People used to frequent in person things like specialty retailers, arcades, hobby clubs, religious groups, etc. When you meet real life people in person based on shared interests, you make connections across socioeconomic groups.
I just don't see nearly as much of this in todays society as 20+ years ago.
People with kids sometimes experience this via all the activities they take their kids to, but even there a lot of kids activities have become economically stratified. Instead of playing in the local $50/year rec baseball league, there's tiers of travel teams to meet any budget.
This is something welcome I didn’t expect to come from parenthood. Like many others I had thought to myself “how do you even make new friends in your thirties?!” and then once I had kids… bam. New friendship groups.
For us the local park and playground are a great equalizer in terms of economic stratification. But when the weather turns bad it rears its head again as people head to $50 a go trampoline parks and the like.
Public school is another unifier, of course. I’m in NYC and our preschool was very obviously not a reflection of the neighborhood or city around us. But once my kids entered the city-funded Pre-K they started to meet a ton of kids from different backgrounds. It’s very different from the childhood I had but I’m very glad my kids have it.
I spent so many hours at our local mall with my friends growing up. It had an arcade, a movie theater, book store, game store, place to eat. Our parents could just drop us there for hours. Skating rinks and bowling alleys were also a solid option.
It's one of the things that make it worth the time investment to follow sports, even if you're typically not interested in it. Getting people together to watch the game, go to games, tailgate, etc is huge.
It sounds good in principle. And I was very excited when discovering the Internet (Usenet) and a place to discuss all my geeky interests with many similar minded people.
However, now that the Internet has so overpowered in person relationships across the board, the cost in mental health, anxiety and general unhappiness is staggering.
If you live in a society that really devalues everything you like, having that online outlet is the difference between giving up on life[1], and being passionate.
Imagine being told you're broken because you like books, movies, and video games, and having almost every aspect of society reinforce that message.
[1] Not in the suicide sense, but in the "Life will always suck" sense.
Going to a university in a city helped a lot with that. Long conversations about comic books with friends, going to the nearby comics store on new release day with lots of other nerds, etc.
I’m no longer convinced adding the Internet to that has been a net positive. Maybe if we could have froze its growth and development at some specific point…?
The shift to the algorithmic "Feed" established adversarial incentives across the board - the platforms are incentivized to addict and enrage, the individuals are incentivized not to be vulnerable for friends, but to be viral and get approval of the public, since if your posts don't perform for strangers, the algorithm won't even show them to your closest friends.
The Internet gave us an easier way to make "friends" with no apparent downsides, only to rugpull us all as soon as most of the 'pre-Internet' places and social habits had been completely destroyed. Now we are all obviously lonely and hate the Internet mess, but whole generations are now too awkward to even speak to others in person, just from lack of experience.
It wasn't a disaster until megaplatforms came alone.
We may recognize a handle on a forum, but most of the time we don't know anything about the other person other than a narrow part of their interests.
And I’m the nerd minority who “couldn’t wait to get out of this place.”
Now, I would still go to a big city where I could find people with similar interests. But the cost to society of all the Internet has wrought has been far too high.
When I was living in Iran, we didn't need a hobby club to meet people, you just picked up the phone and everyone came over. I have vivid memories of going on trips with 5 cars filled with people
When I went to Peru with my wife to meet her extended family, it was very similar. Heck you can just randomly talk to people and meet them. At 9PM, the streets are exploding with people in Arequipa or Tehran.
The biggest difference is that in the West, people have the idea of "personal space", which doesn't really exist in some culture. People are seen more as one, rather than many. Of course this has its own downsides, but I suppose nothing is perfect.
I do think we've lost a lot of "civic life" in the past few decades but video rental stores aren't anything I remember fondly.
Wait, is this a career option I should have been aspiring to? I wonder if it's too late...
In the mid-2000s, my hometown decided to build a town square. They put it at the edge of town next to the train station, where it would look nice for commuters but not where people lived so it was always empty.
The near universal proliferation of owner's associations and management groups and whatnot is something you can lay square at the feet of the environmentalists.
Some big commercial developer developing a subdivision in 1970 would've allocated a couple lots as a park owned by the city or town. I live in a neighborhood like this.
Now those empty lots and the exact layout of plantings on them are a key part of the green space on the site plan that makes the bullshit spreadsheet math that is required for your stormwater or environmental math to pass requirements. And and some legal entity has to be responsible for that in perpetuity. Enter the HOA. And of course then they make all this stuff private because they can market the units in the development better that way.
This was exactly the subdivision I grew up in. The "park" was just a few vacant lots in the middle of the neighborhood. That's all it was for years, eventually the city put in a shelterhouse and a couple of picnic tables, a basketball court, and a baseball diamond.
For video stores, there's Retro Rewind: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3552140/Retro_Rewind__Vid...
There are also games like that for trading-card stores, video arcades, and record stores.
(I'm probably going to buy the record store one, "Wax Heads." Being a music-genre nerd and recommending bands to people is a fantasy that I was born 10 years too late to do in real life.)
One thing I think is that theres just never enough time. Everyone is so over-scheduled. The white collar work day really has expanded vs what I remember my dad doing 30-40 years ago. There's more two income households than in the past. Parenting is far more active for both parents than it's ever been, and kids are being shuttled between events all weekend.
Most local shops are not open past 5pm or at best 6pm, and often closed Sunday. Who is off work by then to stop by?
Easier to click buy on amazon, and stop by the big box store after dinner Saturday open til 9pm for anything you need sooner.
Obvious anecdata, but within an easy walk or bike radius of me (a couple miles) there are 3 public libraries, something like half a square mile of parks, a few public basketball courts, a few public tennis courts, a public baseball field, a bar over the baseball field that welcomes children (it’s one of the veterans things and has board games and what not), at least a dozen other businesses that don’t care if you buy anything, and your usual litany of Walmart kind of places that can’t be bothered to track who is buying and who isn’t.
