The Atlantic covers the loneliness epidemic and wonders if potlucks and group dinners cure. It’s a generous effort. But generosity alone won’t fix what disconnection has hollowed out. I’ve got news: We’re not lonely because we don’t have enough food-centered social events. We’re lonely because we’ve never been taught how to navigate the mess that is human connection in a world built on transactional, shallow interactions.

These newfangled "solutions" to loneliness—Project Gather, Block Party USA, and their ilk—are peddling a comforting lie: If we just get people in a room together, it’ll fix everything. The problem with that? It assumes loneliness is a matter of physical proximity, when in fact it’s a symptom of something much more fundamental: misalignment. People aren’t lonely because they’re isolated. They’re lonely because they’ve been living in a system that treats connection like a commodity, not a co-created experience.

Potlucks don't cure loneliness. Vulnerability does.

You can line up twenty strangers at a potluck, but until we fix the emotional asymmetry at play, you’re just a room full of people checking their phones, pretending to connect. Vulnerability isn’t something you can just schedule into an hour-and-a-half. Trust isn’t something that can be constructed in the time it takes to eat a mushroom foraged from the backyard.

Here's the kicker: Loneliness isn’t about a lack of bodies. It’s about a lack of depth. When people go to these events, what they’re really looking for isn’t just company. They’re looking for recognition. They’re looking for someone to see them, in all their messy, imperfect, and vulnerable glory. But these initiatives aren’t teaching people how to give or receive that kind of attention. They’re just teaching people how to play the social game more efficiently.

This is what happens when you treat loneliness like a logistics problem instead of an emotional one. Sure, it’s nice to have a seat at the table, but you’ll never feel truly seen unless the people across from you are willing to show up—emotionally, intellectually, vulnerably. And we’re failing at teaching that.

These companies aren’t solving loneliness. They’re solving nothing. They’re just giving people a placebo for their social pain. It’s time we realized the real epidemic here isn’t a shortage of events—it’s a shortage of the tools needed to navigate the complex dance of human connection. Until we address that, we’ll keep circling the same empty rooms, hoping that the next dinner will fix what’s been broken for far too long.

There’s no cure for loneliness, just a lot of people pretending to cure it.