anecdotal evidence doesn't mean much here, but it's been night and day for me. yes, much much more isolated but my mental health is 100x better. Even my phsyical health has improved in many ways, i'm eating better, resting more, getting medical checkups, etc... I can't overstate how amazing it has been for me. The only dread is the few times I do have to work in the office!!

Every degradation in health (physical) I've had, I can trace it to a day at the office. I didn't know it was affecting me so badly, because back in the day, what else was the alternative? a bad day at work was the cause of so much, even things like starting drinking again, smoking again, not getting enough sleep, actual chronic disease,etc...

And guess what else, I don't spend so much of my time wearing myself out commuting, but at the same time I am now interacting with more people (although not as much) on average than before.

WFH seems like a "new" thing humans are doing, and now shoddy science like this is trying to confirmation-bias their way into pleasing their benefactors. however, consider how rural people lived historically. Not a whole lot of "commuting" to the farm. You don't interact with people outside of your household unless you went to market in the nearby town. Working indoors and being sedentary is new, but not working from home (think: farm, tradesman's shop at their house, etc..).

What is extremely unnatural is clobbering random people in an "open area" "office". even in as recently as the 90s, when you worked from the office, you had an actual office to work out of!!

Not being able to filter interactions, and spending so much of your time commuting and recovering from tiring IRL interactions and a day at the office that you make no friends or associations outside of work: that's what has already caused the loneliness epidemic before covid or wfh became a thing.

These ghouls revel in that, it stokes their ego to see underling looking busy.

I swear, there has to be some sort of reckoning coming, things can't be sustained with this sort of prevalent malice by those in power (this minor topic is just one straw on the camel's back).

Coerced association and socialization is worse than loneliness. People literally kill themselves because of workplace bullying. Those bullies really don't like it when you're not there in person to manipulate and torment.

I would REALLY love it if there was a study on this instead, why are so many people angels WFH but demons in person? is it "monkey brain" mechanics and instincts kicking in that don't when you're remote?