The rise of the anti-social American

The American welcome mat used to mean something; now it’s just the designated drop-off zone for the Amazon courier. There was a time, not that long ago, when the average suburban street was full of unannounced drop-ins, the smell of burning charcoal, and scattered lawn chairs. Today, neighborhoods possess the lifeless feel of a well-maintained cemetery. The modern American Dream is best described as a private bunker where the outside world arrives entirely in a cardboard box or a fiber-optic cable.

Americans now spend considerably less time with other people than they did 20 years ago. This is a magnificent triumph of optimization. The human animal is notoriously unreliable. He’s prone to bad breath, political rants, and requests to help move heavy furniture. Eliminating the physical neighbor in favor of a digital stream is a sensible defense mechanism. The local bar, once a breeding ground for scandalous gossip and collective hangovers, has been soundly defeated by DoorDash and a high-definition TV. America has achieved the pinnacle of individual autonomy: the right to die alone in a perfectly temperature-controlled living room.

The modern economy operates on the premise that human contact is a design flaw. Up until the early 2000s, buying a loaf of bread required a verbal exchange with a cashier who might comment on the weather. Today, self-checkout kiosks and gig-economy couriers ensure that a citizen could survive for six consecutive months without uttering a single syllable to another member of the species. The delivery driver leaves the paper bag on the porch, rings the bell, and vanishes into the bushes like........

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