"What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
While I sometimes understand the bemoaning of top engineers spending time on trivial apps, sometimes those apps aren't as trivial as you would think when you consider how they positively impact loneliness. Of course, there's plenty of garbage out there, but I do love to see efforts to connect people in ways that can be serendipitous and have the possibility of leading to more meaningful connection.
I can think of multiple long-time valuable real-life relationships I've had where our first connections were on some trivial platform. Sometimes it's hard to see past the glaring negatives that come with some of those platforms, but I'm hopeful that better options will evolve over time.
>While I sometimes understand the bemoaning of top engineers spending time on trivial apps, sometimes those apps aren't as trivial as you would think when you consider how they positively impact loneliness.
Absolutely not. Abstracting a layer of communication, shedding it of any humanity, and lazily pasting over emotion with emoji, is hardly a 'cure' for loneliness. If anything it makes you feel more lonely.
Some Silicon Valley dipshit with a Macbook isn't going to solve loneliness with an app. Sometimes I wish Zuck just had a girlfriend who would have told him FB was a stupid idea and we would have never found ourselves 'here'.
I draw the line in 'social tech bullshit' at the phone call, at least I can hear the vocal inflections. Anything below phone call like texting is used strictly to meet up.
I strongly disagree. Personally, I found text based communications really beneficial while getting through difficult bouts of loneliness in my life. Moments where loniness and anxiety fought over which could make me more miserable.
Would hanging out with someone in person have been a better cure for that loneliness? Sure, but I didn't have anyone and was too stressed out to make finding a group setting worthwhile.
I certainly have moments when I unrealistically dream that I'd never had the issues that I do. I say to myself 'you know all that bullshit stress you had? Instead of trying to cure it through technology you should have just gone out and done it that way.' In those moments I try to remember what it was really like, getting through hard times. I always accept that I wasn't in a position to do that yet.
There isn't one app that ever 'solved' loneliness, and some of those that tried didn't work for me. Facebook still makes me feel anxious and judged by others, for example. But I speak with friends for whom Facebook is a pleasure to use.
I'm glad there are a ton of engineers focusing their time on the trivial task of helping solve loneliness. They certainly made apps and programs and protocols that have helped me. And the more I talk to other people about it, the more people I find have been helped through technology.
Certain apps and strategies for fighting loneliness won't work for everyone, and acknowledging what doesn't work for you is great. But I'd never wish for a time when there weren't people out there trying.
I just moved into a suburban neighborhood. On the surface, in real life, this place seems utterly sterile and devoid of life. But, of course, it is actually filled with life. The design of suburban American neighborhoods make it incredibly difficult to connect people who live just down the street from you.
But I signed up for Nextdoor and there is tons of connection happening between neighbors. There are the obligatory complaints about homeless, but people are also swapping goods, hiring each other, warning about burglars, etc. I have a hard time imagining how all of this happens in a place like this without a social network.
>I have a hard time imagining how all of this happens in a place like this without a social network.
It's customary, when you move in, to knock on your immediate neighbor's doors and introduce yourself. The full-blown cheesy 1950s housewife thing to do is offer homemade baked goods to whoever just moved in. My dad frequently borrowed and lent woodworking tools with the neighbor on one side, and I walked a dog after school for the neighbor on the other side. We'd have each other over for dinner occasionally. We chat over the fences while letting our dogs out or walking to our garages. We run into other families we know at the parks.
Entertaining other families in your home is a big deal in suburbia. Everyone has the space for it, and most families put a great deal of money and effort into making that space welcoming and impressive for guests.
Beyond that, most social life revolves around children: parents who pick their kids up from school (mixture of on foot and in cars) stand around and chat while waiting for their kids to be released. They invite each other over for dinner, form book clubs and knitting circles, converse while picking up and dropping off children from playdates, on the sidelines at youth sports, in the auditorium lobby before school performances and PTA meetings, etc.
You won't see too many people interacting in the street or front yard in suburbia, and little more than dog walkers or pre-driving-age children on the sidewalk. But anytime you see a bunch of street-parked cars on a street where everyone has a garage, that's a dinner party. Smoke rising from a backyard, that's a BBQ or fire pit in use. Bicycles on the lawn, kids meeting at a friend's house.
Suburbia can be full of life, it's just not immediately visible.
I signed up and promptly got banned from Nextdoor.com for calling people NIMBYs. They were vigorously arguing against the town installing a stop sign at an intersection where 2 kids got hit because "stop signs = increased urbanization!!"
