In urban areas, we really should have less cars. But it’s emblema of a deeper issue; the interests of control and convenience in one’s time has crowded out everything else. If you have an established social circle and a decent income there’s never been a better time to take charge of your social life. Unfortunately the most able to change the system for those who have neither of these things are the least likely to understand. It’s a tough and old question to be honest

Number one in managing loneliness: stand on your own legs. Realise that true happiness comes from inside not from outside, find meaning in just being alive.

Second is family, parents until 30's and then your own. Wife, kids will always be there, either on Wednesday night or on Christmas. You will give no f for others.

Third long time friends in decreasing time scale: high school, college/uni, work.

Fourth you reach out any club you find, from mushroom lovers to blind date lovers.

Get off social media, and go do things you enjoy that aren’t centered around consuming.

Volunteer at a museum if you like art, etc.

You just have to go live and bump into other people living in the world.

There is an old joke or trope of an evil scientist creating a worm that destroys the Internet and everyone ends up thanking him for saving the world.

I think one solution is to have more accessible public spaces where people can meet. As a host of board game meetups, my biggest challenge is finding places to meet. I had to stop hosting Friday game nights because the available spaces were too expensive or closed early.

I'm working on an open source non-commercial website to drive up demand for public spaces. https://createthirdplaces.org/

Kids make friends pretty easily when they go to school and later college. Only after graduating college it becomes very hard to make friends.

So one solution is have folks attend classes in schools and universities or even local libraries during weekends. Classes specifically designed for different age groups - 30s, 40s, 50s etc. Classes related music, personal finance, investing, art, sports, cooking etc

Govt should offer tax breaks for attending these classes. That would attract a lot of people.

You can organize things. It's surprisingly easy. You just put up a FB event.

When I was younger and moved to a new (foreign) city, The first thing I did was to create a "picnic" for people coming from my country. No agenda, no nothing, let's just hang out and have some wine, cheese and chat while sitting on the grass. You'd be surprised how successful this was, and some of them keep running regularly without me for over a decade now.

For me, the loneliest period of my life was when I was socially active but hanging out with people that I didn't really like or respect. Don't neglect spiritual and mental health as a strong component of loneliness. It's not always about dragging your body from one event to another to maximize the number of people in your life. You have to make sure your mind, body and spirit are present and aligned.

> You have to be the one who creates things to do.

This. Isn't it fascinating that for all the different ways we have to reach people (almost immediately, anywhere in the world, at virtually no cost) and all the different social entertainment options, people feel unable to perform an action that is so simple? An action that their ancestors going back all the way to the hominids has done at massively greater costs to them?

What is it that makes people feel this powerless?

Encouraging people to meet up in everyday life and gathering them just to talk is where I’d simply start.

In that spirit I have created and deployed a vibe coded app: come have dinner.com (not the real website).

A simple website we share with my SO to our loved ones, friends, co workers and more. People can register to come have dinner at ours, with an attendance they don’t know.

The website has an admin interface with a simple password, some good jokes, email reminders and calendar invitations.

Should I open source it?