed perception. What else did they expect? Seems quite obvious.
I agree with this interpretation. Plus, I don't think it generalizes that well. In my stomping grounds, there are three circles of trust where people tend to talk about different things:
- Outer circle: the weather, dead relatives (yes, dead relatives!) and "expensive vs cheap" but without actual figures.
- Middle circle: what to eat, where to travel.
- Inner intimacy circle (people who are okay sharing a bed): money with actual figures. But you may not discuss the salary.
Celebrities don't show up in any of the circles, because one needs a measure of lightheartedness and humor to deal with that topic and use it on gossip about somebody else... which is a combination not everybody can or want to manage...not sure if that's a good or a bad thing, but it is what it is.
The article mentions a popular musical artist. Are there popular artists whose work you have an opinion on? Well then as soon as you express those thoughts, you are talking about a celebrity and this study says the way you talk about it may reveal something about you.
Surely you recognize that you are an outlier then. Most people have some opinions on at least one popular musician or actor or writer. If you don't, then I'm a little envious. There's so much great stuff out there waiting for you to discover it. I'd recommend checking out the Beatles.
So many words used to convey so little meaning, what a waste of time. How do they think differently about celebrities, why, and is it a bad thing in and of itself?
This is a bullshit study. It is entirely based on trying to confirm a priori assumptions about ”lonely” people, who are seen by authors as pathologically abnormal.
> Chronic loneliness is linked to mental health issues like depression and anxiety, as well as physical health problems, including weakened immunity, cardiovascular disease, and an increased risk of mortality. Lonely individuals tend to experience lower self-esteem, heightened sensitivity to social rejection, and difficulty forming or maintaining relationships. They may also perceive social interactions more negatively, creating a cycle that reinforces their isolation. In older adults, loneliness is particularly concerning, as it is strongly associated with cognitive decline and dementia. In children and adolescents, it can hinder social development and academic performance.
I think they are trying to learn more about it to see if there is something that can be done in cases where there are negative outcomes. Not where someone is alone and happy.
> Interestingly, the study also revealed a particularly strong consensus among participants regarding the neural representations of Justin Bieber compared to the other four celebrities.
is this academic speak for “yeah…… that guy…… nope.”?
I find it strange that there's so much alignment in gen pop on how celebrities are perceived, and that any original opinion on these celebrities is considered "idiosyncratic". I feel like there's a Spiegelgrund being built somewhere for people who don't think Taylor Swift is the absolute cat's ass, because that means they're different and different is threatening.
Also, what constitutes idiosyncratic neural representation of celebrities? Back when Britney Spears became huge, my nickname for her was "the succubus", after a contemporaneous episode of South Park in which Chef fell under the sway of a succubus when she sang "The Morning After" to him. Britney Spears was clearly an idiot, and she had a weak voice compared to other female singers, yet when people saw her gyrating and mewling on MTV'S TRL they went absolutely bonkers and I didn't get it. Is that idiosyncratic celebrity ideation?
I lived overseas for a time in an area that didn't use English. I loved it, enjoyed being there, but one day I noticed that I was talking to myself! At first, it was just exclamations out loud (quietly) when something happened around me. It progressed to me describing or evaluating my meal, a book, a scene I was looking at. I realized it when I noticed ppl looking at me strangely (they normally did anyway), and as I looked back wondering why they were looking at me, it hit! I had been talking out loud to myself, normal volume! Why? I figure it was loneliness; but loneliness for hearing English. I was the only one who could speak it! And then it hit me again, a new found epiphany about all those "crazy homeless" ppl who I'd seen back home, muttering to themselves as they wander around. What if, instead of (or in addition to) being mentally unwell, they were just lonely, and having no one to talk to led to them talking to themselves? Whoa.
The few interactions that I've had with homeless people gave me an impression that the thing they needed the most was human interaction. They'd be thankful if they received a meal, but they'd start talking in a way that made me think that what they needed the most was for someone to listen to them or some human interaction. It didn't seem like many people would ever stick around for more than a few seconds.
I'm talking about a very small sample size here, but still.
For the homeless, the ratio of meaningful human interactions to total human interactions would be an astoundingly low number.
"I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone." - Robin Williams
One study found that lonely people also engage in more imaginary conversations than those who don't consider themselves lonely. Perhaps ending up talking to oneself out loud is somehow related?
https://psychnewsdaily.com/lonely-people-have-a-unique-brain...
Language is so tied to our sense of connection and belonging
That is surreal! Like one step away from “The Sixth Sense” movie
As someone who's considered himself lonely for most of his life, I can very much relate with the idea of feeling like an outcast, like an alien, someone who doesn't really fit in or understand what others find interest in. I think, in my case at least, it was probably related to being told over and over as I kid that I was doing everything wrong, that I wasn't acting manly enough, etc. Being told I didn't fit in led me to believe it. After a long journey of rebuilding my self-worth, I'm a lot less lonely this days, but I still feel it pulling at me, especially when I'm in a situation where I feel like an outsider.
I'm a state that resonates a lot with what you wrote, thank you for that. Checking out your bio I found out you have a very interesting blog, I really liked "Unexpected Benefits of Being Vulnerable on the Internet" as it's something that I often wonder about, how we condition ourselves to say things we believe will be accepted (and to receive upvotes) instead of what we truly feel, leaving our true self behind.