Moreover, there are many usergroups and meetups - at least for people who are open-minded and not totally technology-avoiding.
For example, here in Berlin you can get out almost every evening in the week, and you'll find one public meetup with similar-interested people. Well, usually not just one, but multiple events happening at the same time, so you have to decide where to go.
There are political groups such as FSFE (Free Software Foundation Europe), DigitalCourage, DigiGes. There are general-topic technology groups such as CCCB (Chaos Computer Club Berlin) and the various LUGs (Linux User Groups). And there are lots of specialized groups for various programming languages, frameworks, technologies or editors: Haskell, C++, PHP, JavaScript, Bitcoin, Freifunk, Android, Drupal, Vim, Emacs, and so on.
Even for children, there is a growing community that oranized various CoderDojo events.
Alternatively, you could blindly visit one of the many hacker spaces (IN-Berlin, c-base, Fablab, E-LOK, AFRA, Raumzeitlabor, ...) and just step into whatever event is happening there this evening.
I've been to lots of those, almost always found something interesting about them and many times I've even had fun, but I've always left them just as lonely as I was when I went in. They're a great way to learn something, pass the time and find people to chat tech with for while, but I've never found them particularly good for making social contacts.
This. I attended student parties maybe once or twice in my life, and it was always awful. Meeting people with shared interests is much more effective for me at forming meaningful acquaintances and friendships.
The Living Rooms, at least from the article's perspective, seem to focus on homeless, recovering from addiction, or those suffering depression, so your suggestion is more for 'regular' people who are just bored.
Slightly off-topic, but that is a very nice quote by Vonnegut. I have been on a Vonnegut mood lately, and noticed that he was pretty keen on community and its role in a person's life.
I especially like this one as well:
"Humanist try to behave decently and honorably without any expectation of rewards or punishments in afterlife. Andsince the creator of the universe is unknowable to us so far, we serve as best as we can the highest abstraction ofwhich we have some understanding, which is our community."
His views on community have been slowly changing the way I interact with people.
>"While I sometimes understand the bemoaning of top engineers spending time on trivial apps, sometimes those apps aren't as trivial as you would think when you consider how they positively impact loneliness."
How does interacting with an app and text on my phone instead of interacting with actual speech and people who are present in my surrounding impact loneliness?
In a similar spirit, it could be cool if some coffeeshops and restaurants explicitly designated one of their communal table as a 'talk table'. Where if you sit at it, it means you are open to chatting with your neighbors.
I know that many places already have communal tables but I find that unless there's some explicit display a place is meant for a certain purpose, many people who want to chat / meet new people won't initiate because they can't be sure their neighbours are open to it. If they purposefully decide to sit at a 'talk table', then you can be sure they are.
Greece has been doing this for a long time now. There are "special" coffee shops that are geared towards older people (mainly men) and which are exclusively for the purpose of socializing with other patrons, usually in a small village or neighborhood.
There are many social differences to regular coffee shops, but people who go there watch sports, play cards and argue with each other over politics, usually. We call these places "καφενεία" (kafenea). The expectation there is that most people know most other people, everyone knows the owner and the setting is usually not lavishly furnished (just a few tables and cheap chairs).
I like this idea but I can see the following challenges that would need to be overcome:
1) In the case of coffeeshops, many people go there to work. The noise of people gabbing could drive them away. This is a pet-peeve of mine; the local Starbucks seems to double as a daycare, making it really difficult to focus.
2) How likely is it that the people gathered share enough common interests that they want to talk to each other? E.g. in my case I'd want to be able to strike up a conversation about politics or philosophy or music-making or tech. If no one already-gathered shares any of those interests then I'm not staying very long.
These aren't insurmountable and there's probably others that haven't occurred to me. Again, I like the idea.
2.) Right, I do want to talk, but the number of subjects I can converse about is a tiny fraction of those on offer. If I show up and the topic is rebuilding engines or flower arranging - two topics I know nothing about - I'll have nothing to contribute.
Part of being social(ly well adjusted) is giving a shit about what someone else is interested in instead of requiring everyone to have the same interests as you.
Good point. In retrospect I misunderstood the gist of the article. Loneliness can be remedied simply by being around and engaged with other people. That doesn't require holding forth on whatever's being discussed.
