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> Even in a world brimming with easy distractions—TikTok, Pornhub, Candy Crush, Sudoku—people still manage to meet for drinks, work out at the gym, go on dates,

• anovikov 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • arcticfox 1y ago
    Until they invent the exercise pill, the gym is absolutely still a good idea
  • Swizec 1y ago
    > For years, i tried to lose weight with gym and dieting. I failed, and now i know i probably never had a chance to, it was a scam all along. > lost all weight i wanted with Wegovy It’s not a scam. The trick is that you probably weren’t dieting aggressively enough before Wegovy. All diets and GLP inhibitors work on the same principle: Caloric restriction. It is simply impossible to stay fat without eating enough calories. But that’s really really hard to do without help. I have friends and family on GLP and they regularly eat less than 800 calories per day. You can’t do that on your own, the willpower it would take is hard to imagine. Conversely when I’m marathon training it’s almost impossible to eat enough calories to avoid losing weight. Eating itself becomes a huge chore. Run 10mi/day and I promise you’ll lose weight the old fashioned way.
    • bluecalm 1y ago
      Idk man, I find it pretty easy to eat any amount of calories. I actually gained weight when burning around 1500kcal/day on a bike during one month - way more than running 10mi/day would burn. That you find it difficult to eat enough during marathon training means your body is at least decent at regulating itself. For some people it's very easy (my gf stays at her very lean weight even when injured and doing 0 sports and then still stays there when burning 1000kcal/day) while for some it's very hard without help (my experience above).
      • Swizec 1y ago
        Yeah totally. Eating less than you feel like is hard and GLP is great for that. I was fat as a kid and then lost it all in high school (and got too skinny). Maybe as a result of that it’s easy for me to not eat. I kinda don’t even realize I’m hungry. Had to start tracking calories to ensure I eat enough.
        • bluecalm 1y ago
          One thing I am wondering about is that if months on GLP drugs is going to help with self-regulation. Maybe if you force yourself to eat less for a prolonged time (2-3 years) with the help of drugs then the body internalizes eating less as the norm. We will see in a few years I guess. I am hoping for at least weak effect like that.
          • Swizec 1y ago
            I know people who had that experience. They describe it as a total reset of their relationship with food. Even when pausing GLP after just a few months.
  • ebabani 1y ago
    In what way was the gym a scam?
    • shortrounddev2 1y ago
      You pay $100 a month but the fine print is you have to show up everyday and work out!
    • derektank 1y ago
      My understanding is that the metabolic rate slows down to compensate for the caloric loss from exercise The only consistent way to enter a caloric deficit is to diet, which is very hard for the obvious reasons
      • nemomarx 1y ago
        The main effect of diet is that more muscle can slightly increase your BMR, and the other health benefits of being in shape. It does also increase calorie loss from activity at the margins, even if it's a pretty small effect. (maybe 100-200 more per day etc in my experience.) None of this will help much without the diet, but it's not useless.
      • CooCooCaCha 1y ago
        Technically yes but not for the reason you think. Muscle and fat are metabolically active, which means they burn calories just to stay alive. If you lose fat, guess what? Your body doesn’t need as many calories to survive. Another factor is the calories you burn not exercising. We burn calories all day, even when we’re not exercising but when people are dieting they tend to have lower energy so the don’t move around as much. So yes, technically metabolical rate slows down but it’s not some conspiracy against you. It’s a direct result of losing fat. That’s why some people lift weights while dieting to build muscle at the same time they’re losing fat. Personally, I haven’t had a huge issue with caloric restriction so I’m doing a more intense diet in the short term, then cooling off once I get to my goal weight and switching to more weigh lifting.
        • 1y ago
  • daymanstep 1y ago
    > For years, i tried to lose weight with gym and dieting. I failed, and now i know i probably never had a chance to, it was a scam all along. In what way is dieting a scam? You literally just eat less, and you will lose weight as long as you're on a calorie deficit.
    • meindnoch 1y ago
      Americans believe diet and exercise "doesn't work". The reasons are twofold: on one hand, this is coming from the fat acceptance / body positivity movement, which needs people to believe that diet and exercise are futile, and being fat is just a fact of life, like being tall or short. They want people to believe that being fat is a disability, or even an attribute of diversity that we ought to accept and celebrate. On the other hand, American food products make it unnecessarily hard to consistently meet your caloric deficit, which makes people wrongly conclude that diet and exercise just doesn't work.
