Especially with the way the story opened, with the first caller being someone whose problems were all caused or exacerbated by capitalist exploitation and poverty, I thought that this story was going to be a condemnation of the obnoxious practice of the state trying to solve problems caused by a lack of social services by throwing money at private companies offering mass-market "revolution" via untested technologies that turn out to just be shitty apps. It seemed self-evident from the beginning that the listening service was a virtually useless substitution for the lack of accessible mental health care.
So I was disappointed when the arc of the story merely traced the main character's dim realization that "hey...maybe just strangers listening really ISN'T enough...and maybe I feel bad because nobody listens to ME" and that her own social isolation was at least partially remedied by quitting her job and just...going to her husband and asking him to listen to her.
But at first I thought it was a story painting a picture of a believable dystopia from the perspective of a character who starts off immersed and accepting of its false premises, like Fahrenheit 451, so I was willing to cut it some slack. It was the author's notes that really soured me on this story, by confirming that, no, the point really was a cliche, uninformed commentary on isolation in the age of social media, more hamfisted than even Hideo Kojima's intent in Death Stranding.
"Social media makes us more connected than ever...but also drives us apart" is right up their with "Millenials are killing..." in terms of clueless takes. "Teenagers don't spend hours on the phone anymore." I'm sorry, but what the fuck, have you seen a teenager in the past twenty years? Who do you thinking they're texting and snapping and talking to on discord? Often it's their IRL friends. Other times its distant Teenagers use asynchronous and remote communication because every year they have longer school hours, more homework, more extracurriculars, and more pressure to attain high academic achievement as college becomes more expensive and more necessary to secure a subsistence level living.
There's a lot of science on loneliness. It's past time for science fiction to merely "raise questions" about it - good stories about isolation should now look beyond. We need "The Ones Who Stay and Fight", not "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas".