Social isolation is probably the biggest cause of unhappiness in advanced countries. Having a strong social network has lots of advantages including providing better romantic and career opportunities, as well as improving physical and psychological health.
Humans have a long history of dishing out lots of money to be parts of strong communities too--country clubs and fraternities have high fees. Church goers regularly give up 10% of their (gross) income to be part of that group. Cult members might even hand over ALL of their possessions to join.
The camaraderie and experiences that go along with being part of a strong, long lived community tends to be the thing people value most in life. Yet finding those communities has become increasingly difficult in the modern era. People move away to different cities, or just don't run into the same set of people everyday. With the rise of remote work, social disconnection is only going to rise. I think there's a lot of room to create new social organizations with pretty minimal technology, and make a pretty profit from doing so. Humans are still human--they want those connections--they mostly just need an introduction.
I think a large part of this (in the USA, anyways) is due to how modern cities are structured.
It used to be, 100 or 200 years ago, that your workplace, your home, and your usual hang-out place were all within reasonable walking distance of each other. It wasn't a huge deal to go out and meet new people, as you'd naturally bump into them every day.
Nowadays we have a large portion of people in bedroom communities, isolated in a sea of houses. They drive in isolated cars to their workplaces, swing by to get some Starbucks on the way in, and that's the extent of their social interaction. Apart from libraries and parks, there's not many places that you can regularly go and just "hang out" without spending money just to exist in that space. It's incredibly easy to go for weeks or months without any substantial social contact outside of work or your few neighbors.
I feel like this is a reason why internet organizations and social media have exploded in popularity, for that matter. It's the new "default place" to hang out and get social interaction, for better or for worse.
I miss living in the dormitory in college. Everything I needed was within a 3 minute walk. The dorm was full of my peers. There was always something fun going on.
You had a room just big enough for a bed, a desk, and a sink. Everything else was common.
If I was a developer I'd build a "dorm for adults" right next to places like Amazon, but at least around here zoning won't permit it.
It's great if you're single and don't have many possessions. Inexpensive, too.
Seattle briefly allowed microapartments, before single-family home owners fought back and got them killed again. You can see one here: https://seattle.craigslist.org/see/apa/d/seattle-apodment-su... $900/mo for 198 square feet. Kitchen sink, but no stove/oven. You do get your own bathroom, at least.
Carefully examine the bathroom photos. No sink! You wash your hands in the kitchenette. Easy enough, when it's three steps away. (After all, where would you put a bathroom sink? The entire apartment is the size of an RV.)
One upside: if the landlord gets on your nerves, it would be real, real easy to move out. A one-backpack apartment.
Wut? I always wonder what people mean when they say 'in Europe', as if there weren't vast cultural and economic differences. Remember e.g. Switzerland and Albania are both in (continental) Europe.
A couple of years ago I inquired about the prize in a room in a hotel in San Francisco I happened to walk up to -- the front desk person cautioned that it offered 'european style' shared bathrooms. plonk -- I never encountered a hotel in Europe with shared bathrooms, but I've never been to Albania either.
I remember the geography of my home continent very well, I travel around here a lot.
The hotels with shared bathrooms are very common even in Switzerland, and everywhere else in Europe.
The small apartments are more common the richer the country. Larger apartments are more common in the poorer countries. You can find the small ones in every capital city though.
I sense a confusion of the terms hotel and hostel. That 's' separates worlds.
As a young lad (on a tight budget) I stayed in youth hostels in Europe and USA as well. Those (at that time) not only were equipped with shared bathrooms, but also commonly with bunk beds in dormitories (separated by gender -- yeah, such were the times) and usually expected you to take on chores. I enjoyed my stay as it allowed me to go to places I couldn't otherwise afford and meet like-minded young travelers, but it would be impossible to mistake those places for hotels.
Well the line is pretty blurred. But you're right that what used to be called three-star hotels is now primarily a thing of the east, while the west calls them hostels.
This change of naming happened during the past two decades. You're technically correct, though. Note that you can get a private room in the hostel I linked, that's not universal - and I feel that moves it towards hotel.
College dorms house a set of people that have been carefully vetted by an admissions committee. I'm not sure if it's possible to recreate such a community and foster trust among a group of adults without some form of prior vetting or selection.
You're right, vetting would be necessary. Dorms work because the population is (generally speaking) in the same age cohort and stage of their lives, there for a common purpose, and they have skin in the game i.e. they risk their tuition and completion of their degree if they don't abide by the rules. That's the other thing, students sign on to a code of conduct and are held to account by staff and volunteers. An adult dorm would work but it would need to follow a similar setup.
> A company town is a place where practically all stores and housing are owned by the one company that is also the main employer.
I'm not familiar with varying types, but AFAIU (or hope), the organizer / owner is not usually the main employer. It's foremost a community where people live. Some people work there or self-employ, but it's not usually a corporate-dictated, top-down governed establishment, which would be something quite different. At least in the examples I know of.
Not if it's organized as a corporation where all of the residents are voting shareholders. That's generally the model that most cohousing and intentional communities tend towards.
A friend of mine actually lived in a place like this in Japan for a while - shoebox room, and then generous communal areas for cooking / living. It sounded like a great idea to me, and when I moved to London I tried to find somewhere similar.