      • thechao 1y ago
        > On the other hand, American food products make it unnecessarily hard to consistently meet your caloric deficit, which makes people wrongly conclude that diet and exercise just doesn't work. As an American who lost 100+ pounds & kept it off for more than a decade ... this x1000. It is extraordinarily difficult to maintain a healthy diet in the US.
      • RajT88 1y ago
        Also: the human body does not want to lose weight. You get more hungry after exercise. People also are bad at calorie counting because they forget about so many sources of calories (milk/sugar in coffee, snacks, etc). Let's say you figure all that out - keeping to a consistent diet and exercise regime is hard without some structure to maintain it. Example: I was in super good shape when my gym was next to my office, and lots of coworkers would go work out with me. All this before we get to the as-yet-not understood effects of ultra processed foods and microplastics. The body positivity movement I would give next to 0 blame here. May as well blame wokeism.
  • konart 1y ago
    >Wegovy (semaglutide) injection 2.4 mg is an injectable prescription medicine used __with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity__ Just saying. Neither gym not dieting are scams and simply can't be by their nature. People who say that either have some serious health condition (and obviously you can beat some things with will alone) or people who failed at realising that "dieting" is about their consumption habbits. Most people I see with this problem convince themselves that they are on a diet while they continue with their eating habbits. You "just" tricked you brain and made things easier for yourself. Good for you but calling gym and dieting a scam is just laughable.
  • Workaccount2 1y ago
    Your body is a machine that burns calories. Give it less calories and it will burn its calorie stores. You are right that there are a lot of scams that complicate this fact as much as possible to get money from you. But rest assured, if you calculate your TDEE (many simple calcs online), and food scale your calories (everything you eat) to a diet -500 under your TDEE, you will lose weight (or you are a perpetual motion machine).
    • phyphy 1y ago
      Confidently incorrect. Body builds what it thinks it needs. Lifting weights? It will think you need muscles. Living sedentarily? It will think you are conserving evergy and you need fat reserves. Running daily? It will think all the needs are met and you need cognitive strength.
      • Workaccount2 1y ago
        You are just restating what TDEE is.
    • bluecalm 1y ago
      Yeah but it's meaningless. The struggle with losing weight comes from difficult to overcome hunger pangs. Advising people about calorie restriction is the same as advising an alcoholic to just stop drinking. It's easy if you can do it but if you can you wouldn't have a problem to begin with. It is missing the problem entirely.
      • Workaccount2 1y ago
        The good thing about calorie counting is that you can dial in the speed at which you want to lose weight. And then it becomes more about discipline than pushing through hunger. But yeah, no matter what it is going to require mental effort.
  • CooCooCaCha 1y ago
    None of what you described is a scam. Time and again, I’ve found the people who are critical of dieting aren’t doing it right… Which is hard for me to wrap my head around since weight loss boils down to one factor, caloric restriction. You burn more calories than you eat and you lose weight. It’s that simple. All these tricks people use like glp-1 inhibitors and keto all serve the same goal of caloric restriction. GLP-1 reduces appetite which reduces calories, keto removes food groups from your diet and decreases hunger which reduces calories. I’ve been dieting recently and lost 20 pounds just by diligently tracking and restricting my calories. 10 pounds lost in just the past month. In that time I’ve eaten bowls of pasta, pizza, gone out drinking, etc. All I do is accurately track everything I eat (everything), and if I have a less-strict day (like going drinking), I just eat less the next day to make up for it. It’s simple, but it requires some discipline. That’s the real reason people have trouble dieting.
    • doug_durham 1y ago
      My experience aligns with yours. Words like "discipline" come off as moralistic. I know very disciplined people who struggle to lose weight. As someone who lost 40 lbs through long term fixation on calorie counting and exercise, I find it confusing. However when I look in the mirror and consider what I do to maintain my weight I realize that I'm the outlier. It is unrealistic to expect others to adopt my odd lifestyle.
      • galangalalgol 1y ago
        The one time in my adult life I was in my healthy weight range. I got there that way. The maintenance consumed all my waking thoughts and energy. I decided that slightly overweight with a life was better. Staying just slightly overweight is easy for me with a few hours a week of exercise and excluding foods that I find addicting entirely. For me that is baked goods, grains, nuts, and dairy. So the staples of the western diet.
  • ofjcihen 1y ago
    I’m glad you lost the weight either way :) Just want to throw this out there for you and everyone’s benefit. Regular physical activity helps you age gracefully and has a lot of physical and emotional benefits besides weight loss.
