In "
Friends of a Certain Age,"
the New York Times Style Section examines how life stages affect friendship, citing the college years as America's prime friendship-making time. Why? Because as we get older and "external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other."
[more inside]
posted by Violet Blue
on Jul 15, 2012 -
67 comments
The Opposite of Loneliness Graduating Yale senior Marina Keegan wrote a column for the commencement edition of the paper celebrating "tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers — partner-less, tired, awake." She
died in a car crash on Saturday. The column she wrote is a poignant eulogy.
posted by fedward
on May 29, 2012 -
53 comments
Counting Stars is a powerful and touching comic from artist Katie O’Neill, which looks at loneliness, wishes, and what we might really need more than a white knight to come along and rescue us.
[more inside]
posted by quin
on Mar 5, 2012 -
11 comments
"Every day there are untold millions of comments, texts, and online interactions. Millions. And each one says, I am here and I extend my consciousness to there. There might have been a time when humans were content to sit and simply be, like the goat I saw yesterday sitting contently in a patch of sunshine at the Lincoln Park Zoo. That time was long ago. We want the news. We want to chatter and gossip. We want to say "I am alive" in a billion billion different ways. And now here is internet, providing such an easy, easy way to do
that."
posted by nomadicink
on Nov 19, 2010 -
35 comments
"Nisan didn’t mean to fall in love with Nemutan. Their first encounter -- at a comic-book convention that Nisan’s gaming friends dragged him to in Tokyo -- was serendipitous. Nisan was wandering aimlessly around the crowded exhibition hall when he suddenly found himself staring into Nemutan’s bright blue eyes... 'I’ve experienced so many amazing things because of her,' Nisan told me, rubbing Nemutan’s leg warmly. 'She has really changed my life.'
Nemutan doesn’t really have a leg. She’s a stuffed pillowcase — a 2-D depiction of a character, Nemu, from an X-rated version of a PC video game called Da Capo." The New York Times' Lisa Katayama on "2-D lovers" in Japan, the latest outgrowth of
otaku subculture.
posted by digaman
on Jul 23, 2009 -
166 comments
Imagine if you were the only person on earth; if no one else could understand you except yourself. No matter how hard you tried, you could never make contact with the outside world, not for long at least. This is the life of a
Schizophrenic.
Here, in a simulation created to understand what a typical trip to the pharmacy is for a patient suffering from Schizophrenia [
previously], you will experience for a few minutes what life is all about for people afflicted with this disease.
(via) [more inside]
posted by hadjiboy
on Sep 11, 2008 -
53 comments
"I am so lonely." Search Google using
that phrase and you may end up
here. Some of the posts in this thread really resonate, "I feel so much better that I am not the only one that typed in "I am lonely" on google. How pathetic that I have nothing better to do. It is amazing that I can be so extremely successful at work and so lonely at home."
posted by VelvetHellvis
on Jun 21, 2005 -
51 comments
