Keeble

"the bird"

left wing bird, online and trying this " alternative social media" thing again. recently unionized barista. Weekly wikipedia streamer. ❤ @proxy ❤30. Avi: me!

last.fm listening


At some point I wanna write a big thing on the growing problem of what I call “techno-hermits”: people trapped at home addicted to delivery apps and essentially afraid of going outside or talking to anyone outside their ingroup that survive basically on media consumption and discord, in a prison of their own making, with no meaningful community support or way to dig them out of this hole


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in reply to @Keeble's post:

i've noticed that people who are stuck in this situation celebrate that they never "need" to leave the house/apartment. it's a good thing to them and i don't know if they're outwardly lying and know how it hurts them or just fail to see it at all.

awhile back i said something along the lines of "it's healthy to be out in public" in a discord server and was met with an adamant rebuttal. i've gone on long periods of avoiding public intereaction before, pre-covid even. if i had gotten hooked on ordering everything online rather than going to a store, i'd probably have ended up just like this.

and the thing is, I AM covid concious and very much know about ways to leave the house and have healthy social engagement with minimal risk. some people who are more risk averse than me do the same. "i never leave the house at all" (even to take a walk with a mask apart from everyone outside, literally the least risky thing one can do) indicates, to me, something beyond covid conciousness (which is good, and a frankly logical amount of risk conciousness!) at a certain point anxiety starts letting anything be an excuse and if that excuse has truth to it, all the more intoxicating

i guess i'm not sure how to square this with my partner, who is in a similar situation because of extremely severe agoraphobia, to the point where they feel horrible being seen by anyone in almost any situation. i'm not sure if this is side-stepping the issue you brought up, but i know a lot of people who seem to be in the same boat as my partner

yeah, thats the sort of thing i talk about. its anxiety that manifests itself in isolation via such risk averseness that essentially no way of leaving the house is acceptable unless it procures a product for them and sometimes not even then. i feel for you, and for them, and that issue i think goes above our paygrades. the best thing i can suggest is: first developing some sort of intra house routine if they dont have one already. like if they're not leaving their room, that's the first step. develop routines of some sort. start slow. a half a walk block outside with a mask and sunglasses on so nobody can recognize you is progress, imo

It definitely would need to intersect with discussion of disability. Most people I know in this situation are in such a situation due to agoraphobia but also because of just finding it very difficult to be outside for autism reasons. Their home is a very controlled environment and they get very quickly overstimulated by things outside their home. There's a lot of people who at least claim to be quite happy as a techno-hermit because everything being controlled and the same is how they manage to function with their particular shape of the tism. Who, without this way of living, probably couldn't functionally provide for themselves and live independently. People who probably before this level of technological progress would have been considered "very low functioning"

It absolutely does dovetail with this but the more specific manifestation I’m dealing with in my personal life involves someone who is, at least from my assessment, not at all thriving in this situation. All of that stuff does absolutely impact it though. If you’d be willing to talk privately I’d be curious on your take bc I don’t know what to do