There were a couple of places in this space when I was looking but I didn't go with them for a few reasons:
- cost was high
- contractual terms were long (6-12mo minimum)
- reviews were mixed, but the general vibe was a "tragedy of the commons" type situation
- location / transit links didn't appear great
I ended up boarding with an older couple for a while before finding a more traditional share house with other young professionals.
If I'd been able to try it out with a 1/2 month minimum I would've looked past the other issues to give it a chance, it seemed like it could've a great way to accelerate finding your feet in a new country/city
This 110%. It's especially obvious after moving out of the US and it's hard to convey how much better cities built for humans are than cities built for cars than by experiencing it for yourself.
Yea so great, until you are struck by a pandemic and your minimalist home is basically now a prison cell where you can't do much because everything there is to do was outside your tiny home.
Now I know people shitting on suburbs is the fashion, but the fact is if you are the kind of person who has hobbies that don't involve going out and socializing a bedroom community is perfect. You get your own land and a detached home with plenty of space to do mostly whatever you want. Woodwork, swimming in a pool, running around with your dog, playing loud music and movies, hosting dinner parties, whatever. It's so much more comfortable for people who don't have urges to just "hang out".
Why not both? Seriously though, suburbs would be a lot nicer if they were built on a human scale with amenities within walking distance rather than a sea of house bounded by freeways. You just need mixed zoning really, model it after a small town with fully detached housing surrounding a small core of low density apartments and shops. Rinse and repeat, call it a decentralized city or some such, maybe it'll catch on and get some planner's attention.
This sounds like how many places in the Netherlands are. A small town (1000-75000) often with an ancient core (ours dates back to 1300) with the church repurposed as a microbrewery, shops and apartments. Then around that core, ever more recently built houses with yards and a more affordable €/m2 price the further you move out. It puts bars, sports, parks, restaurants, groceries in walking and biking distance, often with bigger cities nearby for theatres, university, or more niche shopping, accessible via public transportation or cars in ~30min.
Two of the central themes drawing people to suburbs are space and privacy. I agree that more mixed use spaces in suburbs would be nice, but fundamentally I don't think you are going to do away with cars in most suburban environments because I don't you can achieve the business density necessary to do so without sacrificing lot size and privacy.
I don't think you should do away with cars, we need them for efficient transport and whenever we need to travel longer distances. I just think we should build with both cars and people in mind. Most North American suburbs are focused solely on cars and houses with no provision for mixed use. I think the zoning is more to blame than cars for the current dire conditions.
I think for that to work you need a strong public transport system (regular daily, frequent enough and comprehensive) as well as having multi-purpose buildings so that companies are mixed in housing, as well as green places and areas for people to meet, sit chat and go shopping.
Doctors, dentists, hairdressers, cafes, bakeries and flower shops all fit nicely with housing.
I live in the burbs with some amenities being walking distance. People are still very isolated and segregated. I'm not sure it can be fixed except to allow easy access through public transportation to more dense, walkable areas. Strong driving culture as well. Save for a few strip malls on main drags, suburbia is a big box dystopia. Anyway yes zoning is probably the most important thing, though people are out here for the (comparatively) larger lots and houses.
> your minimalist home is basically now a prison cell
Went home for Christmas and as part of it swung by the nursing home where my Grandma lives.
She is basically in actual prison for the past nine months. For a good part of it she was confined to her room. It appears that they've relaxed the restrictions after Coronavirus ripped through the place and everyone that didn't die is now immune. She is at least allowed to go sit in the lobby area now and talk with the other residents.
Nothing quite like watching a 98 year old woman break down in tears every time someone reminds her that she can't actually come outside and give us a hug or talk to us in person.
Other people have caught it and recovered, but it was not known whether that gave them immunity. What's different here? In fact, some people have caught it twice, so you can obviously recover without gaining immunity.
Who said anything about a minimalist home? While a little smaller, our place has a much better build quality than our "stick built" suburban US home (that we still own and rent out - and it requires wayyyy more maintenance). It overlooks a large park (that contains walking paths, statues, water features, skateboard park, various sports courts, outdoor exercise park and even a climbing wall. Additionally, we have a view of the bay and mountains.
Within 5-10 min walking distance we have all daily activity requirements like grocery stores, gyms, pharmacies, restaurants, bars, schools, large year-round indoor swimming pool that blows away any private pool that I've seen, etc. If I did want a car we have underground parking or I could buy a private garage in a self-storage warehouse type area nearby for parking it or using as a hobby workshop. The one thing I do miss is being able to crank up my electric guitar, still looking for a solution to that one. Maybe a music space that rents by the hour or something.
I don't miss the car centric lifestyle for a second, and I'm saying this as an amateur race car driver. With all the time I used to spend driving around for the most basic of activities, I now have much more time available for my family, hobbies, side projects or even the occasional nap. You can't buy this quality of life anywhere in the US at any price or income level.
Who said anything about minimalist or tiny homes? There's a wide middle ground between a 25 square meter shoebox apartment and a grotesque 230 square meter "family" home.
Thank you for speaking up. You're responding to a comment that angrily assumes some unspoken characteristics about "cities built for humans, and not for cars."