Thank you for sharing something so personal and honest. Your story highlights how loneliness isn’t just about physical isolation
Aaron's right, you have a cool blog. His account here is so over censored.
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The causal relationship here would be extremely interesting: Do those individuals start off with brain that is slightly differently wired than the "normie" population and become lonely because they just don't vibe well with them? Or is their loneliness causing their speech and thought patterns to diverge, because they have less opportunities to "resync" with the mainstream culture? Or a sort of feedback loop of both - or something else completely?
The linked article is a summary of a much longer article (https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-024-00088-3).
From the conclusion of the original article:
> Shared reality fosters social connections between people and increases confidence in one’s knowledge because it is corroborated by others. While lonely individuals report feeling disconnected from others in terms of their interests and ideas it was previously unclear to what extent this is true with respect to the zeitgeist—defined here as the widely shared perceptions between members of contemporary culture.
I kinda get what they were looking for but knowledge and description of "celebrities" seems like a poor metric for many reasons including somebody just not interested in celebrities. For example, one can be lonely but online all day and so very connected to the "zeitgeist." Or one can have many interactions with other people but never discuss celebrities.
But, ignoring all that, the headline suggested that loneliness alters something in the brain akin to how blindness alters ones view of reality. Or maybe it's the different way of thinking and talking that leads to loneliness.
Justin Bieber, Ellen DeGeneres, Kim Kardashian, Barack Obama, and Mark Zuckerberg
The celebs in the test. I'm not sure I could say anything meaningful about Bieber other than he's a pop star from Canada. Similar for Kardashian - Instagram influencer with lots of cosmetic surgery and makeup. Is the test expecting me to know other details beyond the completely inane and superficial?
It would be even worse if they tested on athletes. I haven't watched any of the big US sports in decades. NFL, NBA, MLB - no clue. I guess I could answer a few questions about World Tour cyclists, but that's not likely to be on a test outside of Belgium or Italy.
I agree with you, so I did some quick research and: Bieber is very well known by the general population, Kardashians moreso. A large majority (70%+) watch a moderate to significant amount of live sports on TV. Anecdotally, interacting with normal people at my job agrees with this.
We're the non-neurotypical people they're talking about.
30% of the population is plenty for making friends. If choosing not to watch a lot of TV makes someone non-neurotypical, that’s a pretty scary standard. 75% of the population in the US is overweight or obese. Are we defining people with healthy weight as non-neurotypical too now?
I keep up with the Cardassians, so I guess I'd flunk this test quite spectacularly.
Yes, I wonder how the responses would be to "Describe Gul Dukat to someone who doesn't know him"
but see, we got our own celebrities and a way to talk about them. doesn't that kind of confirm the idea? the problem is just that the content of the test is to limited.
every group has their own language and people not in that group have a different one.
>we got our own celebrities and a way to talk about them
Maybe, but Gul Dukat isn't a celebrity, he's a character. The study isn't asking people about <character from currently popular movie or TV show>, but about real, living celebrities. If they asked about the #1 character in Bridgerton, whoever that is, that I think would be comparable.
It also doesn't help that they're mainly asking about current celebrities. A 60-year-old doesn't give a shit about the Kardashians or Justin Bieber. Obama probably. But some celebrity who was big 30-40 years ago would be of much more interest to them.
Unless you know them personally, there's almost no difference between a celebrity and a well-known fictional character. Either way, you're learning a crafted story about a person that doesn't really exist. Kim Kardashian the person is a real human, but Kim Kardashian the celebrity is just as real a person as Dukat, a Gul in Cardassian Union.
> Maybe, but Gul Dukat isn't a celebrity, he's a character.
That line can get blurry; see for instance Hatsune Miku.
Traveling across the developing world, I have been astonished at how many women even in countries with limited English skills follow the Kardashians (and the young men follow Andrew Tate). Yes, on one hand celebrities are silly, but on the other hand they have a global societal impact that nerds like us might not appreciate.
My kids grew up with no TV and no Internet until they were 12 or so. When they applied at a Microsoft-area private school one question asked what celebrity they like and why. They knew of none and didn’t even know the word celebrity.
All this stuff can very much lead to depression, and there seems to plenty of evidence that depression changes the brain
There's a reason emotional security is 3rd on the Maslow Hierarchy, after food and physical security
All what stuff?
I don't understand how your comment relates to mine (or even the article). It feels like you're trying to correct me but I have no idea on what. Skimming through the other comments, I see numerous other criticisms of this article and study that you've ignored. I'm genuinely curious about why, of all the other comments, you chose to respond to mine.
From the article: "lonely individuals tend to perceive that their ideas are not shared by others"
I wonder how the current loneliness epidemic is intertwined with our current social/political climate and "us vs them" polarization.
I suspect almost everyone has some secret disagreements with their in-group, even if only by a matter of degree, but are afraid to voice that opinion. There have to be tens of millions of Americans who identify as a INSERT_POLITICAL_IDENTITY but disagree with some aspect of that group's platform, narrative or goals.