  • ninalanyon 1y ago
    In my case it seems that the problem is a combination of stomach capacity and the desire to taste all those lovely things. What works for me is to keep myself occupied, to insist on eating only things that I really want because of the taste, and to eat little at a time but more often. My GP concurs and claims that restricting one's intake by having several small meals instead of one large one results in the stomach effectively shrinking so that over time you find yourself feeling full after a relatively small meal. When I am at home I use a smaller plate at dinner than the rest of my family so that I just can't pile as much on. After nearly a decade of this the result is that I simply cannot eat the same amounts as I used without feeling uncomfortable, so I don't.
• add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
  You're both right, it is in decline and it does still happen. Which is why it's not hopeless, and we really can't have AI as a force multiplier accelerating the decline.
• IgorPartola 1y ago
  I’d like to offer an alternative explanation than AI to this. Shit is just too damn expensive. If you want to go hang out with friends it will cost you $4-8 for a cup of coffee. A dinner starts at $50/person. A trip to an amusement park is over $100 easily. The median individual income in the US currently is just over $65k/year or about $32.50/hour. That means half the workforce makes less than that. When an 8oz cocktail costs you an hour of your life because you work for minimum wage, you’d rather stay home and watch TikTok. But it’s not about the price of going out. It is about the crushing stress of surviving in this economic climate that is leaving people absolutely no energy to go and socialize. Whenever the average personal economy swings back towards “can afford to live in this country” again, people will socialize again. Until then everything will be in decline except stock trading and investment in AI projects.
  • rayiner 1y ago
    Coal miners in 1890s appalachia had healthier and more active social lives than american white collar workers. This does not have anything to do with economics.
    • IgorPartola 1y ago
      I am not saying you are wrong but from what I understood that alcoholism and depression were quite prevalent in those times. Do you have sources for what you are saying?
      • profsummergig 1y ago
        An undiagnosed alcoholic (IMHO) I used to know, would happily spend 6 hours any evening, drinking with anyone, gossiping about completely useless things. They could be doing this with complete strangers whom they would never meet again, they could even be doing this with someone visiting to let them know that they were going to sue them (actually happened at least once). They thought they were very "social". Yeah, if this is what "sociality" means, please spare me its gifts.
        • 1y ago
• xtracto 1y ago
  I'm a 44 yo Xenial, not too old, not young. That is, I'm part of the "walkman generation" . It surprises me how people are less and less open to socialize, to the point that some even see you with disgust if you DARE to interrupt them from.their mobile phone trance. Society nowadays is pretty ugly. Younger generations seem very isolationist to me.
  • dclowd9901 1y ago
    Same gen (42). I feel like we have a really unique lens on all of this, too: old enough to remember being in a smoky bar, socializing (not healthy, but fun as hell), but also young enough to have had some technological exposure at a crucial time of our youth. We _leveraged_ technology for socializing in person. Our online pursuits were around organizing lighthearted social goofiness like "getting iced", LARPing, and flash mobs. All of which would probably make younger generations eye roll to death out of secondary cringe. I guess at some point people started taking themselves way too seriously. Worrying about what others think, or something, I don't know. In a way, social interaction is kind of like a standoff in the dusty streets of an old west town. Someone has to make the first move to expose themselves, and it doesn't seem like anyone wants to be that person anymore.
    • benreesman 1y ago
      I'm about to be 41 and likewise very distinctly remember a time when cell phones were a vehicle for organizing the evening or weekend's plans, quickly making a connection with someone you met ("let me get your number"), whatever, buying weed or something. The point was to make friends, get laid, network without calling it that. The idea was that some of those random people would become your crew of friends, one of those girls would become your wife, and you'd end up settled down to kick off the next generation. And I know some people who did end up settled dowm...but not that many, not like the generation right before mine. Kind of hit or miss in my cohort. Near as I can tell that was still roughly the model on paper if less and less until COVID and lockdown and all that. Something snapped, you can see it walking down the street of any city you knew well before. People never came back outside with the same vigor. I don't claim to understand the causal structure between all the various factors: the bleak economic prospects, the decline in institutions, the increasingly rapacious and cynical Big Tech cabal, there are a ton of factors. But COVID before and after, that's when it collectively became too much to easily bounce back from.
• lentil_soup 1y ago
  Is that actually true? Do we have data for that?
  • ajkjk 1y ago
    Two separate questions, with possibly uncorrelated answers.
• Aurornis 1y ago
  I go out and do different activities that involve socialization. There are more people than ever going to the climbing gyms, meeting at the hiking trailhead, hanging out in the ski lift lines, and so on. All of the social places I’ve been going and activities I’ve been doing since a teenager are more crowded than ever, at a rate far faster than the local population growth. Many of the people doing these activities discovers them online or met others to do it online. I don’t buy the claim that everything social and in-person is in decline. Though I could see how easy it would be to believe that for someone who gets caught in the internet bubble. You’re not seeing the people out and about if you’re always at home yourself.
