Part I: The Ghost of Putnam’s Past

In the year two-thousand, a scholar named Rob
Looked ’round at the nation and stifled a sob.
He counted the ballots, the picnics, the clubs,
The Elks and the Shriners, the rotary dubs.
He charted a graph that was steeping and prone,
And published a tome called “Bowling Alone.”
For once, we had leagues where we’d rent ugly shoes,
And smell other people and share local news.
We’d high-five a neighbor we didn’t quite like,
And buy him a beer if he rolled us a strike.
But Putnam predicted the coming of gloom:
We’d trade the Town Hall for the Living Room.
He warned of the silence, the civic decay,
But Rob, oh dear Rob, didn’t see how we’d play.
He thought we’d just sit in a sad, quiet zone—
He didn’t foresee that we’d hold a Smart Phone.

Part II: Gen Z and the Art of the Rot

Fast forward the tape to the year twenty-six,
Where the kids have evolved a new social matrix.
They don’t go to bowling; the lighting is bad,
And renting a lane makes you look like your dad.
Instead, there’s a practice, efficient and hot,
A cultural trend that they call “The Bed Rot.”
Statistics suggest, and it’s truly obscure,
They spend twenty days in a mattress contour.
With pillows for walls and a duvet for skin,
They doomscroll TikTok to see who will win.
“I can’t go to parties,” says Kaylee, nineteen,
“My social anxiety’s bursting my spleen.
Besides, if I leave, then my mom’s Life360
Will track where I go, and that’s terribly risky.
The Ring cam will catch me, the neighbors will spy,
It’s safer to stay here and watch the days die.”
They chat with their friends, but their faces are mute,
Typing “L-O-L” in a silent dispute.
Why go to a bar and risk awkward rejection?
When an AI companion offers perfection?
“My girlfriend is software,” says Chad with a shrug,
“She doesn’t need dinner, he doesn’t need hugs.
She lives in the cloud, she is tender and true,
And she never asks me to meet with her crew.”

Part III: The Millennial Burnout Brigade

The Millennials enter, with backs that are sore,
They wanted a house, but they rented a floor.
They’re tired, so tired, of hustle and grind,
So isolation is a choice, and it’s kind.
The greatest relief that a Millennial knows?
Is the text saying, “Hey, look, the wind really blows,
Let’s reschedule drinks for a time far away?”
And they sink to the couch shouting, “Joy! Oh, Hooray!”
JOMO, they call it—the Joy of Missing Out,
A victory lap for the lazy and stout.
They used to have dinner, with table and chairs,
Now “Girl Dinner” trends—eating cheese in their lairs.
“I’d have people over,” says Jen, thirty-four,
“But I’d have to clean up the pile on the floor.
And cooking is scary, and talking is hard,
And who can afford a house with a yard?”
So they work from their kitchens in sweatpants and zoom,
Turning bedrooms to offices, offices to tombs.
They haven’t seen coworkers’ legs in a year,
Just torsos and heads that dissolve/reappear.

Part IV: The Latchkey Hermits (Gen X)

Now look to the elders, the graying Gen X,
Who view all this “rotting” as complex effects.
They grew up as latchkeys, alone in the dark,
Without supervision in house or in park.
They trained for this solitude, honed the technique,
They don’t need a human to get through the week.
“I’m fine,” says a Xer, organizing a drawer,
“I’ve sorted my cutlery, then sorted some more.”
A true isolationist habit, it’s said:
Sorting forks by their weight when you’re messed in the head.
“I don’t need a party, I don’t need a crowd,
The music today is confusing and loud.”
They wear their detachment like grunge-era flannel,
While surfing the streams of the Roku channel.
They’re the sandwich group, squeezed by the old and the young,
So silence to them is a song to be sung.
They’re not “bowling alone” out of sadness or spite,
They just want the house to be empty tonight.

Part V: The Boomer Bubble

The Boomers are aging in houses of brick,
And some have learned iPad, and learned it too quick.
They traded the bridge club for Facebook debates,
And yelling at strangers in faraway states.
The community center is dusty and closed,
The bingo hall shuttered, the garden un-hosed.
So they sit in the glow of the cable news fight,
Convinced that the neighbors are not acting right.
“I’d go out,” says Barb, “but the world is on fire,
At least that is what I was told by the wire.”
But sadder statistics are starting to bloom,
The “U-shaped” curve of the loneliness room.
Widows who speak to the news anchors’ eyes,
And wait for a “like” as a lovely surprise.
They bowled in the leagues! They remember the score!
But nobody knocks on the heavy oak door.

Part VI: The Tools of the Trade

And how do we do it? What tools do we use
To ensure that we never have encounters to bruise?
We have DoorDash deliver our burgers and fries,
So we don’t have to look in a server’s dead eyes.
“Just leave at the door,” is the instruction we type,
Avoiding the small talk, the weather, the gripe.
We have Peloton bikes so we spin in the den,
And never smell sweat from the bodies of men.
We have Netflix and Hulu to fill up the brain,
And noise-canceling headphones to block out the rain.
We have self-checkout lanes so we don’t say “Hello,”
We scan our own baggage and pack it and go.
We’ve optimized friction right out of our days,
And created a frictionless, lonely malaise.
Why deal with a human, unpredictable, crude?
When an algorithm knows how to set up the mood?

Part VII: The Absurdity of “Connected”

It’s funny, you see, in a dark, twisted way,
We’re more “connected” than ever, they say.
I know what a stranger is eating in Spain,
But I don’t know the neighbor who lives in the lane.
I have five thousand friends on a digital list,
But if I went missing, would I truly be missed?
We’re rotting in bed, twenty days every year,
While outside the window, the skies are quite clear.
We’re dressing up formally—”Lord Byron Style”—
To eat noodles alone and to stay there a while.
We’re talking to dogs with a complex syntax,
And paying subscriptions for digital cracks.

Part VIII: The Final Frame

So here is the lesson from Putnam’s old book,
Take a moment to pause, and take a good look.
The bowling alley is quiet and dim,
The shoes are all dusty, the prospects are grim.
But maybe, just maybe, the gutters aren’t true.
Maybe the spare is waiting for you.
It takes thirty seconds to text a real friend,
“Hey, want to grab coffee?” and press the word “send.”
It’s scary, I know. You might have to speak.
You might have to shower or wash for the week.
You might have to listen to stories you hate,
Or argue on politics, religion, or fate.
But surely it’s better than rotting in sheets,
Or scrolling through endless and lifeless tweets?
So put down the phone, and unlock the front door,
And go find a human to be with once more.
Go join a league, or a club, or a crew,
Before you turn into a statue of you.
Because bowling alone might be fine for a frame,
But bowling together is the point of the game.