It's a wonder that anyone doesn't feel like their ideas are not shared by others.
> I suspect almost everyone has some secret disagreements with their in-group
This is assuming they have anyone close enough to even call them an in-group
I think there has been an over-emphasis on individuality and a strong resistance to conformity that has been instilled in a lot of people, which has led to a lot of those people cutting ties with anyone that has even minor disagreements with them
They are forever in search of their perfect friend group that doesn't exist, made up of only people who agree with them about every single thing
It's quite amazing how many people call themselves "free thinkers" to mean they have unique ideas, yet those ideas usually align with a huge percentage of the population.
This sentiment had meme status in the early 2000s-ish: I'm unique, just like everybody else.
How can it be hip if everyone is doing it?
I just call them normies of a different flavor. They don't like that.
Yeah I think this is the end result of defining people more by their group membership than who they are as individuals.
Interesting premise but did this article _feel_ off to anyone else? Maybe it was me , but did it seem a bit redundant while also not saying a whole lot?
Probably written by a lonely person. It expresses things in unusual ways and has repetition that is not typical when compared to articles written by non-lonely people.
Exactly. It looks like it was written by a very bad LLM. It keeps repeating the title over and over again.
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Intuitively, this makes perfect sense.
Non-lonely people interact with one another, continuously exposing themselves to each others views and opinions (even if indirectly).
A lonely person won't be part of this echo chamber, so their opinions will usually be self-formed and less influenced by the collective opinion of others.
It's easy to see how this creates a feedback loop. A lonely person doesn't share as many worldviews with non-lonely people, so has a harder time fitting in, which makes breaking the cycle even harder.
Is it just me, or does it feel like a significant proportion of psychological research nowadays comes to "no-brainer' conclusions? I find myself more often looking at an article and thinking, "Well, duh."
This is a genuine question. It may just be an environmental shift. Since I used to be deep in the field, I had access to any scientific journal I could think of and the latest research studies. Now I'm mainly seeing pop culture psychology. Has it always been this way?
People are strange when you’re a stranger.
Faces look ugly when you're alone.
That’s because I’m looking in the mirror
> Loneliness corresponded with idiosyncratic [unusual, unique] neural representations of celebrities as well as more idiosyncratic communication about celebrities
must be the best argument to date for being more lonely.
Could mean the opposite of what you might think. I imagine the mean perception of Zuck is weirdo, Bieber is 'no clue, I'm not a teen girl' and so on.
I mean, if you get to enjoy a pop star that society normally relegates to teen girls, that seems like a positive to me.
(I don't particularly like bieber, but if he's your jam, don't let society get in the way)
So having individualized, original thoughts not arising from the herd-mind is considered "unusual." What a world we live in.
What a weird thing to take offense to.
Also yes, if there's a consensus on something, thinking different to said consensus would be unusual because it's not the usual. There are no value judgements in this article, so really interpreting this in any other way other than the literal sense makes you come off as defensive.
More to the article itself, I wonder which comes first, the unusual thoughts, or the loneliness?
It's still a sad world we live in if independent though is unusual.
> Chronic loneliness is linked to mental health issues like depression and anxiety, as well as physical health problems, including weakened immunity, cardiovascular disease, and an increased risk of mortality.
A lot of pshycologists make that claim but I haven't found any compelling studies that prove it. Depression and axiety is understandable because we're social animals but the physical aspect isn't convincing unless the socially isolated person is lying around in bed doing drugs and eating unhealthy food all day. In that case instead of loneliness, we should blame drug abuse. It's unclear whether drug use is causing social isolation or if the latter is causing drug use.
All the studies I've seen so far have weak evidence and most of them don't address confounding factors. I'm no scientist but I'd appreciate if someone could point to studies with strong evidence about this claim.
> the physical aspect isn't convincing unless the socially isolated person is lying around in bed doing drugs and eating unhealthy food all day. In that case instead of loneliness, we should blame drug abuse.
It's important to remember that "linked to" does not mean "causes"
You are saying "we should blame the drug abuse and not the loneliness" but "linked to" doesn't imply blame at all already
Depression and anxiety cause elevated cortisol levels which cause all kinds of physically measurable issues.
Just guessing here, but if you're depressed you're much less likely to take your health seriously. It's also much easier to abuse drug when you're lonely - look at drug use among the homeless.
Certainly, if I took away your friends and family I would expect your health to decline.
> Depression and anxiety cause elevated cortisol levels which cause all kinds of physically measurable issues.
I hadn't thought about it that way. I suppose elevated cortisal causes a kind of domino effect that ends up with deteriorated overall health.
> Just guessing here, but if you're depressed you're much less likely to take your health seriously. It's also much easier to abuse drug when you're lonely - look at drug use among the homeless.
> Certainly, if I took away your friends and family I would expect your health to decline.
This makes sense. I haven't been considering the general population because I consider myself a lonely person since I spend most of my time coding and reading books but that's now how most lonely people would be classified. Many are homeless and in much worse circumstances than I am. I shouldn't be using myself as an example for that reason.
