'Solo economy': Being alone, not lonely

What's weird about dining in a nice restaurant with only you? By yourself, solo, uno, unaccompanied, solitary — or the dreaded — lone which morphs into lonely.

In The Lonely Guy, Steve Martin enters a busy restaurant. When he's asked by the maître d' restaurant, "how many?", he replies, "one." All the diners stop talking and stare at him as the spotlight follows his walk from the door to a table.

Welcome to the millennial/Gen Z "me" world. More and more people are now eating alone, traveling alone and living alone, not because society is broken, but because they have discovered something truly magical: being with other people can be tiring. Maybe people nowadays prefer dining with a person who never asks offbeat questions or competes with your real loyal friend: your smartphone.