So I get what you are saying…

A few possibilities:

1. Covid and the pandemic fundamentally changed how people interact and relate

I know this is strange, but pre-covid, people grew up in a world in which dating and to some extent working required a social life. People met at bars, through friends, at parties, doing common activities. Then dating Apps and hookup Apps came along, but bars still existed, social scenes still existed, people still had parties.

Work also had to be a physical social thing: you needed to show up, there was a more social aspect to interacting with people, and people were more likely to socialize outside of work. Some remote work happened, but not a lot.

Then covid happened. All of work changed so that the infrastructure existed for most people to work without needing to be in person. No one could party, no one could go to bars, no one could do things. There also used to be a large social stigma to staying at home. If you were at home on a Friday, you were a loser, uncool, not invited to things, and it bothered people, and felt like social exclusion.

With covid, everyone stayed at home. There was no social exclusion by being at home. People worked at home. And suddenly, being social in person was so much less important. You could get a job by applying online and it didn’t require a social network quite the same way, or that network could be online. You could meet someone, date, and procreate online without needing a social network at all. The main thing that mattered, in order to procreate, was whether someone had a stable job and was employable.

Even post-covid, I feel like we’ve had a shift. There are still parties, there are still clubs, there are still bars. They are less required or needed part of society. Not only that, we’ve gone into more of an era of have and have nots, and some people desperate, some people scamming others, and so there are more risks in going out of meeting someone who is problematic. It’s why people prefer driverless robotaxis over regular lyfts and ubers, even when it costs more: it’s not that the driver interaction is bad, it’s that social interactions entail risk and if you are employed and can date using Apps, or have a partner, it’s sometimes simple to avoid that.

Technology is now much more addictive. So many people, myself included, think it’s emotionally healthy to go out and be around people. In the same way I know broccoli is better than candy, I know that people are better than the Internet. But when I am stressed, when I’m annoyed, when life is frustrating, what do I want? I want the Internet and candy, not hanging out and meeting new people.

possibility 2

2. People have become much more classist as inequality has increasingly risen, partly because perception of being in a lower class carries risk. When the class itself it what causes wealth to increase, people become hyper-aware of perceptions.

It’s possible your friends make more money now and see themselves as better because of their careers and specifically are less responsive because of that. Should that matter in a friendship? No, but does it? Sadly, many people are extraordinarily superficial and cruel and evil. Almost all of us (that use Lemmy) use devices that contain rare earth minerals mined by the ultra-ultra poor who are essentially there in a forced labor situation because no one else will hire them and if they don’t mine rare earth minerals they will die. The conditions are brutal and evil, there could even be actual slavery involved in some cases, and the supply chain is confusing enough that no one knows which devices involve slavery. That’s evil. We are all evil. To those people, we’re the monsters… and they aren’t wrong.

So given that most people are selfish and evil and just care about their own interest, it should not be surprising that these people, if their wealth has increased, don’t care about you anymore. Much like people don’t stop using devices despite slavery involved in the supply chains because fundamentally people choose evil when it’s easier most of the time, you shouldn’t expect people making more money to want to stay in contact with you, because sadly, the only thing that matters in our corrupt evil society is money, apparently.

possibility 3

3. People are so exhausted from work that they just don’t have time.

Working 40 hours a week is hard as hell. It used to be for most men they worked 40 hours, but also had a full-time assistant at home who cooked, cleaned, shopped, and did other things.

Now if someone wants a family, often both people are working, and more people are single. Wages have not kept up with inflation, so that means if you are single, you often can’t afford a cleaner, a personal shopper, meals being delivered, etc.

The result is chronic exhaustion. Working Mon-Friday, being tired as hell trying to be more and more efficient, because companies have demanded more efficiency to avoid being fired without paying more, and then on your off time, you either scroll Internet to try to decompress, Saturday you just sleep nearly all day and finally have a moment to be exhausted and miserable, and Sunday you catch up on cleaning, shopping, and worry about money, and then Monday the hell starts all over again.

Your friends may be dealing with that, the whole barely treading water thing, and it’s awful.

possibility 4

4. post covid issues, long covid

A lot of people who got covid developed health issues, and some aren’t obvious. Some are things like, you don’t quite have full on long covid, but you are just more tired all the time. You don’t have chronic fatigue, but your health isn’t as good. It just impacts people. People with such issues aren’t quite disabled, but they aren’t totally functional either. And I bet there are a ton more people like this than say so, because it’s not easy to talk about, there aren’t government benefits for being chronically tired after getting covid if you need to work and it’s not totally debilitating, etc.

I think it’s more likely Possibility 1 and 2. People are going out and partying less (no data to support this, just from going out myself and seeing bars and clubs with fewer people) and people are more classist and drop people who have less money these day. I wouldn’t block these people, but don’t spend any more time on them. Go completely no contact on your end. If they reach out, great, if not, who cares. They will likely not reach out and it will feel like giving up a soda you really like and you’ll get cravings to reach out, but don’t. A month of no contact later, you’ll realize it’s best to not interact with them anymore. The second month will be easier, and by the third you won’t miss them much at all. Force yourself to be uncomfortable and then you’ll be more likely to use meetup.com, go out to bars, do things where you are more likely to interact with new people who will be worth the time.