I am a reluctant, but accomplished touring cyclist, and I've ridden hundreds of miles through American landscape that is positively hostile to pedestrians and vehicles operating at less-than-car scales. The assumption of cars has led urban designers to implement travel distances that are only grueling to traverse, and the interstitial spaces are inhospitable, bedecked with exhaust ports, bad lighting, narrow spaces or vast, entirely unfurnished without shade, let alone water or public facilities for miles, even, in larger towns. Sometimes, just crossing the street to go a kilometer I've found the American cityscape impassable without hopping in the car, and popping over a minimum of one (1) freeway exit.
That's just one aspect of the alien dimensions to which our environment's built.
I visited a University in America having lived outside America for 5 years. I walked from the University to the theater 2km away to see a movie. It felt like I was going to die even with a sidewalk next to the high way.
Similar story. The old Apple Maps icon was where the N De Anza Boulevard crossed over the Junipero Serra Freeway. Center of the old icon [0] was One Infinite Loop, top left of the icon was the Cupertino Hotel.
Going from the Cupertino Hotel to One Infinite Loop on foot felt like I was risking life and limb, despite it having pedestrian lights [1].
Visiting Plano, Texas (which I really enjoyed) - our hotel was just over the road from the business we were visiting.
That road was a 3-lanes-each-way road with no pedestrian crossing points. We just had to run across when there was a gap. It wasn't a fast road - there were plenty of traffic lights for traffic purposes - but still, nothing for pedestrians.
230 m^2 isn’t uncommon in the US, and there’s plenty that are double. We do have “basements” that sometimes are finished and can be counted against the size, but are generally used to much larger homes than elsewhere.
I question their numbers. How many bedrooms are in that 1156-square-foot apartment? At least three? I've lived in several two-bedroom apartments throughout my life in areas with a relatively low cost of living, and they ranged from about 650 to about 900 square feet in area. The latter felt unnecessarily spacious.
So either the source claims that the average apartment has three or more bedrooms (and this is false, very few 3BR+ apartments are built in most buildings), or that the average apartment offers palatial luxury. Maybe they miscalculated?
I respectfully request to cease comments of the type of "weeps in x". You don't have to honor this request, but I would feel better without reading these.
The brevity is pretty unique but lets see what would be conveyed by honoring that wish
Translation: "As someone that lives in desirable parts of high cost of living areas, even the largest premium units are below the average square footage mentioned in that article, I generally try not to think about it but it is fascinating to see, I think I can relate to other people that earn enough to comfortably live in these areas, but it is not common to ever talk about being financially stable in an expensive area, lets go back to pretending that we are all struggling and 'got a good deal' on our 900 sq ft penthouse."
I wanted to get a larger house with a garden before the pandemic (which is ridiculously expensive given the rent / value ratio in Europe is a joke) and the pandemics reinforced that tenfolds.
How long before the government lock us in our tiny homes again?
The problem of relying too much on "data-driven decisions" is that it leads to absurd optimizations that make the overall system more fragile.
We had only one pandemic in our lifetime, yet. But don't forget about Avian Flu and Swine Flu also happened and caused concern less than 10 years ago. The world is way more connected and we never had so many people being able to go across the world spreading a virus in less than 24h. The likelihood of another pandemic threat is increasing with time, not decreasing.
If anything, one of the lessons that I hope we take from this year is that we need to think our environments (on all scales, from the bedrooms in our homes to our cities and schools for our kids and the city altogether) for robustness and longevity, not for cost, practicality or marketability.
I blame ubiquitous access to cars and phones as significant early contributors to this problem, with modern IMs and social media being the final nail in the coffin. Because together, these technologies enable your social network to be mostly independent of location. Nowadays, when you move to a different neighbourhood or a different town, you'll still be in daily contact with your friends and family from the previous location, and (if they're relatively close by car) you'll also hang out with them regularly. So you have no reason to try and meet new people at the place you now live in, because you still have your old social network! Hell, new friends will be competing for attention with your old friends - where just few decades ago, these old friendships would go to "hibernation mode" by virtue of distance.
Internet communication, with its much richer modes of communication, is essentially social junk food. It's not a real substitute for meatspace interactions, but it satiates the hunger for socialization. Thus people feel ever more connected and ever more lonely at the same time - loneliness being social malnourishment.
This... still exists? It's called the Elks, the Kiwanis, the Odd Fellows, the Jaycees, the Rotary Club, the Knights of Pythias, the Freemasons, and some organizations based on blood or military service, like the American Legion or the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Even here in the Bay Area I live just a couple blocks down from a huge and well-appointed Elks lodge, and just a few miles away in downtown Mountain View, there is an Eagles lodge across the street from an Odd Fellows, itself a block away from a Freemason lodge.
I think they exist, but they don't appeal to younger people. All of the groups you mention that I'm familiar with I associate with people's grandfathers, or at youngest their slightly odd uncles. Also only with men, although maybe that's a bit of selection bias on the ones I know.
If something exists but people aren't using it, it isn't the right solution. It might be hard to say why it isn't, it could even just be a marketing problem, but nevertheless the problem isn't solved by its existence.
> I think they exist, but they don't appeal to younger people.
I live in the mid-west, where these organizations were very common. I'm ~50 years old, and I don't know ANYONE who's in one of them, and every one of them around the area that I drive by is in disrepair. I expect them to disappear with the boomer generation.
Another feature of my location are all the small "mainline" churches (Presbyterian, Methodist, et. al.), who hover around 30-50 people, and have no members younger than 60. There's a business opportunity coming to buy up a lot of prime real estate when these churches fold in another 10 years.
