American Loneliness

[scoofy]

Just before the article turns to the television show, the author points out that "every piece of art I’ve ever loved is about the loneliness of other generations."

Does anyone know where i could find significant pieces dedicated to loneliness in different eras in history? I also find the topic fascinating, and would like to see how technology has changed the art in form and subject.

[dkhar]

Well, some classic "high school English literature class" books that fulfill that criteria are Miller's Death of a Salesman and Wharton's Ethan Frome.

Still in the Western classical canon, Puccini's Madame Butterfly is fantastic, if you're into opera.

[securingsincity]

I never caught the TV show but the film was fun if not a little hard to buy because it was so over the top. I think probably the success of the show can be helped mostly on the high profile catfish of star college football player Mante Te'o. A very large audience had been first enthralled by the idea of his cancer stricken girlfriend that he was playing for. But then that same audience learned both the phrase "catfish" and the hard truth that he had been duped because that girlfriend didn't exist.[0] It was national news for awhile and broke thanks to research from Deadspin. How ABC and other outlets (ESPN,CBS,Sports Illustrated,NYPOST) didn't look up if the girl had existed before they spoke about it still blows me away.

[0] http://deadspin.com/manti-teos-dead-girlfriend-the-most-hear...

[DanBC]

> the film was fun if not a little hard to buy because it was so over the top.

But people who fake cancer to gain friends are over the top.

Ten Year Cancer Hoax: http://gawker.com/5914621/the-long-fake-life-of-js-dirr-a-de...

A cancer patient who is befriended by fake cancer patients, not once, not twice, but thrice: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/the-lying-disease/Content...

Here's a fake cancer sufferer created by a child and her friends, but abandoned by them, and then taken over by the mother:

Guardian UK newspaper report: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2001/may/28/internetnew...

Wikipedia Entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaycee_Nicole_Swenson

The FAQ http://web.archive.org/web/20050115092141/http://www.rootnod... on the wayback machine

The metafilter investigation http://www.metafilter.com/7878/The-Kaycee-Nicole-Swensen-Faq

Deconstructing Kaycee http://psychcentral.com/blogs/kaycee.htm

[laxatives]

Am I missing something? This is just a review of some MTV reality TV show. Why is this article interesting to anyone (least of all Hacker News readers)?