The idea that loneliness can be solved with even more loneliness is an idea so patently American it's hilarious. I know you're being facetious, but part of the hilarity stems from how many others genuinely believe a shed in the woods is the answer to their problems.
Which is part of the problem, people would rather sit idle and do nothing except dream of the ideal isolated state, than to bake some cupcakes and give them to a neighbor, join a book club, participate in more sports, the list goes on and on it's truly endless.
I've found that the loneliness epidemic is not one of loneliness, but of comfort. People do not want to experience discomfort and the inconveniences that are a natural part of social life. It's so much easier to open HN than to message one of your friends from the net and hang out. Why join a class to learn to cook when you can just download an app to order? These conveniences are the source of your loneliness.
Side note, the best people being jerkwads online only stems from two roots: misunderstanding (as text is difficult to grasp), or people wanting to hurt. Yes it's true, even the best of people can want to hurt others, but it's not due to them truly being evil or not knowing the person they're replying to is a real person - it's because they want to share their pain (in unhealthy ways :P). Bullies IRL operate the exact same way.
Also I would like to push back on the idea that online communication does not activate "that part of the brain". There are numerous studies regarding the positive impact of elderly people utilizing the internet, this being used to prevent age related cognitive decline. Games too, widely demonized, have the same positive effect. Switching to a negative light, younger people are drastically more likely to be suicidal the more they use the internet (5+ hours/day). Sources for all of these found here [1].
How can the above paragraph be true if the brain "knows" it's just talking to pixels on a screen? The answer is, our brain doesn't (to some degree, rituals play a big role in why we understand watching a movie = fiction, but hanging out with a friend in a video call = good feelings). This is why it feels good to talk to friends online, but we're missing the externalities involved with in person talk - mobile activity, deeply sharing your interest, gossiping, etc. None of these things have been replicated online beyond superficial methods through VR. These things, while uncomfortable, are crucial to actually reaping the benefits of community.
Your retort starts unnecessarily abrasive (I'm not even American), but it has a lot of good arguments.
But let me push back against something implied in your comment: yes, comfort is the cause of many of our social problems, but it's not because we are weak and in the olden days people were willingly choosing pain over comfort.
It is completely natural to choose the easy path. The point is that there was no easy path for most of human history. There was no grocery stores nor free healthcare. There was war, famine and wild beasts. More recently, there was no instantaneous world-wide connection with everybody nor Tinder. Our only choice was discomfort, so we as a species slowly made that better.
So it is easy to create a "get a little uncomfortable" slogan, it would sell a lot of books and self-help classes, but it is not the simple trick no one has thought about before that you think it is.
We are not weak, we have just created a comfortable world, and that has made us weak. We gotta lose one or the other, but in any case we are always missing something. Such is the human condition.
Completely agree with your focus on discomfort. Occasional discomfort is an inescapable reality of social life and unfortunately the behavioral norms in America make it very difficult for the average person to develop sufficient tolerance to build deep and meaningful relationships.
Every single aspect of human interaction has been designed to minimize this discomfort which unsurprisingly breeds cynicism, narcissism and distrust. Unfortunately this perspective is firmly embedded in the DNA of the U.S. so its tough to have an honest conversation about it without ethnocentrism / bias coming into the picture.
Which is part of the problem, people would rather sit idle and do nothing except dream of the ideal isolated state, than to bake some cupcakes and give them to a neighbor, join a book club, participate in more sports, the list goes on and on it's truly endless.
I've found that the loneliness epidemic is not one of loneliness, but of comfort. People do not want to experience discomfort and the inconveniences that are a natural part of social life. It's so much easier to open HN than to message one of your friends from the net and hang out. Why join a class to learn to cook when you can just download an app to order? These conveniences are the source of your loneliness.
Side note, the best people being jerkwads online only stems from two roots: misunderstanding (as text is difficult to grasp), or people wanting to hurt. Yes it's true, even the best of people can want to hurt others, but it's not due to them truly being evil or not knowing the person they're replying to is a real person - it's because they want to share their pain (in unhealthy ways :P). Bullies IRL operate the exact same way.
Also I would like to push back on the idea that online communication does not activate "that part of the brain". There are numerous studies regarding the positive impact of elderly people utilizing the internet, this being used to prevent age related cognitive decline. Games too, widely demonized, have the same positive effect. Switching to a negative light, younger people are drastically more likely to be suicidal the more they use the internet (5+ hours/day). Sources for all of these found here [1].
How can the above paragraph be true if the brain "knows" it's just talking to pixels on a screen? The answer is, our brain doesn't (to some degree, rituals play a big role in why we understand watching a movie = fiction, but hanging out with a friend in a video call = good feelings). This is why it feels good to talk to friends online, but we're missing the externalities involved with in person talk - mobile activity, deeply sharing your interest, gossiping, etc. None of these things have been replicated online beyond superficial methods through VR. These things, while uncomfortable, are crucial to actually reaping the benefits of community.
So get a little uncomfortable!
[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6502424/