The history of coffeeshops goes back hundreds / thousands of years and they were almost always used as forums for public discussion, debate and socializing. This crosses across borders, present in both Middle East and England. Only recently have Americans turned them into quiet places to sit and (pretend) to work on a laptop. If it were up to me they'd all be banished.
I was raised going to church but stopped in college, and I really miss the community. There's absolutely nothing like it that I've found in the secular world. It almost makes me want to 'fake it' and join a church again, just to be around such kind and welcoming people so often.
And it's not just the social part of the community, or the moral lessons, although I liked both of those things - a church gives you an entire framework for your life. What's a secular wedding? A secular funeral? How do your kids get involved in the community outside of the public school system (Boy Scouts is hardly secular) and how do you celebrate their coming of age? What are your standing plans for Wednesday night and Sunday morning? We have to reinvent all these things from scratch when we're not involved with a church, and people do that, but I've never seen such an in-depth and positive out-of-the-box experience as what a church provides. They've been optimizing this stuff for literally millennia.
And I think that society is ripe for a group that will provide all of this, while not also trying to tell us about spirits doing magic tricks. And if you think about it that way, then the "this is where the world comes from" part of religion is almost a sideshow to the "here's a community and framework for your life" part, and yet it's what people focus on and what turns people away.
Definitely agree on this one, to such an extent that I don't expect someone who's never been a part of a church community to understand that they are missing. Sort of affirmed by the guy who thinks a public gym is an approximate replacement.
Church is a place where they help you figure out how to live your life. You learn about family. You learn about money. You learn about grief and loss. You share your own insecurities and learn about the insecurities of the others in your community.
We would sit down once a week for about 90 minutes in a group of ~7 and try to apply lessons (moral, financial, social, etc.) to our lives.
I'd love to see an analog spring up in the tech community.
> What's a secular wedding? A secular funeral? How do your kids get involved in the community outside of the public school system (Boy Scouts is hardly secular) and how do you celebrate their coming of age? What are your standing plans for Wednesday night and Sunday morning?
This sounds like you live in a region where the majority of people are religious. I live in East Germany, where the majority of people don't belong to any church. Consequently, all of the things that you mentioned exist here:
* A secular wedding consists of a ceremony wherein a state-appointed official solemnizes the marriage (basically like the wedding service without the prayers and the singing), followed by the usual reception.
* A secular funeral is basically the same, a funeral service without the religious parts. The last time I attended a funeral, I was 4 years old, so I cannot comment on this, but I imagine that a secular funeral would focus more on the history of the person to remember, rather than on the religious interpretation of the event.
* There is a secular coming-of-age ceremony called Jugendweihe [1].
* There are clubs etc. that organize activities for children, they're just secular.
* "Standing plans for Wednesday ngiht and Sunday morning" are not a problem either because no-one goes to the church.
That's interesting, thanks. I've never been to a secular wedding or funeral and know few non-religious people.
My comment about plans for wednesday/sunday is just that having church activities automatically twice a week provides something to do without specifically planning. On wednesdays I used to sing, play my instrument in a group, or attend church classes all with friends. Now I drink beer.
Interestingly, and rather off-topic, many LGBTQ+ people, polyamorous people, and people who generally don't fit into what society prescribes, have to deal with all of these questions right now anyway - along with even more questions like "what is a relationship?" or "how do I present myself at work?". I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all answer to many of these questions, I don't think there can be.
That's sort of the point of a church. It gives you frameworks did answering those questions and a community of people of all ages to compare notes with.
Some religious institutions provide strict, rigid answers, and others are more flexible. Most I would say have fallen at least somewhat behind the times, especially as modern society finds it more difficult to accept that God exists.
I'm quite against religion but agree somewhat. But secular weddings? I've not been to a whole lot of weddings, but the secular ones have been qualitatively better. The ceremony seems planned around the actual people wanting to express their love and commitment, not the (generally boring) rites of people going before a god. A sermon or mass seems just so out of place. Or maybe it's just Christian-type ones that get it wrong.
The secular weddings had a feeling that every minute was purposeful, that there wasn't any going through ceremony to "get to the good stuff".
If you're religious, then the ceremony is the "good stuff". It's meaningful. Your friends, siblings, parents, their parents, and their parents probably were married to a similar ceremony. It's about community, not individualism.
It's not like the various Christian churches invented those frameworks from scratch either. They are assimilated and developed from existing practices. The church has no monopoly over these practices. The secular community can take -- and has taken -- these practices and develop them into a secular framework.
For example, my wedding, and those of most of my friends, were secular. They were very much similar to the religious weddings in my culture, but the official part was done in front of a judge instead of a priest.
In my (European) country, we have two groups of Scouts, one aligned with the Catholic Church, and one secular. It seems some people are trying to do the same in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigators_USA
This is what gyms have become for many. I remember seeing a graph showing the decline in church attendance coinciding with the rise in gym memberships.
I think that gyms can scratch a certain itch in that arena, but aren't nearly as comprehensive as what a church provides. Also I hoped for that when I started at a small yoga studio, but nobody really talked to anybody else there, as far as I saw, and I didn't make any lasting connections.
I was going to mention the UUs as well. Here in Spokane we've a sizable UU "church", and its leader is a self-proclaimed atheist. They have a very large physical facility and there's always something going on.
A somewhat similar organization: http://www.unity.org/ It's based just outside of KC at Unity Village and I can highly recommend a visit if you're in the area. The site is beautiful and an incredibly peaceful place. I'm an atheist so I can't speak for any of the religious or quasi-religious beliefs of the two entities but they definitely have an established social infrastructure.
I experimented with a couple UU churches and was disappointed. They seemed to attract a lot of people with a "spirituality" that didn't fit with what I wanted. Maybe just the places I tried. Wiccans, people greeting at the door with "the sky-mother is smiling upon us today!", etc. All nice people though. It made me ask, would I want a group to be totally accepting in that you can believe whatever you want, or a group with a little more active skepticism?
The thing is, those are the people you're looking for! The ones who reject (or are rejected by) mainstream religion, but desire a welcoming community atmosphere, they end up at UU churches. If you find Wiccans and sky-children there, that's because they're present in your community, and sought out the church for probably roughly the same reasons as you. Who better to form a community with than nice people with whom you might not otherwise interact?
I think to socialize with random other individuals most people need alcohol or a pretense - pubs provide the former, temples provide the latter.
There are societies where this concept is pretty foreign. I live in Thailand and when I tell Thai friends that foreigners often sit down at a pub and talk to complete strangers, many are quite surprised.
For me, it really helps if I have a pretense like you say, but for me that pretense is playing games. Pool, darts, trivia, role playing games, board games (the biggest one for me right now), scavenger hunts, murder mysteries, even karaoke I can treat kind of like a game. Playing or following sports (games) can serve as that pretense also, although I don't follow them very closely personally (although it's impossible to avoid Cubs mania in Chicago right now :)
Games have helped me be around strangers and give me a reason to talk to people I would be too shy to talk to normally. Now a lot of those strangers are no longer strangers, but friends, and that's because we played a lot of games together.
I also believe that you can learn more in much less time about the character and personality of a person by how they act in a game (especially games about devising your own strategies and negotiating with people) than you can with most traditional social outings.
Surprisingly video games don't really do this for me anymore. I do still play a lot of them, but I mostly play single player games. If I play multiplayer, it's got to be something in the same room now, which is why I have a Wii U.
Board games are really great for this, as it immediately gives you something to focus on - both literally and figuratively. Rather than having to stare a stranger in the face, you've got an excuse to pore over the bits and pieces on the table while quietly listening as the game is explained. The rules give you something to concentrate on as well as another excuse for not talking all time.
But! The mechanics of the game itself are inevitablely social. Pretty soon you're interacting with your fellow players in dozens of small ways. Maybe you're even striking bargains and forming alliances. By the time the game ends, these people you've been chatting around a table with for almost an hour don't seem like such strangers anymore, and you've got a shared experience to talk about, as you trade views on how the game went and what you'd do differently next game.
I met many of my local friends in a cafe here. We all have small kids, which give you a very easy opportunity to talk to people you don't know and make it difficult to spend time with a phone or laptop.
After four years of living in our town with kids, I almost always bump into people I know when we are out and about. I've never been so connected to the local community where I live before and I really love it. :)
I am getting flashbacks of those days. It was so nice to walk into a Starbucks, and not see the chorus of people staring into their devices.
The smart phone is looking like The Adult Pacifier. I'm getting old, but I remember social anxiety. I might have been that person who pulled out the phone?
When was this magic time when people constantly made friends with strangers in public? I remember that picture comparing the line of people staring at their smart phones to a group of people in the 1920's separately staring at their newspapers in public. Same people, same impulses, different day.
Talking to people older than me, they often seem to say that a timeless feature of living in cities is that you try to pretend that the masses around you aren't there.
I would say it was about five-something years ago. You weren't expected to have a smartphone that coddled you like a baby, and people would be more willing to help you out. Example – I was in New York by myself, and without a smart phone. I had to find my way around with maps + asking people. I ended up talking to quite a few interesting people, and hanging out with a stranger as we both were going the same way to a popular landmark.
Today the iPhone in my pocket completely replaces all of those interactions, since I can (and am supposed to be able to) map my way to absolutely anywhere in NYC.
Oh glad I have showdead on, this comment was killed! Sadly now I see quite a bit dead comments that shouldn't be. Diversity of ideas shouldn't be left out in crossfire in a fight against spammers and trolls.
In my Southern European country, cafes are still places for discussion among friends; Starbucks is very much an exception. On the other hand, I don't think people expect you to talk to complete strangers; generally you need to be friends with someone in the group.
If you want to meet completely new people, I think you're better off joining some activity.
In countries that have mandatory military service, many men create lifelong friendships in there. A great thing about it is that you meet people from literally all walks of life, the lowlives, the poor, the politically connected etc, all in a neutral environment.
This is an interesting concept because it's actually quite old. While traveling through the north of Holland playing shows we happened to play in a centuries-old historic public living room in a tiny township in the middle of nowhere. The place had been a home, but the occupants of the home historically (whomever they were) would open their living room most every day to travelers and neighbors, and serve small-fare food and drinks. The modern owners continue the tradition, and host house concerts occasionally.
It makes sense: it's a sparsely populated location. You could have called it a "cafe" and converted it, and maybe made a little extra money, but so much of the social aspect would be gone. The place actually adds more value to the community as a community living room than it would as a diner.
Edit: the place was also interesting in that it had the original "bedsteads" or box beds (example: [1]). These open (and latched!) from the outside: parents would basically lock their kids in these boxes overnight.
Nowhere is this more apparent than Amsterdam. Too much of America is built solely for cars. Thankfully millenials want walkable areas and streets first and foremost.
Really, the nerve of us crazy Americans, wanting to be able to live and work in different places depending on what we felt was best for our families. What were we thinking?
But that is crazy. If you look deeper, why would you want to work separately from where you live? Like, "wanting what's best for [your] families" /could/ be that you don't need a long commute, AND where you live is nice :) It's shallow thinking that the only way to have a safe living environment is to separate it from where you work.
>why would you want to work separately from where you live?
Because separately, $300,000 is a beautiful 3bd/2ba house with a finished basement and a backyard in a safe, pleasant neighborhood with excellent services and infrastructure.
Together, it is maybe a "junior 1-bedroom" condo in a former industrial area just starting its gentrification curve where you really shouldn't let the 12-year-old walk the dog alone at night.
>It's shallow thinking
It's economics. High density apartments offer less space at higher cost.
The problem with this conversation (European 'let's walk everywhere' vs. American 'don't tell me how to live') is that it tends to rely on wrong assumptions from both sides, though obviously I can't read the minds of parent and GP. In the US we aggressively subsidize low-density living through school busing, infrastructure, the secondary market for federally insured single family home mortgages, and many other programs. So Europeans have a hard time recognizing that telling us to live in walkable places is like telling us to spit into the wind in so many parts of the country (after all, if a commute is bad for family, how about moving hundreds of miles from relatives?) Meanwhile, we Americans have a hard time recognizing that we're making choices on a severely biased playing field that discourages the living patterns that humans have used since the dawn of civilization.
We'll get back to the old way eventually, but it's going to hurt bad for a lot of people.
"The old way" is subsistence agriculture. If we're really going back there, we'll be too busy wrestling with questions like "will the harvest be enough to feed me this year?" and "will my child die of this treatable infection?" and "what are cars?" to worry about parking :).
>it's going to hurt bad for a lot of people.
Well yes, anything that ends the economic conditions which make current residential arrangements appropriate will have significant consequences.
It's so generous of you to acknowledge how both sides are wrong: Americans are wrong to want to live the way they do, while Europeans are wrong to not realize how severely deluded, wasteful, and out of touch with humanity Americans are.
Sure, you could express it that way, but mine includes some empathy, whereas yours is so carefully protected against the possibility of anyone benefitting from it: not Americans, because you're pushing us away by calling us stupid; and not Europeans, because you don't attempt to help anyone understand why others are so determined to be wrong.
You're still stuck in the broken mindset. The whole idea of suburbs was an invention. And what I'm saying is, invent something new! I don't discount that you need to start with where you're at, the day to day practicality of what isn't yet available, but to always dream of what only already exists is boring and deadening
Yes they should - high density housing and everyone having to commute to the same few square miles in the middle of a densely populated area is one of the biggest scams of our time.
To each his/her own. I live in one of those "high density housing" places you mention and I have to say it's quite convenient to only be 3 tram stations away from work. It's actually faster to get to work using public transportation compared to taking the car (cause of difficulty finding parking). And half of the times I choose to walk to work anyway, it's a very effective way of relieving anxiety stress before the work day starts and of decompressing on the way home at the end of the day.
I live in one too - if we spread people out a bit more into localised communities and make work from home culture a real thing, all the pollution and lifestyle issues you get from high density housing and everyone having to work in the same few square miles would no longer be a problem.
I see one car accident on the sydney harbour bridge delay thousands of parents from getting home before their children's bed times - it's just not the right way to live, no wonder everyone is depressed and family units are struggling.
I live in high density housing - it's like being a caged hen compared to the freedom I had being brought up as a child in the countryside. The noise, the pollution, the high house prices. Not good.
Biggest scam? That sounds like heaven to me. I, however, would willingly live in the middle of Tokyo. (Perhaps we can alleviate the problem by having a better rapid transit system?)
The alternative is low density housing and everyone having to commute to the same few square miles in the middle of nowhere with no services culture or energy..
A recent post on the /r/campingandhiking subreddit [1] featured a photo of five young men, dressed in suits purchased at a thrift shop, at the northern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail. The OP revealed that none of the men knew each other prior to the trip. Each just happened to start the trip at the same time, meeting the others during the first day on the trail. Together, they backpacked for 5 months over 2,650 miles.
The best part of traveling along was talking to people in the common areas of hostels. I wish there were more social spaces like that where you can just randomly talk to strangers without seeming weird.
It works in hostels because like you said, most people are traveling. This means they're only in the city for a night or two, so they want to socialize, meet local people or other travelers as part of their adventure, go out together, etc.
This doesn't work the same in other 'social' places. If you visit a coffee shop, 90% of people are meeting friends, doing work, or want to drink alone and browse the internet. I don't know how you'd start a place that only encourages visitors that want to meet new friends. What about a coffee shop that only has big round tables with 10 seats, so you need to share tables with a handful of strangers and face each other?
You could try local CouchSurfing meetups. I've been to some alone, and depending on the city they might have 5 or 100 people. They're typically at pubs, and some are better than others, but they're usually a mix of locals and travelers from around the world. Quite a few others go alone, so it's relatively easy to make some friends.
"If you visit a coffee shop, 90% of people are meeting friends, doing work, or want to drink alone and browse the internet."
This is true but if you frequent the same place each day at around the same time people will start acknowledging you and making conversation. It takes time but it's a fairly reliable way of meeting people, especially if making the first move is something you struggle with.
It's only weird if people think it's weird. If it's not weird to you then it's not weird. Who cares what the strangers think? You won't see them again anyway and if it happens enough then they'll stop thinking it's weird too. The best way to counter this "talking to strangers is weird" phenomenon is completely ignore the possibility the other person might think it's weird, and go talk to them. If you get good practice at it, they might think it's weird for half a second and then become completely comfortable talking to you.
New condo developments in SF are trying this idea out.
Gentrification, etc, yadda aside, there are now big HOA club houses, sky decks, and other common areas designed to encourage mingling among neighbors. Now there will be undoubtedly those who will shut themselves in (just like in college), but I think it's bringing back a collegial atmosphere.
Our HOA is organizing a bring your own bottle and cheese event once a month on our sky deck.
I just moved into a sort of a co-op. It's run by residents and owned and maintained by a startup that's trying to create a lot of these kinda of spaces.
Beyond "bringing back a collegial atmosphere", it looks and feels like a straight up dorm.
My rent is $1700/mo. My room is tiny. The common areas are fun. Location is v central, 1040 Folsom St.
With the caveat that I've been here less than a week: so far it's great.
My mortgage is $1800/month, for a 2400 sqft duplex and a two-car garage. I can rent out the downstairs unit for $1350/month. Location, location, location...
