Solaria is rising

This is exactly the kind of article which I in principle disdain, but in this instance have to acknowledge as valuable: How to Make Friends by Lindsey Underwood. The meat of the article is this advice, which, in broad terms, is not bad.

1) Become a person who is comfortable spouting non-sequiturs. Friendship starts by talking, which means that someone has to start talking! Comment on the weather, or the smell of the room, or something on TV last night … regularly. It’s pleasant to make conversation about something light. Just talk about Beyoncé!

2) Then, once you have built up a rapport with your Potential Friend, you have to DTT: Divulge To Them. Share a very tiny secret, like you have cramps or you’re hung over or you accidentally voted for Bush. This is step one to building trust.

3) The next step is crucial! After you DTT, wait a period of time, and then refer back to the thing you divulged to them! You are creating an inside joke. THE FOUNDATION OF FRIENDSHIP.

4) And finally, you have to ask them to hang out with you one on one. And then again, 2-6 weeks later. Then they should get the hint and ask you to hang out, too. Now you are friends. Congrats!

The loss of manners, social skills and other implicit knowledge is startling.

Isaac Asimov explored some of the consequences of when people in a society become isolated from one another through the enablement and ministration of technology in The Naked Sun. The story is a murder mystery which has occurred on Solaria, a world settled three hundred years ago. The settlement consists of 20,000 people living off the productivity of two hundred million robots. Prosperity is so great that people live isolated in their own estates with limited and rare actual physical presence with another person. From Wikipedia.

The planet has a rigidly controlled population of 20,000, and robots outnumber humans ten thousand to one. People are taught from birth to avoid personal contact, and live on huge estates, either alone or with their spouse only. Face-to-face interaction (referred to in the book as "seeing"), and especially impregnating a woman, when replacement of a decedent is necessary, was seen as unavoidable but dirty. Communication is completed instead through holography (referred to in the book as "viewing") where in contrast to "seeing", they are free of modesty, and have no problem if an interlocutor sees the other's naked body. A two-way teleconference allowed the participants to hear and see each other, but in 3D – an idea almost unheard-of at the time of publication, when color television was a novelty.

The Earther protagonist, Baley, is constantly being startled by the customs which have developed owing to every individual's profound isolation from all others.

We are not Solaria, but we are seeing the consequences of the destruction of old institutions (such as religion) which facilitated community interaction as well as the barriers created through communication technology. People no longer meeting or speaking or calling when they can get by with texting. No wonder there needs to be a remedial article on How to Make Friends.