Asklemmy

54524 readers

342 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 7 years ago

MODERATORS

Is social interaction really all that? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 day ago by userreality@lemmy.zip to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I genuinely don’t understand why society treats social interaction like it’s one of the most important things in life.

If someone spends a weekend alone, people assume they’re lonely. If someone has no interest in constant messaging, group chats, or hanging out every week, people think something must be wrong.

Meanwhile, a lot of social interaction seems repetitive. The same conversations, the same small talk, the same routines repeated over and over.

People talk about socialising as if it’s automatically meaningful, but for many interactions the main purpose seems to be avoiding boredom or avoiding being alone.

If somebody has no friends it’s often treated like a tragic disaster, but what if that’s actually what they prefer?

Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see why being comfortable alone is viewed as strange while constantly needing people around is viewed as normal.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Mesa@programming.dev 3 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

Humans have evolved for ages to be socially dependent creatures. Humans are also highly intelligent, and can tool their way through a situation for which they aren't technically "fit."

So, is social interaction really all that? Yes. Will you be fine without it? Being charitable and assuming you're excluding basic needs which have been socialized like shelter and food—maybe.