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This is a dumb "question" I'm just flabbergasted in a low key situation. Going to Mexico for my wife's friend's wedding. Taking my small kids, gonna be something...
Happens to be down in Mexico for Mexico's first World Cup knock out match. I don't like soccer it's for the poor's but this is falls under "few in a life time opportunities" in my mind. The one guy I kind of know on the trip turned me down going out to watch the game (at a bar, or sport garden) because he hates crowds and sports. I've always struggled not to judge this guy as a loser (sulks around and whines a lot), this really doesn't help. Literally I don't think any other person I know would turn down an invite like this. Am I being too harsh?
Translated to English:
I fail to see what having no interest in crowds and sports has to do with being a loser. To such a person, a "few-in-a-lifetime" high-profile event would be more annoying, not less annoying.
(Disclaimer: There are several reasons for which I can be considered a loser, but I don't think that my lack of interest in crowds and sports is one of them.)
(Anecdote: In my freshman year of college, the university (or maybe just the engineering college—I don't recall the details) gave to every freshman a free ticket to a local baseball game and made a joking threat that everybody was required to attend it. I found it profoundly uninteresting, and left after the first inning (or maybe after the first half-inning—I don't recall the details).)
It doesn't in and of itself. Correlation, but certainly not a given. I know lot's of guys that hate crowds and have no interest in soccer, every one of them in my circle would recognize this as a rare opportunity to do something interesting - something that "cool" people think is "cool". It's being unwilling to be uncomfortable for a limited period of time to partake in a rare enough opportunity that tends towards "loser" behavior.
I think baseball sucks as much as soccer, I don't live near a MLB team so when I am on a work trip in a city with one and get invited to an MLB game, I go. Because it's a semi-rare opportunity.
Anecdote from my freshman year of college. I found myself turning down invites because I liked watching pirated shows, and films. A few weeks in I decided to never turn down an invite unless I had a very good excuse. Not disappointed in that choice at all.
There are people that I would consider "cool" who would turn down such and invite, but got to amp up the "coolness" in some other areas to compensate.
I made this kind of decision sometime after college. It's one of my bigger regrets in life, as it raised the amount of suffering I went through in everyday life without providing any meaningful positives. No particular big negative event came out of it, just a constant long-term significant reduction in quality of life compared to the alternative. I ended up regretting it enough to basically reverse it about 5 years ago, never saying Yes to an invite unless there was some specific reason I really wanted to go or to hang out with those specific people. My life has been a lot better in those ~5 years.
And if that choice makes people happier/more content/whatever else, that's great one should 100% live that life.
Socializing is a lot like eating well or exercising. Some people naturally stay thin and fit, while others are just really lucky and actually love working out.
If someone is content with their life, doesn’t get lonely, or in another example has no problem with the reduced mobility that comes with obesity, no skin off my back. On The Motte, I tend to believe people are willing to accept the trade-offs of their actions (or lack thereof). For society at large, I highly suspect that’s generally not true. I see the "male loneliness epidemic" as very similar to obesity. Society used to heavily incentivize not becoming obese, just as it heavily incentivized building and maintaining social circles. Now modernity has removed the guardrails, so people pursue short-term desires and later lament the long-term outcomes.
I think this is an apt analogy (along with the stuff about how society has failed a lot of people both in terms of loneliness and obesity) but also not quite right. Eating well or exercising, by nature of physics, definitionally causes someone to stay thin (tautologically by what "eating well" means, to some extent) and arguably fit. But socializing doesn't have similar effect for loneliness. I'd say that building meaningful connections with others is what leads to preventing the deleterious effects akin to preventing obesity. One of my great insights that I had as an adult is that socializing by, e.g. spending lots of periodic time with like-minded people who enjoy your company and like you for who you are and vice versa, doing activities that everyone enjoys and/or is passionate about doesn't actually lead to building meaningful connections or relationships.
I suppose this prompts the question: what does?
My mantra is always "repeated unstructured interaction". Activities are good at building shallow relationships, but it's when you're just hanging out and talking about stuff (alcohol helps) that you build the friendship.
Blueprint for building a friendship:
Sit in your dining room with the prospective friend.
Pull out a long printed list of conversation topics.
Pick a topic. After discussing it in whatever detail seems necessary, cross it off the list and take a shot (1 2) of distilled liquor.
Continue until one of you vomits or passes out.
Repeat as necessary (on different days) until you judge that friendship either has been achieved or will not be achieved.
(This is a joke.)
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