> five well-known celebrities (Justin Bieber, Ellen DeGeneres, Kim Kardashian, Barack Obama, and Mark Zuckerberg)
It feels weird to me to bundle a tech CEO and a former President of the United States in with a pop idol, a talk show host, and a reality TV influencer as "celebrities".
Why? They're all undeniably celebrities, and I guess the point was to have a spread of source of celebrity?
Why not? They are all celebrities. Celebrity status is not really correlated to the actual work they do [although some work requires some notoriety]. Gordon Ramsey's a restaurant owner and chef but he's also been on reality TV. Malala became internationally famous for being the target of an assassination plot, not her years of advocacy for women's education beforehand.
as a simple comparison: would Harold (of "hide the pain" fame) be considered a celebrity? what about Linus Torvald, or heck: Linus Sebastian?
I'm simply curious, I don't really know what line we have between what is "local icon" and when we call someone "celebrity".
Makes me think about how deeply loneliness can influence our perception of the world
> The second study was an online survey conducted with 923 Amazon Mechanical Turk workers, whose average age was 40 years.
So psychology is now the study of mice, college freshman, and mechanical Turks? I have not seen this before.
It is very common. There are lines of research on dealing with the shortcomings of using mturk this way.
e.g. https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c...
Do you guys know who the most popular artists of our time are?
Reading this article and its mention of celebrities I was like "Who are today's celebrities anyhow?"? And typed
into Google. It came back with: I have heard 8 of the 10 names before. Never heard about "Karol G" and "Charli XCX".I can only think of one song performed by one of them: "Paparazzi" by Lady Gaga.
Does that make me very disconnected with today's culture?
Meanwhile I don’t listen to anyone on that list except for Charli XCX because I arrived at her music from a rave/hyperpop background and then became a stan with her last album Crash in 2022.
I was tired of BRAT though about 2 weeks after release because I listened to the teasers so much… then it blew up and even attached itself to VP Harris…
That's where that came from? Never heard of it and all I could think of was either the Bratz dolls or that "brat summer" was short for "bratwurst summer", neither of which made sense.
I recognise some of these words
Amusingly, calling a devoted fan of something a "stan" is a reference to an Eminem song. A lot of these people claiming they don't know who Drake is would probably recognize the meme even if they don't know his music.
Also, not a response to you, but rather the parent, that Destiny's Child and Eminem both released their debut albums in 1997. Not being a fan is one thing, but saying you've never heard a single song of theirs goes a bit beyond being out of touch with "today's" culture unless you define today as this entire millenium and a few years of the last one, too.
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Maybe if you're young (20s, early 30s)?
I recognize 8/10 as well, but like you, can't name actual songs from most.
Same would have been true if I was tested in the mid-90s (HS and college). Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Backstreet Boys - I know the names, but can't think of the names of songs. I'd test better on alt/grunge rock of the era - STP, Nirvana, REM, etc.
And I don't think I'm particularly lonely - I happily married, have a few office friends, and see normal friends regularly. I'm not as social as I was in my 20s, but I assume that's normal.
There are many cultures. You’re on HN, so my guess is you’re connected with today’s hacker culture. I’ve heard of 6 of those names, but can’t name any song from any of them. It just means I have my own interests.
I’m 4/10 on that one as far as name recognition. Similar to you, I can only could think of one song from lady Gaga. Eminem is the only one which multiple songs come to mind, not that I could name them.
I grew up on 90’s and early 2000’s college radio, and am now a Doom/psychedelic rock kind of guy, and spend a good amount of time and money curating what I love.
I am disconnected from pop culture. It has repeatedly failed to deliver what I enjoy, and typically comes bundled with advertisements so I have no reason to pay attention to it.
These artists are definitely popular, but I doubt they are the most popular. The list doesn't fully match up with the most streamed artists list on Spotify, for example.
Both Google results and Spotify "most streamed artists" stats are heavily gamed, but in different ways and by different groups, so no surprise they diverge.
I don’t listen to 8/10 of these musicians, but I’ve heard of all of them except for Karol G. So yeah; I’d say you are very disconnected.
I thought they were saying they _had_ heard of 8 in 10? Strangely Karol G was also new to me. I'll resist searching for the name - I enjoy not knowing things sometimes.
Whoops, either he edited his comment or I misread it. Probably my mistake.
Doesn't this just mean that some people don't connect with this kind of music. I don't. Possibly my loss but there's a lot of music out there and life is short.
I think the commenter meant disconnected from popular music culture, not disconnected from music entirely.
Same result here, never heard about karol G and Charli XCX but to be fair, I find most modern pop music to be very manufactured and boring. People like Max Martin can create a lot of hits but it makes the music rather uninteresting.
Just listened to Brat from Charli XCX and yeah, not missing much.
I feel that when it comes to Music, being in sync with pop music is more of a generation thing.
On the other hand, I wouldn't describe myself as lonely... I'm not super social (I've worked remotely for 13 years because I don't particularly like working in an office) but I do meet up with friends 2 times a week (used to be more but with a kid at home, there's less time).
Charli XCX is a standard-issue pop singer. She's a brunette. She's probably best known for doing the singing bits on "Fancy", the only Iggy Azalea song you know (if you know any at all).
> Does that make me very disconnected with today's culture?