  • garciasn 1y ago
    Depends on where you live. Areas that have a culture of outdoor activity and strangers talking to one another is a requirement. Here in MN, for example, outdoor activity does exist year round but strangers talking to one another is not.
    • vitaflo 1y ago
      Go to WI, you'll have both in abundance.
  • abeppu 1y ago
    You're basically saying that people who aren't social mistakenly view the rest of the world as not social because of their specific experience, but doesn't that effect also cut the other way? You're seeing people being social because you're going to those situations. But there are time use surveys etc which provide a quantitative view of a lot of people. Because they're voluntary, they can't be a perfect representative sample of the overall population. But I think the broad, systematic view is still the best view we have of the overall trend. Also note that the scale and pace of the trend is slow enough that any individual _can't_ really provide an anecdotal view of it, because their own life is in a different place. E.g. one source [1]: > Atalay reports that, between 2003 and 2019, people spent an increasing amount of time alone. Over this 16-year period, the portion of free time people spent alone increased, on average, from 43.5 percent to 48.7 percent, representing an increase of over 5 percentage points. Any given individual's time-use would probably change over 16 years regardless of what the population-level trends were just because that duration might also be the difference between e.g. being in school vs being married with young children or from being a busy professional to being a retiree. [1] https://www.philadelphiafed.org/the-economy/macroeconomics/how-time-spent-alone-in-the-us-has-changed-over-the-past-two-decades-and-implications-for-well-being https://www.philadelphiafed.org/the-economy/macroeconomics/h...
• dv_dt 1y ago
  Though it's popularized to blame social media and phones, economics should not be overlooked. Pay for young generations is lagging and restaurants and bar prices are super high. Public spaces for informal gatherings has shrunk - eg fewer malls
  • anal_reactor 1y ago
    Bullshit. Most people can afford grabbing a beer in a supermarket and going to the park. They just choose not to. I think the real change is that nowadays it's just easier and more practical NOT to maintain friendships. Yes, it's lonely, but it's more efficient.
    • roncesvalles 1y ago
      Drinking outdoors (let alone at a public park) is just not a thing outside Europe.
      • HPsquared 1y ago
        Literally illegal in many places. Edit: including much of Europe.
        • janderson215 1y ago
          Which in itself is a crime, IMO.
          • HPsquared 1y ago
            Most places do have a few dedicated areas like beer gardens. No supermarket beer allowed, of course.
            • trinix912 1y ago
              So it's not true freedom for everyone; you're just staying at someone's place so the local rules of public space don't apply there.
• dec0dedab0de 1y ago
  I think this is an ai response
• guestbest 1y ago
  I’ve got little kids and let me tell you, lots of parents are unplugged after work. We meet at the parks, museums and libraries
• jmyeet 1y ago
  I agree that socializing and so-called "third places" are in decline but we have to ask why. I'll spoil it for you: it's capitalism. Where once a family could easily be supported on a single income and you could afford to send your kids to college, real wages have been stagnant for decades and people now need 5 jobs between 2 people to not be homeless. Why? Student debt, medical debt, mortgage debt. The time we spend not working is time we spend not making someone else slightly wealthier. So people don't have the time nor the disposable income to socialize. And even if they did those activities continue to get more expensive because housing specifically and property generally gets more expensive and that's an input into the cost of every real world activity. But again, somebody is profiting from that. Additionally people are in for a rude shock. They see light at the end of the tunnel when their parents or grandparents pass and they inherit housing or sufficient wealth for housing. But many of these people won't see a dime thanks to draining long-term elderly care, particularly with Medicaid funding being stripped. The capital-owning class wants you in debt. They don't want you owning anything. They will want us in worker housing. We are becoming South Asian brick kiln workers with nicer TVs.
  • lunar-whitey 1y ago
    People who downvote this need to think very hard about whether their preferred solution is workable, or if they are simply ignoring the problem because they can. It’s unpleasant to say that people actively desire the current outcomes, but nature does not care how people feel. It is valid to say the purpose of a system is what it does.
• fHr 1y ago
  dating biggest oof, dating has become a second job if you still try to as a man
• positron26 1y ago
  Okay doomer
• calaphos 1y ago
  But these social third places have also shifted. Younger generations aren't going out as much but e.g. playing video games specifically with other close friends is very popular.
