The Four Shades of Loneliness

Loneliness is at least 4-dimensional.

Vivek Murthy’s identifies three dimensions in his book Together:

• Intimate loneliness (not being known). Longing for a close confidante or intimate partner. Needing someone with whom you share deep mutual bond of affection and trust.

• Communal loneliness (not being surrounded). When you feel disconnected from a larger group, network, or community that shares your interests and values. You may long for the sense of belonging and shared purpose that comes from being part of a collective or community.

• Relational loneliness (not being connected). This occurs when you miss having reliable friends and companions—people you can turn to for social activities, conversation, and support. It involves wanting meaningful friendships and regular interaction with others who genuinely care about you.

In addition, as Emily Kuret convincingly argues, there’s a fourth facet:

• Intellectual loneliness.

Intellectual loneliness emerges when we lack meaningful discourse and exchange of ideas with others who share our curiosity and depth of thinking.

It's the isolation felt when our thoughts, theories, and intellectual pursuits find no resonance in our social circles.

It’s that feeling when you want to leave a social gathering because everyone is just talking about events and people instead of ideas.

It’s why Elon Musk gets up “from the dinner table without a word of explanation to head outside and look at the stars, simply because he’s not willing to suffer fools or small talk.”

In a twist that, as far as I know, no futurist predicted, technology so far has only fueled the loneliness crisis.

Dating apps like Tinder have paradoxically made intimate loneliness worse by commodifying relationships.

Infinite home entertainment like computer games and streaming services fuel the death of third spaces. The individualization of entertainment also means there are fewer shared cultural touchstones to discuss.

At best, social media platforms create shallow interactions rather than genuine bonds.

They also killed most other forms of digital publishing and community like independent blogs and niche forums.

Podcasts create a fake feeling of hanging out with friends or intellectual stimulation. They are one-way streets that create parasocial relationships without real connection.

AirPods allow you to talk to anyone at any time but in practice are more often used to isolate ourselves from our immediate surroundings and fellow humans. They create invisible barriers between people in public spaces, discouraging spontaneous interactions.

Remote work, while theoretically freeing up more time for social interactions, often leads to increased isolation as casual office interactions disappear.

But not all is lost.

It’s just that all iterations so far made matters worse or didn’t quite work out.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying.

Web 1.0 with blogs and niche forums did a pretty solid job at fostering a sense of community and providing civilizedintellectual discourse.

Web 2.0 started with good intentions.

Facebook connected college students.

Early Twitter facilitated real-world conversations instead of replacing them.

Meetup and Couchsurfing were able to bring people together in meaningful ways for a while.

But then platforms got corrupted by ad dollars and VC-fueled dreams of hypergrowth.

Web 3.0 sounded promising, but quickly lost its way when gamblers and scammers took over.

So what’s next?

The next iteration needs to learn from these failures.

There are first signs of what the future might look like.

Substack is starting to become the new home for independent writers and thinkers. It’s VC funded, but at least takes a strong stance against ad dollars.

Local creative, reading, running, and walking clubs are starting to emerge.

Cal Newport keeps preaching digital minimalism. Single-purpose devices are rising in popularity.

And most importantly, AI will have the exact opposite effect that most experts predict.

It will play a huge role in solving the loneliness epidemic.

Not because people will have all their needs met from interactions with AI models.

Instead, AI will drive us back to human connection by making digital entertainment less appealing.

When AI is ubiquitous, we'll realize its emptiness and seek authentic human experiences.

The pendulum will swing back towards authenticity and meaningful interaction.