Just disconnected with pop culture. I only know 6 of the names on that list and can only name Brain Damage by Eminem off the top of my head. I don't know what Taylor Swift sounds like though I have probably heard a few of her songs in my day to day without noticing. Just don't worry about it and do what makes you happy.
Something that's been talked about every so often is that there aren't representative (generational) pop icons for the past few generations (probably from millenials onwards).
One theory from Japan, that I still remember and think is most likely, is that the democratization of entertainment since the 80s and especially from the 90s onwards with the invention of the internet has eliminated the very concept of pop culture.
Back in ye olde days a person's choices for entertainment were fairly limited, basically a small regional selection. People in the same locale ended up consuming the same entertainment and thus gravitated towards forming similar tastes and directing their fervor on that small selection of entertainment.
Entire generations identify with icons of their time like Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck, Marilyn Monroe, Ingrid Bergman, Elvis Presley, and so on. Entire generations sang "the song of their people" so to speak.
Today, though? Everyone can access any entertainment they want from anytime anywhere. The entertainment consumed by one person is very likely completely different from that consumed by a person right next to him; entertainment has been democratized. There is no longer a "song of our people" because everyone has a "song of me", there are no longer generational icons because everyone has their own icon.
The intense political push from the Left to make any form of social cohesion and loyalty undesirable also hasn't helped. The dismantling and removal of tradition, religion, and nationalism/patriotism from society means there can't be a "song of the people" from outside of entertainment either.
So no, I don't think you're disconnected with today's culture. Rather, today's culture doesn't value social cohesion and unity as much as it does freedom and power. Everyone has their own icon and song, everyone is their own generation.
Maybe Gen Z, but I'd say Millenials definitely had their generational Pop icons. Those icons simply did not live a good life once they left the spotlight. Like, most people I know don't really want to talk about Brittney Spears nor Micheal Jackson, even if they loved their music.
But I agree with your core point. There is no "Spongebob" of animation for Gen Z (except for... Spongebob. Maybe). There's no Friends, nor Breaking Bad of the 2010's/2020's. There's barely any individual movies that break the cultural zeitgeist period.
>The intense political push from the Left to make any form of social cohesion and loyalty undesirable also hasn't helped. The dismantling and removal of tradition, religion, and nationalism/patriotism from society means there can't be a "song of the people" from outside of entertainment either.
we can have social cohesion without resorting to nationalism nor religion. It's just that when you give people infinite choice, we diverge at best to the pareto principle. But 20% of society not being in the know is still a lot of society you fail to connect with.
I'm a millenial myself (36 years old next year... I'm getting too old for this), and while I can think of some "popular" names of my generation like Linkin Park, Dragonforce, Emma Watson, Brittney Spears as you mentioned, Mario, Pokemon, World of Warcraft, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, The Simpsons, Futurama, and so on, none of them can compare to ye olde icons of ye olde generations like Star Trek and the people I mentioned before.
Celebrities and pop culture sensations of olden times defined entire eras that we can still clearly identify to this day, but that just doesn't happen anymore because large numbers of people aren't forced to coalesce around a small handful of works and figures.
>we can have social cohesion without resorting to nationalism nor religion.
Can we? The way I see it, in removing and villifying tradition, religion, and nationalism/patriotism they were simply replaced by inferior substitutes and surrogates. The chief examples being "science" ("Trust the Science.") and politics (Obama, Trump, Farage, et al.) as the receptacles of peoples' desires to be fervent about something.
>none of them can compare to ye olde icons of ye olde generations like Star Trek and the people I mentioned before.
Well a lot of that comes with time. None of the people nor ips you describe are more than 30 years old. Star Trek is over 50 years old. We don't know which are gonna last 20-30 more years. Pokemon is going strong, but HP has been dipping for a while, and The Simpsons is well past its prime.
I think it's also simply because we are more globalized. Is Pokemon and Harry potter bigger than Star Trek ever was? Absolutely. But it's also easier than ever to globally broadcast anything anywhere, especially when offering localization for more access. I don't see this as a bad thing.
>Can we? The way I see it, in removing and villifying tradition, religion, and nationalism/patriotism they were simply replaced by inferior substitutes and surrogates.
Sure. The world is larger and brands bigger than ever. But when things globalize, that creates a need for smaller, more local community values. Bringing back third places would help more than trying to make the next Star Trek.
Now, will people be receptive to such activity? I don't know. It's not up to me to figure out what people like or want. But those places being defunct answers the question for us without even trying. And I wager there's more than enough community to create out of those that do.
> The intense political push from the Left to make any form of social cohesion and loyalty undesirable also hasn't helped. The dismantling and removal of tradition, religion, and nationalism/patriotism from society means there can't be a "song of the people" from outside of entertainment either.
Funny, because I don't think there is a "song of the people" on the right at all, while every leftist I know are all in on Charlie XCX and Brat Summer.
Lol
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the abstract here, but doesn't this also suggest that lonely individuals more readily reach their own conclusions about common ideas and concepts? I can't get away from the thought that all this confirms is that groups tend to converge their thinking and speech through regular contact, and that different social groups (including groups of one) will diverge in thinking over time.
well, it didn't say their descriptions were WRONG, just different. The insinuation is that highly social people were informed by what their peers think and say, so their descriptions will likely mirror other socially connected people. The lonely people would just have to come up with it on their own.
I know there's a tendency to dismiss groupthink as negative and wrong and bad, and for huge amounts of people that's true, but for small social groups it's often a sign that you've all become familiar with each other, experienced the same things and are just similar in general, and in terms of selecting for safety, these are all markers of who you will likely feel safest with.
there's a hypothesis that singing and instrument usage like drums came about as a way for a community to show cohesiveness and immediately find out who strangers are. By the time you've learned their songs you're not a stranger anymore, but if you can't sing or talk like they do, you're very likely a stranger to be wary of. Makes a lot of societal evolutionary sense.
> Lonelier individuals were also more likely to use unusual language when describing well-known celebrities and to describe them in ways that were not typical for their group.
How is that surprising? If they are lonely, they are not part of the group and intergroup communication (including shared values, opinions, gossip etc).
The text fails to define "unusual" in a meaningful way other than "not part of the majority". It's like saying "we found that the minority tends to vote differently than the majority".
Indeed, I struggle to even imagine what "use unusual language when describing well-known celebrities" even means! Maybe like using "musician" rather than "artist" or some other combination?
edit: Ok, I've read through the paper, and still have no idea. Apparently the responses to questions were compared as semantic vectors using cosine similarity in Google’s Universal Sentence Encoder space. Or something lol.
and interestingly they say they share their data, but after looking through the data I don't see what I'm looking for, which is closest-approximate words for each celebrity.
"hello fellow Taylor Swift fans"
Very unsurprising but perhaps still valid research that needs to be done to be known. A better conclusion might have been: increasing socialisation increases homogeneity of language use.
This rings true to me.
You can infer (with various degrees of fidelity) a lot about people by their communication patterns: age, gender, education, hobbies, reading habits, news sources, place of origin or residence.
And obviously, socialization.
This study suggests socialization is a(n inverse) proxy for loneliness, and there's surely some truth to that, but it is not the same thing.
All psychology research falls in one of two categories:
a) common sense intuitive result
b) does not replicate
I think a study is required to test your thesis
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"Our findings provide evidence that loneliness is associated with deviations from the zeitgeist, specifically when it comes to perceptions of well-known celebrities"
Soooooo... thinking differently than the majority of people may lead to loneliness, because those who think differently than the zeitgeist have a hard time connecting with the majority of people because of the way they think?
Read the whole article wondering how lonely people think differently.
But I now understand that it is just that: different. They do not conform to what the norm thinks.
Seen in that light: lonely people are lonely because they are weird. Right. Good to know.
I was a standup comedian in the 1980s and was occasionally asked why “my people” were so funny, and it’s odd because there are a lot of things that are funny about us, but not the real answer to this one. We had to be, for thousands of years, or we died. If we had humorless dumb ones (and we do, but not as many, again, because of what happened to them, as well as quite a number of our best) they didn’t do as well.
I was also a clinical psychologist for a few years, and could say more on this, but some other time.
Jewish humor, gay humor, autistic humor… they’re all more similar than they are different. You learn, from atypical experience, to see everything one degree off and you have a story that people will listen to and eventually they might even like you. You see things three degrees off and you shut up so no one else knows. You get six degrees off and even you don’t know, but everyone else does.
As they say, tragedy (or alternatively, adversity) plus time equals comedy.
I think a lot about Victor Frankl's description of the use of dark comedy while in concentration camps
This is why the male oriented dating communities call it “goofmaxxing” or “jester maxing” to get good at comedy for the purposes of attracting others.
The need to become funny for literal survival is among the worst of all humiliation rituals that most of us will be forced to do. I want people to be funny because they like being funny - not because they will literally not breed or be killed without it!
There’s also being funny not quite for attracting others, but for avoiding alienating people one has already attracted. As someone surely autistic somehow, I find myself making frequent jokes because I know my interlocutors don’t want to hear about the subjects I’d really like to talk about, so joking seems the least-offensive and least-effort part I can play in socializing. When I saw Mike Leigh’s 1987 short film The Short and Curlies, about a young man who reacts to every single thing with a little joke, I very much recognized myself.
Lonely people are weird because there's no social feedback loop, a lot of teachings are "self-taught" (for example how not to be an asshole), and even in engineering there's a "different" way self-taught engineers think
For a lot people this lack of a feedback loop started as children. In the worst cases, where there's child hood abuse and neglect, any seeking out of positive feedbacks either goes unheard or punished
The feedback loop reinforces itself in the short-term because being lonely and staying in the "hell you know" is better than dealing with the social failure, which might "prove" you don't belong in society and it will never change
Breaking the negative feedback loop is the hardest thing to do especially being born into it
well, thankfully there are tools [1]
1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06204-3
Hence why the term “oversocialization” is more real than ever. Autists don’t deserve the hell they get just because everyone else around them was over socialized. It’s telling that these days, the majority of real advancements in the world are done by people with ASD. Maybe the world should try being nicer to them.
terms like "oversocialized" suggest you spend too much time on imageboards and you would do well to get off those sites. same with "humiliation ritual"
tu quoque
>Autists don’t deserve the hell they get
Sure.