I think a huge problem with finding "community" now is the utter isolation caused by social media and access to the thinnest slice of the news you want to tolerate. It has created a culture where people are only tolerant to their SPECIFIC view of the world, and it's just really hard to find people who think EXACTLY like you.
I think they exist, but they don't appeal to younger people.
I actually tried to join a couple of those sorts of organizations, and I found them all very off-putting. Between the weird elitism, the arbitrary and time consuming hurdles for membership and the feeling that everybody there felt 20+ years older than me (even when they probably weren't) didn't make it seem like a good time.
I like the concept though, I just wish there was one that felt more up to date and actually felt like a sort of thing I'd want to join.
For those that live around Tampa, they can always join a Pirate Krewe https://interkrewe.com/ They started out of the Gasparilla Festival http://gasparillapiratefest.com/ but have become more like the Rotary club or the JC's. They tend to attract members from mid 20's on up.
They seem to appeal just fine in the Bay Area. In fact, I'd say that the main sources of social hookups and favor-trading around here are (a) churches and (b) fraternal orgs... possibly distantly followed by college alumni groups and actual college fraternities.
I think just talking to an Apple dad about his life and priorities would be extremely eye-opening for a lot of people on HN.
I would say that about 40% of my engineer peers belong to a church, but my circle tends to be pretty Korean/Asian. Church attendance is pretty ubiquitous around here. Larry Wall goes to a local church.
While here in the Midwest, their golf clubs, parks and buildings are being sold off to the public for lack of membership.
Part of the problem is many are invitation-only clubs. That kept them mono-culture and full of the 'right people'. And the current members have at some time quit inviting? Don't know why.
You aren't more isolated living in a suburban house than in an inner city apartment. Isolation mostly has to do with your desire/initiative/ability to engage in social activities.
The higher barrier will isolate a person more. Whatever initiative a person has encounters higher barriers, with the net effect more isolation in aggregate.
Advertising basically works this way. Nudges demonstrably work at a population level without anyone feeling coerced. In aggregate, for the population as a whole, it likely makes a statistical difference, even though no one in particular feels like it makes a deciding factor. Like, say, with organ donation. Make opt in default, an enrollment goes up.
Unless some other factor associated with suburban living cancels the effect, it seems extremely unlikely that it does not make a difference, even if every individual feels like "the only thing that dictates it is my desire/initiative/ability".
I think the complications getting transit home is a major cause of point two there. Co-workers that have to catch trains out to commuter towns always needed to be mindful of the time, and may have needed to drive the final part of their journey.
Big contrast to being able to catch an underground/subway within a few minutes with no planning, and fall back to a relatively affordable Uber if you get carried away and miss the last one
Depends. Inner city may offer quicker/easier access to favored activities. When I had a car, I found that a ten-mile drive in from the burbs (and back) can become a barrier. Mass transit, much moreso.
Socializing, there can be a substantial difference between interaction and meaningful interaction. Both can require time away from favored/necessary activities; both can have multiple consequences (desirable or not). A perceived need for constant contact may be unhealthy.
Tech is a crappy substitute for the real thing (as E. M. Forster famously noted), so has some destructive potential.
I would argue the issue is there are only so many people talented at this particular skill, "making a meet up that works" and so it doesn't scale.
There are all kinds of issues. Setting an agenda. Getting people to follow the agenda. Fostering conversation. Finding venues. Getting the right mix of people. I've been to so many meetups where these kind of issues were not handled well.
If you just want random people you can go to a bar. If you want "like" people it's much much harder.
Victorian etiquette was on to this. You need social market makers who are skilled at knowing a lot of people, introducing them to each other, starting conversations based on common interests and butting out when no longer needed. Formalizing this process would help to some extent, technology could help with remembering names, interests, and whether people have been introduced. Somebody could build this, gamify it and make money all day long if they did it right.
I’ve been thinking for a while that this is needed too. This is a big role that priests play in communities.
If I were to start something up, it would start with a clubhouse and probably two employees—one is an event organizer who plans parties and other special gatherings, and the second would be a host/hostess that is responsible for welcoming new members and ensuring they’re comfortable as they try to fit in. Maybe something like an “onboarding partner” would work too when you’re trying to scale.
The problem with any idea in this direction is that someone ends up having to deal with all of the toxic people, and in this market, there are a lot of them.
In my experience the toxicity you're talking about doesn't usually carry through to in person gatherings. Most people have at least some manners even if they are awkward and being in a group face to face adds social pressure to mind them. It's fairly rare that you see someone who is a complete boor since they are usually excluded from gatherings due to their behaviour. To make something like this work you'd need to leverage all of that cultural machinery that's already in place, networks of trust and reputation, consensus, expectations of politeness, etc. We still have all that social technology that's been built up over millennia, I think we're mostly just lacking the hubs around which we used to organize. Build the hub and people will provide the etiquette.
> In my experience the toxicity you're talking about doesn't usually carry through to in person gatherings. Most people have at least some manners even if they are awkward and being in a group face to face adds social pressure to mind them. It's fairly rare that you see someone who is a complete boor since they are usually excluded from gatherings due to their behaviour.
I think in-person power dynamics are often not immediately obvious, and "inclusive" groups sometimes make it worse.