• isatty 1y ago
  I don't understand the sentence in question any way. "TikTok, Pornhub, Candy Crush, Sudoku" has never been a replacement for "meet for drinks, work out at the gym, go on dates" To be fair, I have not used TikTok or Candy Crush, but let's say Youtube Shorts and a random video game instead. Still does not compute.
• boh 1y ago
  People who live on the internet assume this is true because they only deal with people who also live on the internet. Just because we're not all documenting everything that we do to a nebulous public doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Much of what happens in the social world isn't articulated or available for scientific study. You might be surprised to know that bars, clubs, gyms, concerts, trivia nights aren't empty. "In decline" is the sort of state that's can only be articulated in abstract terms. Stop rationalizing your loneliness as a societal ill. Getting to know people is your problem and society offers many solutions.
  • kaashif 1y ago
    > "In decline" is the sort of state that's can only be articulated in abstract terms. It absolutely is not. It's very concrete and is a real problem. In the UK, for example, there's a well documented trend of pubs and clubs shutting as business declines. And this has real world impacts or causes, the number of people who are single is rising substantially: https://archive.is/kyk2L https://archive.is/kyk2L This isn't rationalizing personal loneliness as a societal ill. It's noticing a societal ill based on real world effects.
    • password321 1y ago
      > In the UK, for example, there's a well documented trend of pubs and clubs shutting as business declines. Just to be clear, this is a sign of a cultural shift. Pubs are an old English tradition that people aren't interested in as much anymore. They would rather go to a sushi restaurant or go get curry. Same thing has happened with fish and chips shops.
    • sw030695 1y ago
      Pubs and clubs are declining due to a cultural shift amongst the young. Alcohol isn't cool for the younger generations and a larger cohort of young people can be found in the gym and running around than ever before. If I was an investing man I'd stick all of my money into Garmin, running shoe companies, gyms and the like.
  • vitaflo 1y ago
• PicassoCTs 1y ago
  Society just feels hollowed out, puppeteered, constantly acting against itself and the interest of the people, nice faces, nice gestures, nasty acts and in the end just happy, friendly enemies with enemies on top. I know, the e-destructions are there to make a society of 8billion "happy" as can be without ravaging the planet, but the life this creates is absolute misery. I rather prefer death or war to that.
• whateveracct 1y ago
  I think "in decline" is too zoomed out. What's happening is a gap - people are becoming more bimodal with respect to these things. There are lots of people who live pretty normal lives (by the standards of the last 20-40y) but there are also so many people who have nihilistic views of it all and are left behind.
• _proofs 1y ago
  uhhh, while covid affected things this certainly has not been the case for my life at all. the last 7 years of my life have been filled with nothing but community. from skate diys and meetups, and other outdoor activities to, skate diys, bars, live music, and gym communities (once regular programming resumed post covid). if you feel this isolated i am inclined to ask -- what is it about your life that seemingly lacks these things? i have somehow managed to find community wherever i go and wherever my interests guide me. what experience of yours caused you to arrive at "they actually don't"? people in my city are always out and about and socializing and walking their dogs or getting drinks or coffee or working remotely or at work spaces or in offices or whatever. they go out on weekends and drink and eat and hang with friends. i recently went to berlin and as an american i could not get enough of the summer vibe, the sparkaufts and casual communal hangs and byob bars. where do you live?
• weatherlite 1y ago
  > Everything from dating and fitness to manufacturing and politics is in decline in activities Source ? At least about fitness - I'm a regular runner and I've never seen so many people jog outside. Not sure what's going on in gyms though.
• PeterStuer 1y ago
  A good fitness membership is outside of the reach of many young people. Not that they could not afford it at all, but it would be a serious expense not taken lightly. Same for restaurant and bar bills, or catching a film. Not like the old days where you could go out drinking with your friends each evening by just having a light student job and some summer work.
• odiroot 1y ago
  > Everything from dating and fitness to manufacturing and politics is in decline in activities And here I am regularly having to wait for a free squat rack ;)
• appease7727 1y ago
  Wondering why social activities are declining in the West is like asking why the Victorian slums didn't have a more active night life. Everyone's too busy scrambling to survive.
• freejazz 1y ago
  They actually do. Might be less people than before, but plenty still do. I live in a moderately cool neighborhood in Brooklyn. It's crazy Thursday through Saturday. Bars, parties, everyone everywhere, parks full. Baseball, run crews, volleyball and slack-liners. There was a hacky-sack club. Outdoor farmers market, packed. Tiny little street-corner vintage flea, packed. Restaurants spilling out everywhere. Maybe get outside if you really think that people "actually don't" or that there aren't "enough" of them. Society is right here, chugging along.
• bookfa 1y ago
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