Are we dead within? Are we even social animals anymore?
Why is no one interested in conversations where the goal isn’t to debate, dominate, or deliver a monologue, but simply to sit back and understand? To ask, not because it leads to an argument, but because the question itself matters. Why don’t we talk to discover how the other person sees the world, not just how we see it?
Somewhere along the line, connection became transactional. Urban hangouts became stages, and friendships became mere artifacts of convenience. Social gatherings are now loud but hollow. You walk in with a longing for connection and walk out more invisible than ever. Someone rants about their boss, someone else talks about how hard life is, there’s food, there’s a drink, and then it’s over. No depth. No stories exchanged. Just surface-level suffering packaged as bonding.
I carry a million stories. I ache to share them. And I long to hear yours. But where do these stories go? Who’s left to listen?
Because these cities we live in, these urban jungles they’re not built for human warmth anymore. They’re built for speed, status, aesthetics, and content. The “friend” is now a black screen with a blue tick. We all know someone, but we don’t feel known. We scroll through heartbreaks, achievements, deaths, weddings all reduced to a second-long tap and a double-tap.
We’ve mistaken presence for proximity. We’ve traded real talk for well-lit reels and somewhere in the process, we forgot how to listen. We forgot how to sit quietly and soak in another person’s experience without waiting for our turn to speak.
Is it burnout? Is it fear? Or are we just too used to emotional starvation to even crave something more?
Gen Z is called the most connected generation, but connection isn’t Wi-Fi. It’s knowing that if you fell apart at 2 a.m., there would be someone who wouldn’t say, “Damn, that sucks,” and mute the chat. It’s asking “How are you?” and meaning it not as a greeting, but as an invitation.
And maybe that’s what we’re missing: invitations. Not to parties, but to presence.
So here’s mine. Let’s not meet just to complain or compare. Let’s meet to share in silence, in stories, in perception. Let’s build spaces where depth isn’t scary and vulnerability isn’t embarrassing. Let’s stop being zombies of these glass jungles and start being human again.
You speak, I listen. I speak, you listen.
That’s how we begin.