Sherry Turkle believes that as we expect more from technology, we expect less from each other. (SLTedTalk)
posted by Evernix on Apr 6, 2012 - 41 comments

Screenshots of Despair [more inside]
posted by pantsrobot on Mar 25, 2012 - 23 comments

"In a sense, living alone represents the self let loose. In the absence of . . . “surveilling eyes,” the solo dweller is free to indulge his or her odder habits — what is sometimes referred to as Secret Single Behavior. Feel like standing naked in your kitchen at 2 a.m., eating peanut butter from the jar? Who’s to know? . . . What emerges over time, for those who live alone, is an at-home self that is markedly different — in ways big and small — from the self they present to the world. We all have private selves, of course, but people who live alone spend a good deal more time exploring them."
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear on Feb 25, 2012 - 100 comments

Alone In The Wilderness "Documentary tells the story of Dick Proenneke who, in the late 1960s, built his own cabin in the wilderness at the base of the Aleutian Peninsula, in what is now Lake Clark National Park. Using color footage he shot himself, Proenneke traces how he came to this remote area, selected a homestead site and built his log cabin completely by himself. The documentary covers his first year in-country, showing his day-to-day activities and the passing of the seasons as he sought to scratch out a living alone in the wilderness." (Color, 57mins)
posted by puny human on May 2, 2011 - 62 comments

Table For One.
posted by allkindsoftime on Sep 16, 2010 - 191 comments

Depending on how permanent Sharpie markers really are, I may have managed to confuse anthropologists years from now, who will surely wonder how it is that hermit crabs on Jabonwod are numbered. — US Congressman Jeff Flake (R-AZ) spends a week alone on an uninhabited island in the Kwajalein atoll.
posted by blasdelf on Oct 14, 2009 - 45 comments

Why I'm Alone: "People ask me why I'm still alone, and why I don't seek to date much, eight years after my husband died. I thought about it the other day, and came up with a few of the reasons."
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Mar 28, 2009 - 195 comments

"The definitive list of single-player games." Here's another. And if your Paypal account balance means eBay isn't an option, here's a whole mess of stuff to do by yourself with a basic deck of cards.
posted by jbickers on Jun 17, 2007 - 3 comments

Contrary to popular belief, not all loners have a pathological fear of social contact "Loners often hear from well-meaning peers that they need to be more social, but the implication that they're merely black-and-white opposites of their bubbly peers misses the point."
posted by 2shay on May 16, 2007 - 89 comments

Alone. Ahhh. Sigh. 27 Million Singles Do Whatever They Want. All by Themselves.

The problem with census data is there's never space for a longer answer to the question. (Yes, I live like this but I didn't plan to. See, here's what happened . . . ) This week's newsy trickle across the national spreadsheet reveals, among other things, that more Americans than ever live alone. Twenty-seven million people, give or take. That's a lot of air guitar being played in private. That's a lot of bowls of cereal eaten over the sink around 1 in the morning.....

Do you fit into this scenario? I know I do.

posted by perogi on May 19, 2001 - 33 comments