> Maybe the world should try being nicer to them.
That's hard because of negativity bias. 90% of the world can be nice, but that 10% will stick out like a sore thumb. That strategy of "be nice" works on a micro level, but not macro.
> Breaking the negative feedback loop is the hardest thing to do especially being born into it
And it doesn't happen overnight. It's taken myself five years just to be at a level where by you can defensively stand for myself and look at myself in the mirror and be pleased at where I am. The only support being my mother.
Lonely people are also weird because they are lonely (and don't get the calibration from human interaction).
The article does not claim this nor support the claim. It merely says that loneliness is associated with being "weird". No causality.
It's possible to reverse this and infer the more mainstream your thoughts of these celebrities, the more popular you are / will be.
Well, exactly. Parents poster is pointing out that the cause is ambiguous. Actually, technically, they are attributing causality to the opposite direction, but in practice, I'd say it gets the point across.
My intuition is that it goes both ways and it's a feedback loop/downward spiral.
Yes, a social feedback loop, but the internal feedback loop is what causes the downward spiral
Indeed, but the article does not mention causality at all.
So does this mean that if you dial down your contrarian thinking, you might feel less lonely?
I wonder if loneliness improves (at least correlates) creativity. Can I make myself inventive by becoming lonely?
Lonliness is also correlated with depression which i think would be pretty bad for creativity. Maybe there is a fine line.
You can hijack your longing for love and companionship sure.
> Lonely individuals tend to think and talk in an unusual way, study finds
That's not really what this article finds... the title is "Loneliness corresponds with neural representations and language use that deviate from shared cultural perceptions", but even that title is too general when it's only talking about a handful of pop-culture celebrities.
And also, remember when a researcher says "loneliness" they mean "self-reported loneliness," I know a lot of people with very little companionship who might insist they are a 0 out of 10 on the loneliness scale.
There's so many different ways to interpret this data:
Perhaps people who are willing to admit they are lonely (usually something that's very mildly frowned upon in my experience) are more willing to break with social norms. Or perhaps having wild takes on reality results in you becoming lonelier. Or perhaps a few outlier individuals really pushed the average. Or perhaps people who are less lonely are generally more knowledgeable/well-informed about these individuals. Etc etc.
> And also, remember when a researcher says "loneliness" they mean "self-reported loneliness," I know a lot of people with very little companionship who might insist they are a 0 out of 10 on the loneliness scale.
That seems reasonable. Lonliness is a subjective phenomenon. There are people who don't interact as much as other people but feel content about it and aren't lonely. There are people who are desperate for interaction and get a lot but who are never satisfied. I can't imagine any other way to measure this than by asking.
But there are also people who believe they are fine alone but are negatively affected by it, and people who have lots of friends and interaction but nonetheless lack connection. People aren't very good at judging their own emotions.
Not having a better way to measure doesn't mean this measure is sufficient.
"People who self identify as lonely" is a different class of people from "people who are negatively affected". It's worth researching both groups. This study happens to be about the former.
> Not having a better way to measure doesn't mean this measure is sufficient.
It necessarily does mean that. Empiricists (such as scientists) must work with the tools with which they are equipped. Sure you're not going to get deductively-true results out of it (true for any scientific field), and certainly psychological findings are on the emphatically less-certain side of the scientific fields, but that doesn't imply that results aren't meaningful.
Granted, scientific reporting is so terrible the hedging the (good) scientists engage in to reflect this uncertainty invariably goes out the window. But c'est la vie.
"There are people who don't interact as much as other people but feel content about it and aren't lonely."
Yet the difficulty about self-reported degrees of loneliness, is that it doesn’t tell you how resilient a person’s contentedness is. Put that person in a crisis situation, like a suddenly precarious financial situation or a serious illness, and they might feel that they desperately crave human contact and were masking it before.
All of what you mentioned looks like a possible contributing factor, but this one stood out to me:
> Or perhaps people who are less lonely are generally more knowledgeable/well-informed about these individuals.
I'd go as far as saying, people who are less lonely are more interested in those individuals in the first place. Celebrities are social objects. There's nothing inherently interesting in life or personality of any specific celebrity - what makes them interesting is that other people know about them too, so discussing them is a way to bond with others, have fun, etc. Lonely people do less of that, so they have less of a motivation to care about celebrities in the first place.
Yes, from the Discussion section of the paper:
> Prior work even finds that celebrities that generate common ground between strangers are disproportionately discussed in conversation, suggesting shared celebrity knowledge can provide a “foot in the door” to forming ties with others
Heh, I know that studying obvious things is the "bread and butter" of scientific study, but it's still funny to read sometimes...
"Hello, fellow coworkers! How about the local sports team, did you see them play last night?"
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-024-00088-3
The original article this one links to is a better read.
Is the reverse true as well? Unusual preferences can lead to lonliness?
Seems logical. If you're into medieval re-enactments, you'll have a much harder time connecting with people than being into the NFL. It'll be a blast once you find that group, but you're finding a needle in a haystack.