For example, cases where the inclusion of someone who's socially awkward lead to the self-exclusion of some other people.
Someone's social awkwardness could lead them to constantly stare at people they find attractive; the leaders or organisers of the group might be too nice to exclude said person, since they didn't do anything criminal like harass people, just awkwardly stare at them; and other people might choose to self-exclude themselves because of this.
If the goal of attending gatherings of new people is to expand your social circle then you'll inevitably run into a lot of people that you don't like. A product that enables people to host and attend these events would have to account for such faux pas and gaucherie, maybe having a way to pass anonymous feedback to others at the event (moderated by the hosts first of course) so you could politely inform people that their staring is making people uncomfortable. My thoughts on the initial concept were along the lines of a way of automating not just introductions but also learning how to interact well with others, providing structure to those interactions that people usually fumble through and hopefully avoiding or lessening situations like the one you mentioned.
It’s a real role that’s hired in the Jewish community. Both to encourage in-faith marriages and to foster a sense of community. Usually one person for teens, another for young adults, and others for men’s club, woman’s club, newly parents, retirees...etc
It’s generally funded by synagogues and charity foundations.
I’d of thought the Christian churches/denominations have similar programs.
It could be unique to Jews due to historical and present anti-Semitism. E.g. Jews were (and still are in a few establishments) barred from many fraternities, country clubs, athletic clubs, summer camps...etc
Making it a paid position is a great idea, it provides incentive for the person to do their job well and adds some status to it. I'd like to see this idea carried over to other groups since it's done so haphazardly everywhere else or added on as a soft skill for people in other roles where they either have it or they don't. Is there a name for this role? I'd be interested in knowing more about it.
I think about this often, but then I go for a walk (or in other cities, a drive) and see packed bars and restaurants every night with people from all ages having a good time. Makes me feel like the problem is on me - people are obviously able to make friends and hang out without any special apps beyond what is available now.
Pre-covid I went to bars a lot to hang out. Ranging from suburban “family dining” bars to downtown dive bars to hipster breweries, I’ve been a regular at a lot in the last 10-15 years. Most people at my bars come in with friends and really only talk to existing friends or friends of friends. Maybe/rarely the strangers directly next to them if they’re feeling extra social, but not much more than a bit of small talk. From the outside a bar looks like a great place to meet new people and make new friends but in my experience that’s just what it looks like and not how it is.
The only new people I’ve met at bars are friends of friends, not random strangers. And when people are with their group of friends, it’s hard for a stranger to jump into that dynamic.
Yeah, it's pretty tough, especially the older you get. You need to find people that are also looking for friends, it makes it much easier. A good opportunity is to look for language exchange or expats groups, local people are always very welcome in my experience since they are rare.
It depends on the bar. If you already are well-established socially somewhere, you usually tend to self-select into establishments that kind of cater to those established friend groups.
For recent transplants they roam bars until they find one with more singles and folks looking for social interaction. They do exist, but are probably more rare.
My theory of course is that the latter type of bar morphs over time (decade+) into the prior type of bar as "friend groups" get established at the new place. The new place slowly turns into the old hangout spot.
Going to bars in other countries and/or frequenting bars that attract tourists is the solution to your problem. You'll have less inhibition when traveling, or at least I do. I would never start a conversation with a stranger in the US, but it just feels...easier when abroad?
I've been living in the USA for a year and I don't think I will ever get over this odd 'spaced out' way of living. I see 3 lane roads that would work so much better as a mixed tram/bicycle lane. Crossing roads is also terrifying.
Nix the thought of walking to do the following activities:
- fetching a missing ingredient from a local shop/store that would take 25min round trip and benefit you with additional exercise.
- spending an evening going between bars being mildly intoxicated but not requiring a taxi.
Depends on where you live. Towns and cities with a vibrant downtown exist, from Carmel, California to New York, NY
Bedroom communities established during the mid century tend not to have those. My experience with those have been Fairfax County, VA; Fayetteville, Arkansas; and the suburbs around Sarasota, Florida. These are places that if you walk or bike around or take a bus, people seem to assume you are poor or a servant
Meetup is kind of this. There were also a handful of these in the early-2010s wacky startup boom - I remember some acquaintances discussing Grouper, a startup that organized 6-person social outings.
I guess one distinction between those and your examples of country clubs, fraternities, and churches is that the latter are long-lasting institutions: you find a group of people, potentially spend an extended period of time interacting with them without commitment, and then you become a "member," which carries informal commitment. (In the case of cults there's formal/irrevocable commitment, but for the rest, you're free to leave, there's just a social norm that you don't do so casually.)
The flip side is that a lot of people have either first-hand bad experiences at such organizations or know people who have, and committing to an organization that turns out to be mentally draining (even if not abusive per se) is a worry. So maybe if you want to add some sort of structure on top, find a way to manage that risk. Certainly one step is to not accept as customers/members people who make your organization less fun to join, and be very up front about that. But beyond that, there might be ways to demonstrate to newcomers that the existing members are good people, or to support the organization in establishing social norms that discourage bad experiences, or possibly even figuring out what sorts of things toxic people tend to latch onto and designing your society in a way that lacks those.
(One other danger here is that the easy way to provide some of these benefits, like better career opportunities, is to be exclusionary and offer your members favorable treatment from each other and unfairly treating those outside the organization in a correspondingly unfavorable way. Country clubs, fraternities, and churches all have a reputation of helping the rich and powerful remain rich and powerful. It's possible to provide the benefits in a non-zero-sum way, by actually using the connections to make your members better people, but it's harder.)
I didn't see anything about an app in the op's comment... I started thinking about how to create a social hub where you can just go and exist. Like men's clubs that used to exist, but without the sexism and classism. A clubhouse where you pay some kind of membership fee and you get unlimited access to books, movies, a lounge, a bar, a few games leagues, some mild gambling, etc. Being a queer woman with a disability, I would start by making such a place explicitly inclusive to people like me.
It's a bit unfortunate that most of them might have shut down (either temporarily or permanently) due to COVID-19, but I hope you'll find what you're looking for!
I think being explicitly a male club is extremely important for something like this to be appealing. Otherwise it’s just a meetup or bar visit. I don’t ever think it should be race specific/racist but I do support “elitist” requirements to get in.
Agreed. I’ve set up my life to foster and form in person social interactions (and organizations to the extent that they help) in my neighborhood. It’s affected where I live, what kind of house I have, each weeks schedule, my kids education, and what jobs I’ll consider. But it’s totally the main thing that we have to work on as humans.
> Humans have a long history of dishing out lots of money to be parts of strong communities too
I think this is the reason Crossfit got so popular. People could go every day, see the same people, compete against them, etc. Definitely more expensive than a regular gym but offered more than just renting time on equipment.
In the Netherlands we have something like 'Verenigingsleven', loosely translated to club life.
At the end of 19th century workers got better working hours. In the hours after work they set up clubs for everything you can think of. Sports, rabbit breeding clubs, pigeon clubs, shooting clubs etc.
Tot this day it's still a thing, and it's in the canon of the Netherlands.
Last year I did everything I could, to go to tons of concerts, meet up groups, and alumni events. I had a very successful year in terms of meeting new friends, finding high income partners , and generally loving my life. I've long been disillusioned with social media, and I completely blame it for destroying a generation of mental health.
You need to make friends, and you need to go back to the old fashioned way of having light-hearted discussions. Versus nasty arguments on social media. I had to stop using Reddit for the most part, since no matter what I said people would attack it in some way shape or form. Even something as mundane as I find Java to be difficult, turned into a personal attack on my abilities as a programmer. Tons of people are obviously angry for whatever reason, and you feeding into their anger isn't going to help anyone.
I went to tons of meetups, and even though and all of these cases I was a complete stranger I was never insulted or made to feel unwelcomed. There's community out there you just need to seek it out.
> I had to stop using Reddit for the most part, since no matter what I said people would attack it in some way shape or form.
> [...] even though and all of these cases I was a complete stranger I was never insulted or made to feel unwelcomed.
My feeling is that once people no longer have a keyboard and monitor with which to "hide", they no longer have the ability to hurl insults at other people spontaneously and without being reprimanded for it (if anything they might get juicy upvotes).
The reason I put "hide" in quotes is because people don't act this way consciously. No one wants to throw personal attacks at other people for simply expressing a different opinion. In fact, I regularly read stories of politicians who were arch rivals politically but would still foster good friendships with one another. Another good example is the relationships the judges have in the US Supreme court. I have trouble believing that the judges would be able to form similar friendships with one another if they did that online through soulless text boxes, rather than face-to-face contact.
The anonymity provided online enables this subconscious switch in people's minds that allows them to do things they would never do face-to-face. And I want to add that it's not really the anonymity (though that does amplify this effect), it's the lack of seeing the other people. Posting online with your full name (e.g. Twitter) can still enable these subconscious switches simply by virtue of giving you the illusion of not talking to people because you can't see them. In the end, all the people responding to you are text boxes, not humans with feelings and emotions.
Seeing somebody face-to-face just cannot compete with online connections. The way you see what you say form an expression on somebody else's faces, or the way that looking into somebody's eyes somehow forms this inexplicable connection (I remember reading about how studies were done on the brain that noticed hormones being released when people looked into each other's eyes... not sure where to look for that now), or how you can listen to their voice tones change as they talk allowing you to subconsciously gain more understanding of what they feel as they express something. It's... just not the same.
> The reason I put "hide" in quotes is because people don't act this way consciously. No one wants to throw personal attacks at other people for simply expressing a different opinion.
I think such people are called "bullies" in real life.
The better ones tend to be able to disguise their actions and gaslight people [1], and therefore get away with it.
I've had Bowling Alone in my to-read Queue, however I think it might be way too depressing to read it in the middle of quarantine shelter-in-place! Would only emphasize the current dire straights!
I was surprised at how many "dating apps" there are that are simply focused on showing people pictures and expecting that simply seeing a picture of someone is going to be a strong enough signal to filter out who is and isn't a viable candidate for dating. It's a tired argument to say it's superficial and shallow, but there are tons of people still doing dating apps like Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, etc. If you think about it more, I think this is a statement on just how much demand is out there [to meet new prospects] to put up with such a miserable experience.
When I tried using these apps, I found myself trying to reverse engineer the algorithm to figure out exactly how it was ranking me and how to optimize my match rates. Most of it comes down to picture quality and your looks in those pictures. I learned this by running my own A-B tests using different pictures, but unfortunately the apps don't really give any stats on which pictures on your profile are and are not performing. This gave me an idea to create an app to do just this. I called it Cupid's Critics, and you could upload candidate pictures and get people of a certain demographic to vote on them and collect statistics before pushing them live.
What I realized is that this is a band-aid to a broken system. I think a new system is needed entirely, which is why I am now trying to figure out how to make group dinner party dating scale.
If anybody is interested in building it out with me, please send me a DM. If you're interested in an invite/signing up for a group date, please fill out this survey: https://kadray.typeform.com/to/VmhktNHD
Beyond remote work, this will be an even bigger issue with automation in the future.
I can't see university grads opting for 5 remote work days a week unless they've already got a big bubble. It's the people in their 40s with kids already who love fully remote work the most.
Agreed. Why is there no Tinder/online dating equivalent for making new friends locally?
Instead of dating-specific qualifiers, it'd ask for your interests, hobbies, values, age and other demos, then match you based on overlap.
Not Meetup - it's not quite solving the same problem, and so it solves things differently (focusing on shared interests and on discrete meetup events).
Because every time someone builds this it turns into a dating (charitably) app.
If there is a way to find sexual partners in a medium, people will do so.
I think that people will be surprised in the near future how realistic (and similar to in-person) VR and AR interactions will be. Especially with eye tracking that will enable virtually looking the other people in the eyes.
Think about as optical waveguide technology becomes more affordable enabling very lightweight comfortable headsets that actually are close to normal glasses in comfort. Combined with pose detection from cameras with fast AI.
Things like VR Chat are already pretty good.
And actually I think the potential to create perfectly tailored 3d workspaces in VR could make those spaces preferred in some cases over real ones. To me the biggest issue is the size and comfort of the headsets and new technologies are coming to mass deployment in the next couple of years to address that.
It is possible to build technical solutions that take the work and luck out of social organization by shouldering the heavy lifting, but then get out of the way once people meet IRL.
The best tool for this right now is calendar and email. There's a lot of room for improvement.
Please PM me if you're interested in a deeper discussion. I've thought a bit about what this tool might look like and how to get it off the ground.
I've found Meetup alright for finding things to do with other people, but it doesn't work well (at least for me) to find people to be with. Meetup helped introduce me to a once-a-month board game group which is nice, but the problem is that the people I meet through this are sort of stuck in that "role": they aren't my friends and won't be, they are just people I play board games with. Whereas my true friends are people I've hanged out with, speak with weekly, confided in, etc., you can't expect to have that friendship intimacy from strangers who just want a regular activity.
My feeling is that we're losing the facilities to make general friends, and that void is being filled with the non-optimal but best-you-can-do interest-based groups. This is even more effective on the internet where you can find even the most niche group that may not have been possible when we were limited to our local area.
In short: Meetup is good for activities, but it doesn't fulfill the third space OP mentioned.
You're on the money. As I've elucidated elsewhere I think people are going about this backwards, because it's all we know: create organizations surrounding particular subjects, then have people join in. In many cases people are surfing around these groups as a means to an end, they don't care the slightest about the subject but they need it as a medium to connect with others. Not only is this contrived, it can lead to friction between individuals who want to focus on the subject and others who want to go on tangents away from it. This problem disappears if you simply have a space where people can choose to mingle or focus on their projects. There are collaborative workspaces, makerspaces, University grounds.. the issue is it can cost a pretty penny to rent, or attend, those spaces.
I've made friends with people at Meetup but I also agree with the above. My guess is that there are people that are looking to make friends, but whether they succeed or fail, they're going to stop going to the Meetup. What this means is that you're more likely to meet the regulars that really aren't that interested in making general friends.
I’ve been the lead organizer of a largish group with a couple hundred very active members. But getting to that point was quite a challenge that was made harder by Meetup. The group still ended up falling apart.
The Meetup platform is pretty terrible. It’s designed to get people to join many groups, most of which they never engage with and just get a lot of spam from. I’m sure >99.99% of pre-pandemic “social” Meetup groups were totally inactive. Most of the rest would have semi-regular events that <4 people would sign up for.
That said, I think there’s a lot room to build a better version of Meetup.com. The main problem with it is that the managers just don’t know what they’re doing, or are in too deep with tech debt and legacy code. If someone here actually wants to build a better version of Meetup, let me know.
I think one key to a better Meetup would be to solve the no-show problem. From what I understand this is the greatest issue that large-group organizing has on the platform, to the point that I've seen people regularly write sassy rants on event posts to guilt people into accurately updating whether they're showing up or not.
Having managed large groups, the no-show rate was large but extremely consistent (always within the range of 74-82%, pre-covid that is). Because it was so consistent, we could reliably plan both the space and refreshments.
I think part of fixing the problem of no-shows would be to not let members see who/how many people have said that they're going. If 25 people say they're going to show up, then it's not a big deal if I don't, right? Until half the people have the same idea. There will be more perceived social pressure to keep that commitment if people don't think they're just going to get lost in a crowd.
Oh jeez my worst nightmare might just be going to a Meetup without knowing how many people I should expect and ending up being the only one who showed up. If Meetup didn’t tell me how many people RSVP’d I’d never go to any of them.
I believe this will be more important as the nature of work changes. In the short run, owing to more remote work as you say, and in the long-run, owing to jobs themselves being increasingly automated away.
Irl organizations surrounding particular interests do materialize as extensions of online enthusiasm (we see this for meetup groups) but this is still insufficient. What's missing is accessible infrastructure to facilitate new connections. For instance, there are today collaborative workspaces and makerspaces (or even University grounds): these can be a good spatial medium for meeting like-minded people. However, the cost of renting is a deterrent. So, that can be addressed in a myriad of ways. As a remote worker, prior to COVID, I'd periodically hit the coffee shops but this did not appear to be an appropriate medium for engaging others.
We are going about things backwards, because it was all we could do: create organizations surrounding particular subjects, then have people join in. In many cases people are surfing around these groups as a means to an end, they don't care the slightest about the subject but they need it as a medium to connect with others. Not only is this contrived, it can lead to friction between individuals who want to focus on the subject and others who want to go on tangents away from it. This problem disappears if you simply have a space where people can choose to mingle or focus on their projects. Historically, physical spaces like this were always important large communities. Now our socially acceptable avenues for engaging others we don't know include very loud pubs, just barely, sports complexes and the like.
> We are going about things backwards, because it was all we could do: create organizations surrounding particular subjects, then have people join in. In many cases people are surfing around these groups as a means to an end, they don't care the slightest about the subject but they need it as a medium to connect with others.
As a long-time member of a hackerspace, I've always envisioned it as a "church" (of sorts) for tech. I feel like I've learnt quite a bit from just immersing myself in the place, and having conversations with people from various disciplines.
Unfortunately, we're always struggling to make rent. It's a pity that the concept doesn't seem to work well in high-rent areas — many people view use of such spaces as a transaction, and won't contribute financially if it's just like any other office or co-working space.
One thing I've realized is that if you actually do succeed in creating a strong community, there's a good chance it will raise the property values and appeal of your surrounding area and therefore the property taxes and rent for those in the community living nearby and possibly the community space itself, if the space isn't owned outright by a non-profit organization. Then you risk getting bought / pushed out by outsiders that just want a "safe neighborhood" or an "artsy area" and not really a community.
It seems like these social groups -- besides needing a non-financial mission, shared rituals and beliefs, and some kind of exclusivity -- need a strategy for dealing with the social connection-dissolving "market" that exists around it.
Meetup’s been doing a good job at this for some time. I’ve made friends and I’ve known people who have made lifelong friends from it.
I think it’s hard to build a community around people who just want one, and it’s more effective if it’s based around a starting ground of an interest and better yet shared values.
I think a lot of this does exist, it just isn't formalized. In person socialization happens at a public place. If you go to the same public place the same time each week, odds are you'll find yourself as part of a casual community after a few months.
Coffee shops are great for this. Game shops as well
"Working on" in-person social organizations (particularly starting new ones or restoring deteriorated ones) seems to require a good amount of personal charisma, ambition, social skills, organizational ability, and not desiring to simply make as much money as possible, plus a long-term focus on community health and success over your own personal gain. People with the first set of skills can make a lot of money in the marketplace. If you make a social organization instead of a unicorn, your "exit" would be being loved and respected, along with having your own friends and family growing up in a good community that maybe, eventually increases everyone's collective financial value instead of just your own.
The reality is the changing social dynamics of a population spending increasing amount of time on the internet and less inclined to do things in-person, amplified by people choosing to have 'busier' lives, is the direction we are currently heading in.
We need top down (govt) and bottom up (community) efforts to start real change that can gain momentum (network effects for the founder inclined).
Working on experiments to chip away at this from the bottom up .
Whole social clubs may have been on the decline for decades, there’s been a pretty big growth in group fitness. CrossFit has been huge for over a decade and BJJ had really begun to explode, prior to Covid. I hit my two-year mark in jiu jitsu, right before the pandemic. While I still maintain contact with a few members, I really miss the camaraderie. I have no interest in returning to my office for work, but the moment it’s safe for me and my family, I’ll be restarting BJJ. And possibly reforming dormant bands I’ve played in.
Wait, aren't all social media platforms with their rooms and groups not promoting the idea of finding like minded strong communities? Sure its all digital and sometimes it leads to events happening in real. The "moderators" in these groups take their positions a bit too seriously sometimes.
Decline of churches is one aspect. Society is becoming more secular, and there is nothing replacing those weekly religious services. There are no replacement "myths" that groups can cohere around.
I am working on an idea in this space. Anyone interested can ping me (contacts in profile), it's in early stealth mode but it is targeting exactly this problem.
Social isolation is probably the biggest cause of unhappiness in advanced countries. Having a strong social network has lots of advantages including providing better romantic and career opportunities, as well as improving physical and psychological health.
Humans have a long history of dishing out lots of money to be parts of strong communities too--country clubs and fraternities have high fees. Church goers regularly give up 10% of their (gross) income to be part of that group. Cult members might even hand over ALL of their possessions to join.
The camaraderie and experiences that go along with being part of a strong, long lived community tends to be the thing people value most in life. Yet finding those communities has become increasingly difficult in the modern era. People move away to different cities, or just don't run into the same set of people everyday. With the rise of remote work, social disconnection is only going to rise. I think there's a lot of room to create new social organizations with pretty minimal technology, and make a pretty profit from doing so. Humans are still human--they want those connections--they mostly just need an introduction.