I‘m a cofounder of a German loneliness startup. My core insight is that loneliness often stems from a badly adjusted internal social threat function ( f(social event)=perceived threat ).
This function runs subconsciously all day long. From talking to strangers to reaching out to a friend, the lonely mind is much more aware of negative outcomes, so your mind protects you by telling you things like „I don’t talk to strangers because I would annoy them“ or „I don’t reach out to that friend because he’s probably busy“. And that makes it much much harder for lonely people to maintain a healthy social life.
As for the fix, you can try to set the social event up in a way that has less room for perceived threat. Think of third places, regularly scheduled meetings, etc. Or you can work on the function itself (=your thinking patterns). If you look at research on loneliness interventions, working on this function is the most effective way to help individuals overcome persistent loneliness.
Now the sad thing is that people don’t like to hear that the most effective way to combat loneliness is to work on their own perceptions, which makes the sales pitch rather challenging.
You're probably far ahead of me on this topic, but as an immigrant to Germany for some years now, living with a German partner, I'm convinced that Germany (at least, Bavaria) has its own specific cultural norms that makes socialising far more challenging than is my experience in other countries. I can't explain why, but I observe a more insular (i.e. family- and existing-close-circle-focused) attitude, and also a significant level of difficulty/inflexibility regarding scheduling social events.
For example, I often find it quicker and easier to agree the timing and details of weekend trips to meet up with friends in other countries, involving one or both sides traveling significantly to meet, than arranging a single evening to meet for dinner with a single existing German colleague or friend living nearby. Of course these people have lives and arrangements I must fit in with, but I'm convinced that the examples I'm thinking of do not have such overwhelmingly busy schedules as to explain the observation.
This might sound like a trivial observation, but I suspect that the overall effect, if you scale even a small fraction of this behaviour across a whole country, could be huge.
As a German, I very much share those observations, and it seems to be underdiscussed and not that apparent to most people here.
The German social scheduling culture can definitely be a viscous circle, where everyone having to plan their calendar in advance forces everyone else to plan even further in advance if they want to have a chance to meet up.
I do think it's probably felt the strongest for adults between ~18-35, where your circle of friends spreads out across the country/surrounding cities/world, and any get together necessitates travel. After that, when people settle down (potentially have children) they usually form new circles of friends that are more local again with more opportunities for spontaneous meetings.
So far, the only solution I know is to set a date and stick with it. Trying to find a solution that meets everybody's calendar is rarely worth the effort. First, nobody has time; later, they have other appointments, so in the end it seems to be a matter of priority.
Set your date and stick to it. If people deem your topic relevant, they will arrange to participate.
I'm extremely skeptical of financial solutions to this problem.
One of the most fundamental reasons for my own personal loneliness is that, in many of the connections I've made, they simply do not feel sincere, genuine, authentic, and simply because the other person clearly has a different motivation for "caring" about me than actually caring about me.
For example, the churchgoers I've met have always felt like they were only spending time with me to get me to become a member of their church. They were eager to throw money at me if I lost my job, or offer to help me move, but never wanted to get coffee outside church hours.
Therapists are another example, obviously financially incentivized to talk to me. There are definitely some who care simply because it's part of their personality, but that still says nothing about me and any connection they have with me.
And I shared a story elsewhere here of a priest who I had literally just met minutes before, and who actually went in for a hug the moment I mentioned having a hard time with something, as if this random hug from a complete stranger meant anything other than him following a virtue signalling script.
No, I am convinced that the solution must be free, it must be volunteers doing it without anyone knowing about it, without the belief that they're earning brownie points from God or gaining a potential member of some organization, and without getting paid or rewarded for it, except for the reward of having a new and worthwhile friendship with the lonely person.
Not at all. In fact, once I learned to raise my standards for friendship, I now have significantly higher quality ones.
I have a small handful of people who I talk to regularly, who I genuinely listen to, and who genuinely listen to me, who genuinely enjoy my company, and whose company I genuinely enjoy, whether in small talk or deep conversations, serious topics or lighthearted fun.
These people give me by far the most joy in my life out of any relationships I've ever had before. And it's because we worked toward it the right way, and built our way up to it, finding common interests and building a real, organic connection from them.
It's a little like being invited to things out of pity, by people who know that you don't have any friends and struggle socially: It's nice, and I do feel their kindness from the gesture. But in the end, I only feel more isolated. I want people to hang out because they enjoy it, not out of charity. The social connection just isn't there, there's no sense of belonging, quite the opposite.
That's the next part of the problem: Masking. If I'm only performing so that other people like me, again I am not actually connecting with them. If I don't care about football but everyone else does, we are not actually sharing anything if I force myself to talk about football. I feel just as rejected and distant as before. And if I was on the other end, I would also not want that, for people to just twist themselves into a shape that suits me, right?
