One of my all-time favourite films, Her, follows Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix), a lonely divorcée who finds himself falling deeply in love with the virtual assistant on his phone. When it premiered in 2013, it seemed like an outlandish sci-fi fantasy; who would want to date a computer program? Yet, here[Read More…]
Tag: loneliness
Social chatbots are abetting the loneliness epidemic
Isolation. Anxiety. Depression. The loneliness epidemic rages onward even as the era of lockdowns is mostly behind us. Around 33 per cent of adults worldwide report often feeling lonely, with research showing that social isolation is correlated with greater physical and mental health risks, including heart disease, weakened immune system,[Read More…]
Alleviating the transfer student blues
There is one thing that all McGill students can agree on: McGill is an extremely challenging school. While the degree of difficulty varies between courses and programs, it is safe to say that it is nearly impossible to find a truly easy class that requires minimal work. This academic rigour,[Read More…]
Lonely campus
I’m a first-year McGill student, and I’m lonely. I did all the right things. I lived in residence. I participated in Arts Frosh. I joined a few clubs. But nothing seemed to work. None of my relationships could bridge the canyon-sized gap between acquaintance and friend. Everyone else, it appeared,[Read More…]
Swipe right—for the right reasons
I recently re-downloaded the dating app Tinder. I was working on a difficult essay and, frustrated by my lack of success, found myself reactivating an old profile and swiping furiously. This was not the first time this had happened. When school becomes stressful and the pressures of McGill begin to[Read More…]
Exploring loneliness within McGill’s nooks and crannies
Fear has an infinite number of personalities. Often times, the cliché examples come to mind, like phobia of spiders, snakes, or the dark. But there are fears that often go undiscussed, like the fear of being alone. It is a fear of living in isolation, of being devoid of the[Read More…]
Interacting with my ‘Dopplenamers’
What do you do when someone has the same name as you? Is your first instinct to befriend them—or rather, to fight them to establish dominance? Encountering another person with the same name, better known as a ‘Dopplenamer,’ brings ambiguity to one’s sense of self. An individual’s identity is often[Read More…]
The loneliness epidemic
Loneliness is hard to define because it is premised on a feeling of lack—a lack of contact, of laughter, of connection, of empathy, of dependence. It is a lack that weighs heavy at 8 p.m. on McGill campus as students slowly make their way home—their stomachs growling and vision blurry[Read More…]
Leveling Up
Gamer. For a lot of people, the very word conjures up images of a basement-dwelling creature who feeds on Doritos and Mountain Dew, fears sunlight almost as much as social interaction, and guards the bridges of YouTube comments with a fierce, troll-like rage. Given the years of controversy video games[Read More…]