One of the best things about living in a dorm in college was they had common areas, including a dining room. Most of the other students in the dorm became your friends that way.
After I left, they converted the dorm common areas into dorm rooms by pulling out the furniture and installing cheap wall dividers. I'm sad that students won't get that experience until they catch up on construction, but that's what happens when your university basically doubles in size in 8 years.
It's obviously have been noted elsewhere in the comments, but aren't those essentially cafes? Of course, in some countries, it became normal not to talk to strangers in cafes — but wouldn't the same in the end happen in the same public living rooms? After all, many cafes and restaurants now are using giant tables to bring people together, and we're still reluctant to talk to one another. May be the problem isn't with spaces, it's with us?
If the social media of the past decades teaches us something, is that when given the chance, people tend to form cliques and tend to stay in their bubble when they find one. This persists in large cities where people have adequate and constant exposure to alternate cultures. Maybe people have gotten tired of trying to be tolerant to everyone, maybe they don't see enough value in having to resort to lowest-common-denominator communication and cultural memes. Maybe in the future the physical layout of cities will come to represent its ideological /cultural layout. As loneliness is a physical thing, maybe bringing compatible people closer together enhances communication.
I liked the article and the overall concept. The main issue in my opinion is that the sort of people who would be attracted to such a place would also have had already a great many opportunities to connect with others throughout their life and they likely failed in all of those attempts to form positive, valuable relationships. So the likelihood that they will succeed in this venue is very small. In other words, the reason they are there is that they could not do what this place is asking them to do in any other setting that normal people find plenty of social opportunity to successfully make friends and build a support network. Such spaces would likely be undermined in the United States by the fact that it would end up being a magnet for homeless mentally ill people. If you live in Chicago, as I do, and you want to talk to such people then you can just go to the library downtown, which has ended up being basically a day program for the marginalized, who sit there all day using the free computers and taking bird baths in the bathroom sinks. They don't talk to each other a whole heck of a lot though.
But yeah the modern world is super alienating for most people. The loneliness problem is, in my opinion, sort of like the 21st century version of slums. In the past the existence of slums was a sign that economic progress was not working to include everyone. In our times the isolation and loneliness of vast swaths of our population signals that the system is not creating the opportunity to form effective personal relationships. I doubt there is much we can do about that. Nobody is a stakeholder in the success of the lonely other than the lonely person themselves, and they wouldn't be lonely if the knew how to build relationships. So it's a catch 22 that only gets worse over time.
Not to diminish whats being done but it does feel like a band aid solution. This is such an important issue. I currently live in London, UK and loneliness is a big problem here. My parents were from India and it doesn't seem as bad there but may be I'm only seeing through my own lens and it is actually a problem there as well. I think the problems stem from a combination of culture, modern life style and tech.
Easy patch: keep a security guard watching over physical machines, which should be the case anyway.
The same can be done with paper ballots. The trick with this article is that the perpetrator has full and unrestricted access to the building. If that were the case it wouldn't matter what the medium was, any of it can be hacked. They could throw cameras up in the booths, keyloggers, virii, etc.
In my area there are enough polling places that if you go to your local one you usually see several people you know. And it's not uncommon to have a social gathering (BBQ etc) at someone's house on that day since everyone has to go to the same place at the same time.
I just met a YC founder and I do think her startup fosters this type of community and builds deeper relationships beyond the typical "transactional" world.
I wonder if VR could play a part on this? My grandfather had a terrible brain tumor that didn't allow him to walk, although he was mentally fine. I could imagine virtual 'living rooms' where my grandfather could've interacted with other people etc.
This sounds nice and all but how long will it take for these to turn in to a bar or cafe or whatever, designed exclusively to extract money from participants?
No, but when you solve a problem for yourself, you still need to go and ask people who aren't like yourself whether they consider it solved before you say "it's solved for everyone".
While I sometimes understand the bemoaning of top engineers spending time on trivial apps, sometimes those apps aren't as trivial as you would think when you consider how they positively impact loneliness. Of course, there's plenty of garbage out there, but I do love to see efforts to connect people in ways that can be serendipitous and have the possibility of leading to more meaningful connection.
I can think of multiple long-time valuable real-life relationships I've had where our first connections were on some trivial platform. Sometimes it's hard to see past the glaring negatives that come with some of those platforms, but I'm hopeful that better options will evolve over time.