I don’t have any issues finding places to hang out for free, and I use them, but they’re pretty sparsely used so it’s not as 3rd space as it used to be.
Eg I walk my dogs most mornings, and I rarely see more than 1 other person at the park or dog park at 7 or 8am.
It feels to me like 3rd spaces are disappearing because people don’t use them, rather than people don’t use them because they don’t exist.
Great job, Gen-X parents.
People voted with their wallets.
> public libraries are under constant attack by republicans
Voters get the services they vote for.
All of us are to blame.
It's hard to feel bad about a small backwoods town of idiots who vote to shut down their public libraries (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/book-ban-lgbtq-jamestown-michig...) but there are efforts on the federal level too (https://www.ala.org/faq-executive-order-targeting-imls). Right wing nutjobs all over the country have been threatening library staff and calling in bomb threats and we can't vote them out
I think we mostly all agree that we as a society caused the problem, but we can't go back and undo that. Constructive would be coming up with ways we can, given the past did take place, improve things going forward.
We can vote for politicians that fund projects and facilities for general use and welfare. We can congregate more in the malls and community centers and bowling alleys (and churches too, if that's your style), that we still have. The loss of community isn't irreversible. Yet.
Putting aside the increasing efforts to limit our ability to vote for change, we have to fight against very well funded campaigns trying to convince people that we shouldn't fund projects and facilities for general use and welfare. There's a lot money and power being used to encourage people to be more isolated as well. The public is growing less educated and more fearful. People have fewer friends, fewer social skills, and historically high levels of anxiety and depression.
While there may still be places to go, the ones that don't cost money are going away or at risk, and the problem goes deeper than access to physical spaces. Some things will have to change before we can expect people to really take advantage of what spaces we have left.
Presumably because people spend less money there than they used to.
> I'd bet in most communities their funding/availability has decreased in that time period.
It's one of the tragedies of our age. The inability to fund anything for the common good.
The way things are going maybe we'll get back to those wonderful days. ;)
In theory, the adults were hunting or fishing (although not with pointy sticks). In reality they were smoking, drinking, playing cards, screwing around on the little boat and atvs that were there (three wheelers!), and telling lies around a campfire. Us kids were pretty much on our own the entire time. We too were smoking, drinking, and screwing around on the boat and atvs.
So I agree with you- pointy stick hunting is a great weekend activity.
Any place you have to physically go to provides a chance for social interaction. To debate your friends over what movie to pick, to comment on your neighbor's selections, to ask a clerk for a recommendation. Are these pretty slight? Sure, but life is made fuller by these minor brushes, and you never know which ones will unexpectedly bloom into something more.
I've been kind of puzzled, since the first time I gave it any thought, why "going to a movie" is culturally thought of as an activity one does with a companion, even a date. Much like dining out in a sit-down restaurant. Yet the expectation is that you sit in silence for 2 hours and spend maybe 5-10 minutes critiquing or raving as you walk out.
But now I'm wondering if the custom of doing this together is a vestigial one, formed in a time when the 'going to the cinema' was a more social event even as late as the drive-in era (I have never experienced a drive-in).
Let me unpack a little bit.
I very rarely go to movies and really haven't for years. So it isn't a social activity so mostly won't except for the odd shoe in IMAX.
I will go see live theatre with someone or maybe a group. But am also perfectly happy to do so on my own.
As to meals? I'm so inured to solo meals with business travel I don't think twice. Enjoy eating with friend(s) whether in a business or purely social context. But it's not like I'm going to order room service or go to McDonalds if I don't have anyone to sit with.
I think it was a lot harder when I was 18 because I saw being alone as a reflection on my worth as a person.
Because after going to the movie, you've all seen it, and so can talk about it with each other.
> spend maybe 5-10 minutes critiquing or raving as you walk out.
It's not just for that trip, but it'll be a shared touchpoint. And if it's something you really enjoyed, it's something you'll be able to talk about together for years—like going to see Star Wars as a kid.
Just having everything listed on 50 different streaming platforms isn't the same experience. There are things we really lose with efficiency gains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEEj6d3GTOU
I don't think any movie could better capture the atmosphere and culture of a 1980s video store better than "Clerks." For example, the various types of annoying video store customers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9khHJTztKk
Ordering obscene videos from the warehouse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwFjw798mPI
And some period-era fanfic filmed in an IRL video rental store.
You did. It was a fairly widespread thing.
Although "The video store was always just a means to an end for me" indicates that you excluded yourself from this, rather than missing out on it.
We do the exact same thing now except use a phone or tablet.
Plus, pre-smartphone, most people (note: not saying all people) loved talking to other people, so even a movie store employee who wasn't a major film buff would be someone you could build up a rapport with just based on the fact that you're a regular who talks with them. My dad was that way with most of the staff at dozens of the small businesses in town, and even the 'corporate' places like McDonald's, etc.
[0] https://www.dailycamera.com/2017/02/27/the-video-station-bou...
Well, they were a business after all. And what's being romanticised is the civic experience of that bygone era. The modern experience sucks. It is devoid of any real human interaction. That is highly missing part in the modern landscape and it will only get worse.
What universe is this person from? I must have missed it...
The screaming and explosions from the movie trailers playing full blast on a non-stop loop throughout the store over the PA didn't help.
Facebook jumped the shark when it eliminated customization and forced everyone to have the same personal page.
"Pieces of Flair" and a thousand other ways to express yourself were extinguished, along with any actual "social" aspects of Facebook.
you either disappear like tumblr or you stay up long enough to turn into a dumpster fire.