I spent more time online than I’d like. Probably need a life change or a hobby that overrides social media addiction.

my advice is try and set up 1 on 1s like they do at work lol. Be explicit time and place.

Edit And this post made me reach out to folks so good on this

I don’t mean to be cold, but have you considered that it’s not (just) your responsibility to keep the friendship alive? There are people out there longing for you.

Seeing the reels that get shared since the summer, nearly all of them are AI or extreme (not political, moreso like extreme overeating, extreme overpriced buying/unboxing videos or people fighting past what mma/ufc would allow type content). This seems to have led a few to being scared of the outside while a few others consider outside to be too boring now.

I think everyone’s glancing past this point. That’s the extreme internet content screwing with your friends’ brains – especially the fighting videos. That’s undoubtedly a factor in their withdrawal from IRL socialization. If you look to the Gen Z and Gen Alpha folks, that’s exactly what those generations are going through.

I’m in my late 50s and have been through a lot of shit, and one thing I can tell you is that people generally won’t change until the pain of changing is less than the pain of staying stuck where you are. Moreover, you can want something for someone else, and even if it would overwhelmingly make their life better, it’ll never happen unless they want it for themselves. People are creatures of habit, and those habits rarely change except when there is no other option.

So what do you do? Focus on something that you can change - your behavior. Understand that they make their own choices, and if they aren’t interested in doing things you’re interested in (going outside, socializing, etc.), you need to find people who are interested in those things and engage with them. Healthy people grow and change throughout their lifetime, and some people are less able to do that, so you can outgrow your friends. I’m not saying you should kick them to the curb, but rather understand and know their limitations, and budget your engagement accordingly. Relationships, including friendships, are necessarily a 2-way street. If someone won’t meet you halfway with effort to keep the relationship afloat, then you should consider why you’ve been propping things up and match their energy and see what happens. The phrase: “If he/she wanted to he/she would” is something to keep in mind. People communicate not only with their actions, but also with their inaction. Find people who appreciate you and the energy you bring by reciprocating it.

While it can be challenging to make new friends as an adult, it’s not that difficult. Learning a new skill or hobby can introduce you to a lot of people. For example, I recently started learning swing dancing, and suddenly have several new friends of both sexes, and a never-ending string of fun social dancing events to go to. It’s been a total game-changer for my social life, and I would highly recommend taking classes to learn whatever social dances are popular in your area (swing, salsa, etc.). Of course there are also meetup groups for almost every type of hobby or interest, so you can do something you’re interested in and meet like-minded people. Basically, just get out there and do what your want to do, and find people that also like to do the things you want to do.

We were all very tech focused coming our of school but I’m 1 of 2 that didn’t make it into a long term career

Perhaps this is the root of the change you are seeing. They have entered the career stage of their lives and you have not.

Other than these just being addictive, as they are meant to be, there can be another contributing factor - lack of continuous block of free time.

I am going to make a terrible analogy as usual.
Day, week, month, etc. are like a HDD.
In those, time for work, kids, cleaning, cooking, etc. is like data.
If you’ve got just the work, you can fit in other normal activities like reading, watching movies, going out, etc.
With more tasks throughout the day, you might still technically have enough free time, but fragmented, and that’s quite an issue. Watching a movie is best done in one go. Perhaps you can split it up to 2 halves if needed. But with many tasks, you might end up with just 10/20/30 minute breaks at a time, and then it’s not worth it to even start anything.
But short form media? You might have like 20 seconds per video. That will absolutely fit into any break.
And so that’s the only thing they might end up doing.

honestly…just find new friends doing the things you want to do. maybe occasionally reach out to the old ones in attempt to get them out of these algo-bubbles…but you can’t/shouldn’t put your life on hold trying to help people who don’t even recognize they have a problem.

they’re essentially addicts…until some messaging gets through to them and they see they have a problem, it’s just wasted effort with likely no payoff.

if you want to hangout with people irl interested in doing more things irl…go to those events and meet the people going to them, that’s where they’ll be.

edit/ far as helping those people out of their algo-traps…well, old comedies they probably saw growing up tend to work pretty good. maybe suggest some old movie-day hangout type thing? i always liked the classic jim carey movies. yes man in particular, is pretty much tailor made for this scenario.

Delete big social media. The day I deleted Facebook, my life considerably improved.

Jesus, that’s scary. Most of my friend group doesn’t use social media.

Honestly the only thing I think you could do would be to talk to them honestly about it, and say their behavior concerns you, maybe ask them to put their phones away in your company.

Bro I haven’t seen another human outside of my family for the past 5 years besides people I work with - and I wfh so I don’t actually see them in person… my boss actually is never around either so I’m just alone always

And what do they do now instead of memes and share stuff on social media? Did they detach and turn to useful hobbies like woodworking, or did they switch to consume only and they’re still on social media?

once you pass the age of 30 and get married, this happens. generally you just don’t do anything because you’re not meeting chicks anymore. you just sit inside and don’t do anything, and you’re bored, and you’re depressed, and you try to have kids in order to alleviate the feeling of purposelessness but that doesn’t help at all. your kids are fucked

I think historically humans had shorter lifespans. they aren’t meant to live very far beyond this point