What I'm looking for, what I desire is mutuality. A space where I'm not in debt for just being there, don't have to force myself to "pay back" other's presence.
Exactly. We want to be our authentic selves, be appreciated for it, find people who find value in what we offer, and find reciprocation. Which excludes people spending time with you out of pity, and excludes people faking enjoyment or you faking it either.
This seems like an important insight. The other top comments are about what individuals can do to improve their situation. That's absolutely valuable advice, but is at its core a solution of the form of "this wouldn't be a problem if only everyone would just...", which is never actually a solution.
What you're describing here is an answer to the question "why aren't people 'just' being more social".
Certainly too, social media has played a big hand in this, but for many people, myself included, these activities feel high-risk, with a low probability of reward. Regardless of the correctness of the perceptions that have led to this feeling, the feeling exists and it is becoming more and more pervasive across society. And, like most problems centered on feelings, "have you tried not feeling that way?" is rarely, though not never, effective.
I actually have an interesting story here. For a couple of years I found a third place for myself in VRChat. It was great, I made friends, I spent time socializing for its own sake on a daily basis for hours. But something changed over time. I'll hop on now, look at each person on my friends list, look at private and public rooms I can join, and instead of being able to just jump in, the same feelings of "this is high-risk" that hold me back IRL result in me closing the game after ten minutes or so.
So what exactly happened? My theory is that, being a completely new "kind" of space, my brain didn't see the choices as "social" in the same way as IRL. But over time it relearned the same lessons in this new context, driving me away from social interaction.
Why? What are the unconscious lessons I learned, and why did I learn them? What have I unintentionally internalized that turned an enjoyable, effective, low-stakes virtual third place into an emotional slog that incentivizes self isolation in the same way IRL socializing does?
Sure! It’s a mobile app called platoniq. You can learn more about it here https://platoniq.health
We have a free scholarship option if you can’t afford the course. Our short term plan is to cooperate with (German) health insurance companies so there will be no costs on your part.
Here’s a highly relevant, recently published paper:
Lasgaard M, Qualter P, Løvschall C, et al. Are loneliness interventions effective for reducing loneliness? A meta-analytic review of 280 studies. Am Psychol. Published online October 23, 2025. doi:10.1037/amp0001578
If you know German, you might be interested in the two books on loneliness published by Noëmi Seewer and Tobias Krieger.
I'm especially excited about the error reporting in jank. Fingers crossed they will live up to the blog post showcasing them. Most people I convince to give Clojure a shot tell me that they are utterly confused about its error messages.
For public services, entry level sw engineering with a master's degree would put you at ~52k€ (TVöD E13 I); with 1 yr of experience you would get ~+5k€; with around 3 yrs of experience you would get ~+9k€, surpassing the median salary if you have a master's degree. With a bachelor's degree you'd start at ~46k (TVöD E11 I, though E10 would be possible, too) and would need to wait a bit longer until you surpass the median.
Note that German public services generally base your base pay on your qualification (your degree), only then can your experience "shift" the base pay upwards. Also note that starting next year, they will get a 10 % salary increase...
Tl;dr public service employees earn pretty average
Actually the pay is based on the required qualification for this job. Oftentines, for software developers, they just require a bachelor's degree and will pay E11. If you apply with a higher degree, you will not be paid more..
My bad, thanks for the correction. From talking to colleagues who used to be on such contracts I understood they ended at 60k, but then probably they got some sort of experience accredited.
I'm a grad student at a university from Berlin. We had a job fair a few weeks ago with ~15 companies where I asked every company representative what their salary for freshly-graduated sw engineers would be. About 80-90 % fell between 50k ± 5k € before tax (=brutto). Notable exceptions were finance sector jobs and jobs at American tech companies which offered closer to 70k ± 5k €.
This function runs subconsciously all day long. From talking to strangers to reaching out to a friend, the lonely mind is much more aware of negative outcomes, so your mind protects you by telling you things like „I don’t talk to strangers because I would annoy them“ or „I don’t reach out to that friend because he’s probably busy“. And that makes it much much harder for lonely people to maintain a healthy social life.
As for the fix, you can try to set the social event up in a way that has less room for perceived threat. Think of third places, regularly scheduled meetings, etc. Or you can work on the function itself (=your thinking patterns). If you look at research on loneliness interventions, working on this function is the most effective way to help individuals overcome persistent loneliness.
Now the sad thing is that people don’t like to hear that the most effective way to combat loneliness is to work on their own perceptions, which makes the sales pitch rather challenging.
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