A Boring Dystopia

Culture is a spook.

Manipulate

Being more isolated makes it harder to manipulate you, because you don't pick up normie behaviours by osmosis, and corpos target the broadest demographic possible for the attention sucking slop.

If I was surrounded by people who just thought ads were fine, maybe I would be paying for netflix with ads. But I had time alone to develop my own thoughts on the matter and I go to great lengths to block ads for instance. Likewise I don't understand the appeal of microblog social media like twitter/bluesky/masto.

Meals are cultural participation

That's Brainrot. Meals are food and not much more than that. They can be enjoyable, but oftentimes to be truly enjoyable you kinda need to be alone, it just isn't the same diving into comfort food at home vs at a public place lol.

But the trouble is housing prices are through the roof. People are packed tighter than cattle with strangers or staying with families long past due. It ain't right and it does untold damage to the psyche to never have personal space - it is a crime of capitalism that we have a huge, largely untouched planet and empty homes galore while people are forced to surrender all privacy for the privilege of enriching their overlords.

I've been very fortunate in that I've been able to afford living alone in one way or another since 18, and I value that greatly because I wouldn't be half the person I am from an intellectual, emotional, developmental and any other perspective if I didn't have that time.

So to me - I am very glad that young folk are finding a way to carve out a moment to themselves, especially one as enjoyable as mealtime.