It's a bit why there's common advice (that I'm ambivalent on) in "if you're lonely, get a dog". Not just for the social factor, but because dogs are an almost universally loved pet and instant icebreaker for other pet owners or pet lovers. that first step to socialization is harder than ever.
only if you aren't keen to share them with your friends.
if you watch an obscure show or movie or read a rare book, most people will be eager to share it with their friends, and their friends will be eager to learn about it. It's not the preferences or experiences that make you lonely, it's whether you trust your friends enough to share them.
truly, nothing is more fun than finding a cool movie and then showing your pals, who then also love it. That's the best!
People who don't interact a lot with other people. Hrrm.
It would be really weird if they thought and talked in accordance with the current social pablum.
Feels like fancy neuroimaging being used to scientifically justify excluding people who don't conform to mainstream social norms. Classic case of using tech to medicalize being different. Also kind of makes sense from an evolutionary psych perspective - groups have always tried to identify and push out "others" for survival. But maybe in 2024 we can do better than using million-dollar brain scanners to shame people who see the world (oh sorry, “famous” people) differently?
I've heard many unique, difficult or important profiles or roles as being described as 'lonely' in a 'lonely at the top' kind of way (but not limited to primacy). This would include artists, entrepreneurs and leaders, Q-School graduates...
The article has some weird stuff in it which makes the whole thing seem ridiculous (did we really need two paragraphs detailing the effects of loneliness?). The paper frames it much better:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-024-00088-3
So they tested disconnected individuals against connected individuals in the perception of socially constructed objects (celebrities). And they found that people who don't socialise much don't share that socially constructed perception. What else did they expect? Seems quite obvious.
Exactly. To highlight: the point of social objects like celebrities is to bond over them with other people. Obviously, lonely people do less of that.
I'm disgusted that they took celebrity gossip as reference point for healthy social behavior.
I agree with this interpretation. Plus, I don't think it generalizes that well. In my stomping grounds, there are three circles of trust where people tend to talk about different things:
- Outer circle: the weather, dead relatives (yes, dead relatives!) and "expensive vs cheap" but without actual figures.
- Middle circle: what to eat, where to travel.
- Inner intimacy circle (people who are okay sharing a bed): money with actual figures. But you may not discuss the salary.
Celebrities don't show up in any of the circles, because one needs a measure of lightheartedness and humor to deal with that topic and use it on gossip about somebody else... which is a combination not everybody can or want to manage...not sure if that's a good or a bad thing, but it is what it is.
I don't think the article says that, does it?
The consumption of boulevard media is implied, either directly or via friends.
Boulevard media?
The article mentions a popular musical artist. Are there popular artists whose work you have an opinion on? Well then as soon as you express those thoughts, you are talking about a celebrity and this study says the way you talk about it may reveal something about you.
I have no TV, no radio, no tiktok and no facebook. I don't know much about the people in there.
Surely you recognize that you are an outlier then. Most people have some opinions on at least one popular musician or actor or writer. If you don't, then I'm a little envious. There's so much great stuff out there waiting for you to discover it. I'd recommend checking out the Beatles.
I'm not missing out, I'm not interested in the persons.
And i don't think I'm an outlier. Some people find other meanings in life than watching others.
Oversocialization.
Hmm... I don't know anything about 2 of the 5 celebrities other than their names. Ellen somethingorother I've never even heard of.
self report should be crossed with frequency of interpersonal contacts
Anyone else find that article repeating itself over and over without getting to the damn point?
So many words used to convey so little meaning, what a waste of time. How do they think differently about celebrities, why, and is it a bad thing in and of itself?
This is a bullshit study. It is entirely based on trying to confirm a priori assumptions about ”lonely” people, who are seen by authors as pathologically abnormal.
> Chronic loneliness is linked to mental health issues like depression and anxiety, as well as physical health problems, including weakened immunity, cardiovascular disease, and an increased risk of mortality. Lonely individuals tend to experience lower self-esteem, heightened sensitivity to social rejection, and difficulty forming or maintaining relationships. They may also perceive social interactions more negatively, creating a cycle that reinforces their isolation. In older adults, loneliness is particularly concerning, as it is strongly associated with cognitive decline and dementia. In children and adolescents, it can hinder social development and academic performance.
I think they are trying to learn more about it to see if there is something that can be done in cases where there are negative outcomes. Not where someone is alone and happy.
> Interestingly, the study also revealed a particularly strong consensus among participants regarding the neural representations of Justin Bieber compared to the other four celebrities.
is this academic speak for “yeah…… that guy…… nope.”?
I find it strange that there's so much alignment in gen pop on how celebrities are perceived, and that any original opinion on these celebrities is considered "idiosyncratic". I feel like there's a Spiegelgrund being built somewhere for people who don't think Taylor Swift is the absolute cat's ass, because that means they're different and different is threatening.
Also, what constitutes idiosyncratic neural representation of celebrities? Back when Britney Spears became huge, my nickname for her was "the succubus", after a contemporaneous episode of South Park in which Chef fell under the sway of a succubus when she sang "The Morning After" to him. Britney Spears was clearly an idiot, and she had a weak voice compared to other female singers, yet when people saw her gyrating and mewling on MTV'S TRL they went absolutely bonkers and I didn't get it. Is that idiosyncratic celebrity ideation?
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