Loneliness
Story Stream
“Monk Mode” Is Destroying Young Men January 21, 2025
Explorations of the American loneliness epidemic are everywhere these days—and with good reason. The rise of the “anti-social century,” as Derek Thompson labeled it last week, has had disastrous effects across our culture and politics. Young men migh...
The Anti-Social Century January 09, 2025
The Bar Is ClosedA short drive from my home in North Carolina is a small Mexican restaurant, with several tables and four stools at a bar facing the kitchen. On a sweltering afternoon last summer, I walked in with my wife and daughter. The place was ...
Robert Eggers’s 'Nosferatu' Is a Modern Gothic Triumph January 08, 2025
Somewhere in the overcast German town of Wisborg, our weeping protagonist, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), emerges from the shadowy corners of her bedroom. Enveloped in an aching loneliness as dense as the sheet of darkness that blankets her, she cries out t...
'Nosferatu' and the Erotics of Evil January 08, 2025
Hello and welcome to Many Such Cases.I hope you all had a lovely holiday season. I enjoyed a nice little break from working and writing, but make no mistake — I thought of you all and this newsletter every day. I have a few essays on the horizon, inc...
Americans Need to Party More January 07, 2025
This much you already know: Many Americans are alone, friendless, isolated, undersexed, sick of online dating, glued to their couches, and transfixed by their phones, their mouths starting to close over from lack of use. Our national loneliness is an...
Can an AI Friend Solve the Loneliness Epidemic? December 19, 2024
Avi Schiffmann wants to create what he calls an “Ozempic for loneliness.” He believes Friend — his AI-powered chatbot and forthcoming wearable pendant — can address the loneliness epidemic....
We Live In Imaginary Worlds October 23, 2024
We are all aware by now that this is a lonely age. Friendships feel shallow and superficial. Local communities have deteriorated. The promise of constant connection turned out to be a cruel trap. A generation with access to billions of people say the...
The Loneliness of the Bullfighter October 18, 2024
The most frequently used word in the new film by director Albert Serra is “balls,” but almost as frequently used is “truth.” Following the killing of a bull in which the subject of the film, the young Peruvian bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey, took near-i...
Blue Walls Falling Down October 09, 2024
An Excerpt from Blue Walls Falling Down: A NovelStella Tęsknota was ready to marry Blake Yourrick, the troubled if earnest protagonist of Infinite Regress. In this stand-alone novel (and loose sequel), set after Blake abruptly—and inexplicably—breaks...
France’s Most Controversial Novelist October 09, 2024
Michel Houellebecq — arguably the most important French writer of the past quarter-century — was perched on the seat of his chair like a bird. We were sitting in his dim Paris apartment in August, a spectacularly beautiful day visible through his cur...
The Surprising Truth About Loneliness in America August 15, 2024
Who are the loneliest people in America?American men were said to be in a “friendship recession,” with a survey finding the number of men without any close friends increased fivefold since 1990. Meanwhile, resurfaced comments from Republican vice pre...
What’s Behind America’s Loneliness Crisis? July 26, 2024
American loneliness has, not for the first time, given birth to a bustling new industry. Last year, in a truly conversation-changing move, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released an eighty-two-page warning about the dangers of this growing public-...
Aren’t You Lonely? July 08, 2024
The most common question people ask me when I say I don’t use Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, or TikTok is: aren't you lonely? Aren’t you cut off? How do you stay in touch? In a way these are strange questions.I find it strange because my generation, ...
What’s Behind America’s Loneliness Crisis? July 04, 2024
American loneliness has, not for the first time, given birth to a bustling new industry. Last year, in a truly conversation-changing move, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released an eighty-two-page warning about the dangers of this growing public-...
The Loneliness of the Low-Ranking Tennis Player July 02, 2024
I was 10 when I first told my folks that I wanted to give up playing tennis. They didn’t yield then, and they never did. Tennis was our family business. I first picked up a racket at the age of three, and spent 15 years of my life travelling the worl...
The Adventure of Loneliness March 21, 2024
Loneliness has undergone a rebranding in the last decade. Where once it was a feeling that touched all of us at different times, for different durations, and for different reasons, it is now seen as something much more narrow and grave. Loneliness wa...
It's Obviously the Phones March 06, 2024
A year ago, I published an opinion essay for the New York Times that changed the trajectory of my career. It was about how fewer Americans are having sex, across nearly every demographic. For any of the usual caveats — wealth, age, orientation —the d...
On Robert Glück’s “About Ed” March 01, 2024
Following their first night together, as the sun poured through the window, Ed Aulerich-Sugai recounted his dreams to Robert Glück. Still closeted to their families, both men were "paranoid," trapped between selves, and drawn to the catalyzing energy...
Why Are We All So Obsessed With Book Clubs Now? February 16, 2024
In years gone by, the phrase “book club” might have conjured up images of middle-aged women congregating in dusty, musty rooms, swigging sauv blanc and giggling over Fifty Shades of Grey, but times are changing. Book clubs are currently having a revi...
Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out February 15, 2024
In its earliest decades, the United States was celebrated for its citizens’ extroversion. Americans weren’t just setting out to build new churches and new cities. Their associations were, as Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “of a thousand different types...
The Internet Has Killed off Romance February 14, 2024
How St Valentine came to be associated with romance is disputed. Some suggest the third-century martyr’s feast “Christianised” a Roman fertility festival — but the first mention of his day in connection with love comes more than 1,000 years after his...
In Praise of Male Friendship February 08, 2024
Men have fewer friends than ever. Be it in the US or the UK, male social circles have been shrinking. Millions of British men have no close friends at all. Three decades ago, more than 50% of American men claimed to have at least six close friends. N...
Robots Are No Substitute for a Social Life February 02, 2024
It’s ironic that in a world of over eight billion people, loneliness is epidemic. In the United States alone, an astonishing 47 percent of people “often feel alone, left out and lacking meaningful connection with others.” 27 percent of Americans rare...
How to Save a Sad, Lonely, Angry and Mean Society January 29, 2024
Recently, while browsing in the Museum of Modern Art store in New York, I came across a tote bag with the inscription, “You are no longer the same after experiencing art.” It’s a nice sentiment, I thought, but is it true? Or to be more specific: Does...
On the Possibility of ‘Late Love’ January 23, 2024
Peter Stamm’s new novel, The Archive of Feelings (Other Press, December, 2023) interrogates the old French aphorism on n’aime qu’une fois, la première (one’s first love is one’s only love). Or, as Cat Stevens might put it, “the first cut is the deepe...
