The primary "Loneliness" epidemic that gets talked about today is basically just the mainstreamification of incel/4chan talking points. "Loneliness" is really trying to figure out why young men/women aren't dating, partying, doing drugs, etc.

This article explicitly targets only "friends", rather than what the media is actually talking about today.

I wouldn’t say that downward trends in young people dating which can be judged by many consensus summary statistics ranging from a collapsing demographic pyramid to surveys of relationship satisfaction to condom sales to percentage of the population that self-reports as virgins well into adulthood is a “4chan talking point”. It probably gets talked about on 4chan, but it gets talked about in much more mainstream settings as well.

In places like South Korea the collapsing population is such an extreme crisis that the government gets involved very aggressively as a matter of long-term economic policy and national security.

Inceldom, along with most of the recent rise in extremism, is a negative, damaging manifestation of a complex process of social disintegration that is quite real. One can acknowledge the it without approving of its consequences.

> The primary "Loneliness" epidemic that gets talked about today is basically just the mainstreamification of incel/4chan talking points.

That's just one angle. There's also the angle where watching other people live great lives online—however illusory such perception is—makes us feel more pessimistic about our own lives and contentedness. There's also the angle of disappearing third places. There's also the angle a relentlessly commodified society is alienating. There's also the angle that watching millions of people die from a preventable illness makes us feel like less of a society. There's also the angle of the disappearance of community structures like Church from modern life causes this perception of loneliness. There's the angle that cultural pluralism causes us to perceive ourselves as more atomized than we are. Etc etc. Discussions on the topic are clearly far, far more varied than just those had by bitter young misogynists.

Do not take my observation of this as an endorsement of any of the above points, please.

> The primary "Loneliness" epidemic that gets talked about today is basically just the mainstreamification of incel/4chan talking points.

How is associating an idea with some tiny subculture a worthwhile comment on its merits? Is the implication that social scientists and statisticians claiming a loneliness epidemic on the payroll of big incel? Or is the implication that if you want to discuss the fact that people are becoming more isolated, it means you're an incel?

> "Loneliness" is really trying to figure out why young men/women aren't dating, partying, doing drugs, etc.

These are indicators. Nobody (except the party supply industry or the alcohol industry) is talking about people not partying for the sake of the parties, or not doing drugs for the sake of the drugs. They're talking about it because lonely people are unhealthier and less happy.