Adding to this, and with a side note that this is not my field of expertise, my reading of a few articles from the “tsunami” of articles about male loneliness is that they don’t just focus on quantitative but also qualitative differences of social connections between men and women at large. There’s this hypothesis that close female friendships tend to be more intimate than close male friendships. This is also supported by anecdotal evidence I heard from trans-men, that the absence of love and caring in their new male-male friendships hit them like a truck after socially transitioning, compared to previous (perceived female-female /) egg-female friendships. So I don’t know whether self-reported data like number of close friends is a good metric, or if it would be more informative to ask “how many friends do you have for whom you know the names of their parents” or “how often did you talk to a friend about your feelings this month” or whatever. Again, this is all anecdotal, but this is a vibe I’m getting from other reports on this topic that I was missing in this article. Still, very good article with many valid points, particularly in the second half.

Everything about this post is perfect, down to the last comment.

When you’re chilling in the desert with your cool mask and neither hockey, machetes, nor youth camps will be invented for another couple thousand years sad serial killer noises

You see, that’s why OP always carries a second phone: To photograph the first one not falling into the gutter