James Cooper

While I know that some men are lonely, I do not think that what afflicts America’s young today can be properly called a loneliness crisis. It seems more to me like an absence-of-loneliness crisis. It is a being-consantly-alone-and-not-even-thinking-that’s-a-problem crisis.

Porn is what you get when the act matters more than the intimacy.

And now everything’s porn.

Food porn. Design porn. Storytelling porn.

Slick. Stimulating. Shallow.

We celebrate virality but forget the virus.

We crave engagement but avoid connection.

Jobs are a great example: Particularly if you’re early in your career, you should aim to get rejected from most things you apply for. If you have not yet learned the skill of absorbing rejection, court it deliberately: Apply for some jobs you really don’t think you’ll get so you can learn to decouple “no” from surprise and dejection.

Not using a phone taught me what a phone is really for. It’s not for communicating with other people, getting directions, reading articles, looking at pictures, shopping for products, or playing games. A phone is a device for muting the anxieties proper to being alive .