"Forced Loneliness"

During an online discussion (most of mine are that, lately) about being single, Jeremy (laughingly, it later turned out) referenced something I hadn't heard about: The True Forced Loneliness Movement. You just search that on YouTube and there are many, many videos decrying it and others disseminating its Conspiracy Theory doctrine.  Dude pictured above is one of the main proponents.

Like so many of these things, it starts pretty inarguably: There's a problem with eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia. We blame the media. There's a widespread problem with obesity. We blame the media and the fast food and "crap in food" industries, and all the industries making fascinating, time-gobbling activities that require one to plant ass-to-chair. So thanks to them, now people hate how they look, lack confidence, have an unattainable standard for how perfect they have to look, and how perfect their partner has to look in order to feel ok about being seen with them. Not too much to argue about there, right?

Next: People are lonely and single. Lots of people. Maybe even troublingly growing numbers of people.  Marriages don't last. People keep trying to "upgrade" to better-looking or more socially adept or wealthier people at the first sign of The Thrill is Gone getting there. They're dumping people who thought they'd both grow old together, because of having their expectations in these areas aggressively elevated by the media. We've never lived in a time in which relationships were supposed to be more perfect, more flawlessly equal, more nurturing, feminist, vegetarian, fitness and health-focussed, gluten-free, recycling, gay-tolerant, globally-conscious and anti-allergenic. So these impossible, "have to be perfect" relationships fail. And we live in a consumer culture, in which the most expensive and precious of things are bought with planned obsolescence built right in so that we're always in the middle of arranging buying new houses, cars, computers, phones, spectacles, shoes and iPods. Like we're cash cows.  Or sultans of shit from Shanghai.  And people are treating their sexual and romantic partners the same way as their shoes, and needing more current, more modelly models. That kinda sounds right too.

Then: Someone is doing that to us on purpose, and there's a Plan, and Everything's Connected. It's So Clear If You Watch The News.  It's not just people blindly scrabbling after money and importance. It's a cynically calculated plan by human beings who, as we know, excel at keeping secrets secret, and at working together effectively (and secretly) to Fool Us All, except those of us pontificating on YouTube.

That's where they lose me. People suck at keeping secrets. People suck at working together. It's like in nature: If there are enough beavers, or ants or bats or whatever, they wreck everything just by fighting to survive. Humans are doing that.  Due to sheer numbers, and the competition that comes with it.

And Then More: So, every time some crazy guy (it's normally a guy, unless it's a woman who's sawed off a guy's penis and Sharon Osbourne and other harpies are on TV laughing uproariously in a way they might well not if it were a story about a woman getting her genitals mutilated by her husband with a butcher knife) hurts some women (those random American shooting sprees) we must conclude that This Is What We Get. We make people lonely and they get desperate, unhappy and confused and lash out, so we (well, They, the secret-keeping cabal of People Who Work Well With Others) suffer from what was done to these poor loners, of whom there are ever more and more. And we've built a culture with World of Warcraft and Black Ops and so on, and the Internet, and the Food Channel, so that people are supposed to stay out of each other's houses and sit alone on their own futons, with someone awesome they've somehow met, impressed and inveigled into living there, just the two of them.  But there's no one, so they're alone and growing fatter by the day.  They're supposed to stay in their own houses where the pretty people getting slaughtered on the cover of the tabloids won't have to look at their fat asses.

But sometimes, someone invites single you into their Sanctum Sanctorum, an honour normally reserved, ironically, for other not-alone people.   You get invited over and find, if the conversation is singing and dancing, that you don't want to leave. Some nice couple has you over, shares food and drink, and you feel like "Please don't cast me out alone into the dark night to wander aimless and babbling! Let me stay just a little longer here with you! You two aren't alone all the time!"

So yeah. We want to blame society, blame the media, blame Dr. Phil, blame Oprah, Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Paris Hilton and whoever else is famous right now. And then there are always people with videos on YouTube earnestly explaining how they Just Don't Get How Everyone Can't See that the hidden They have purposely created a culture of loneliness, one which sidelines less-than-perfect-looking-and-socializing people, and which makes even them chronically hate themselves, and how that then men shoot women or women hate men and slice off their John Thomas' because of this and it's Our Fault.

I get that the conspiracy view makes them feel like they know secret, occult things. If you know something secret about the core of the Earth or UFOs or the Gross National Product or The Rapture, you can dance around on YouTube barely able to keep from acting like you did in grade three when you sang "I know something YOU don't know! I know something YOU don't know!" all recess long and down the hall into class, then eventually telling what it is and having everyone say "That's just stupid. It doesn't make any sense at all!" to your bafflement and consternation.

My view is simpler. People are fucking up. In large numbers. In patterns. And it's not getting better. The world was meant to be better.  Western society isn't a good place for people to live, emotionally and spiritually.  And it's not getting good.  And we're not going to change it, and we're not going to leave it, nor change significantly ourselves.  We will consume what we can, and die.  Alone.