"I have no friends" A video that has gone viral

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This video, widely posted on the situation of many people, has had over a million views.
 
That is really sad, isn’t it? Makes us remember the need to reach out to people and not assume everything in their life is just fine.
 
More and more, I feel like the unspoken, unacknowledged crisis in our modern age is a lack of genuine friendships.

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I feel like a great number of our current issues and problems would solve themselves if we put time and attention into cultivating genuine friendship. We would be less likely to treat people in utilitarian ways. We would be more likely to notice when something is going on with someone. There wouldn’t be the same degree of polarization that pits us vs. them.
 
Sad reality. I can understand what this gentleman is saying. Many of us have acquaintances and coworkers, but outside of that there are fewer people that have actual friends.

It seems like many people, especially the younger generation, define their friends by how many people follow them on social media. Their self worth is sometimes attributed to how many likes they get on their posts and videos.

I think this has lead to a growing disconnect amongst people and especially this new generation, who no longer cultivate friendships, but instead open up to others by inviting the world into their daily routines via social media.
 
The flip side of this is I have met people who have dozens of friends and they still consider themselves lonely because 99.9 percent of those friends apparently aren’t what they are seeking in a friend.

Also, this man pretty clearly knows and interacts with many, many people. So in that case he needs to ask himself what he needs to do in order to find some friends through that circle. Perhaps he asked himself that, and this video is what he decided to do.

The people I feel the most sorry for are the ones who don’t have a big LinkedIn network or some other channel to meet people. They may be ill or isolated. For many of them, the Internet is a godsend because they can find people to talk to on there.

I think loneliness is never going away. It was equally present when people lived in small towns and were more into each other’s business - there were whole novels written about loneliness in that setting. It just takes a different form now.
 
I sometimes think that people spend so much time on social media like Facebook or twitter or whatever, discussing really trivial, pointless things, that some people really don’t have a clue what real friendship means anymore. People converse about trivial things and chatter on with their opinions to people that are not in their lives and most likely never will be.

Yes, for some it is their only connection to other people and they do this to feel less isolated. But at the same time, it continues the cycle of just barely knowing people.

People are talking more, and communicating less.
 
Yes lack of friends and family I feel is the worst cross on this planet earth. Mother Theresa said the feeling of being unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty.
 
Social media is what you make it. I’ve used mine in the last 24 hours to chat with a geographically distant relative, cheer on a friend whose house is finally being repaired after a natural disaster, and post funny pictures of animals to cheer my friends up. I do see plenty of deep discussions about things like mental health. I usually choose to stay out of them because I have a hard time understanding some people’s feelings and situations, and i dont want to upset someone by saying the wrong thing, but there’s definitely sharing and support going on there beyond the trivial. I also know that if I posted on there about a tragedy in my life, many, many people would be supportive.
 
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I agree. I think forums can be different than Facebook type sites, but also in the way people approach their use to begin with. Somehow, I am sure that the people you are friends with on Facebook for example, are more like actual friends than the type of silly billy adding of random people requesting your “friend”ship.
 
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Exactly. I rarely add people I don’t know/ have not met in person, for about the last 10 years now. During the 10 years before that I was on another platform where I was much more into adding random people just because I liked their username, etc. I really met a mixed bag of folks doing that. I ended up meeting a lot of those folks in person (though not all). Some became pretty good friends, some just drifted off as we didn’t have enough in common, some were real horror shows in the end. The interesting part was meeting people whose life stories were so wildly different from mine, I’d have never encountered them in real life.

Before i embarked on social media in about 1997, I had a long time bucket list goal of wanting to go on some communications channel like CB radio or computer bulletin board or Usenet, and meet interesting people. I had a fascination going back to my teens with technology communication channels. I still do but being old now I’m more aware of risks and less enthusiastic about connecting with strangers.
 
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So I have no idea who that guy is. For all I know he’s spent his entire life burning bridges and stabbing people in the back.

I also don’t know why it would be shared by anyone. The video has no real content other than some random guy saying “I have no friends”. Maybe he should write a country music song about it.
 
Reminds me of the video last month of the kid whose dad threw a birthday party for him and none of the invited guests showed up.
 
I find it hard to maintain close as relationships with other men in my age group because I’m so busy with my wife and children.

Would I fall into this “loneliness” category? I’m literally never alone so I don’t feel lonely. If anything, I could use some time to myself.
 
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If you don’t feel lonely, you aren’t.

I’m alone most of the time but I’m often too busy to feel lonely. Occasionally I do feel lonely and I try to join my sufferings to that of the lonely Jesus at that time. And remember that Jesus and the saints are all with me. My loneliness is not really the kind I can fix by just joining some new hobby group.

I also have to admit that there are some benefits to being alone. I’ve always been a bit solitary my whole life. Like a bear in the woods, they sometimes will have interactions with other bears like their family, but usually they are going around alone.
 
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Like Mother Teresa said, the spiritual poverty in the West is worse than the physical poverty in the East.
 
Welshrabbit said:
Would I fall into this “loneliness” category? I’m literally never alone so I don’t feel lonely. If anything, I could use some time to myself.
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Loneliness and solitude are two distinct feelings. The video illustrates this concept perfectly.

The man in the video may crave solitude after a busy day, but he also craves some form of human connection. He can’t make friends because he has a network, not a community. A network is not a bad thing; it gets productive things done. But you can’t seek friendship within a network. In our age, networks are strong, and communities are weak.

As a busy dad, you might actually appreciate a male friend or two so that you can go fishing, to a pub and catch a game, or whatever helps you blow off some steam. It’s called self-care, and your wife may need it, too. Even the most introverted among us need to connect to others on some level.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
and I try to join my sufferings to that of the lonely Jesus at that time.
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I’ve been wondering about uniting our sufferings to Jesus… do we say a prayer like “Jesus, I unite my suffering to yours” and then poof it’s united? And can all suffering be united?
 
I say, “All for Thee dear Jesus, Who has suffered so much for me,” which also reminds me of His Passion and His love for me.
 
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