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You're spot on. Anything that increases your exposure to strangers and builds trust will be a boon to society. This is also the case with social clubs and spor

You're spot on. Anything that increases your exposure to strangers and builds trust will be a boon to society. This is also the case with social clubs and sports leagues. Membership of these things has been in decline for decades and is now at an all-time low. Being in a bowling league or the rotary club with random members of your community did a ton to increase basic trust in society. Which in turn, makes everything else work better. Source: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/trust-me/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/trust-me/ This is why consuming video content, specifically streaming services with all-you-can-stream crap is so damaging. People no longer have time for shared dinners, clubs, or adult sports leagues because they'd rather binge watch a new series every week.

siquick 5y ago
> This is why consuming video content, specifically streaming services with all-you-can-stream crap is so damaging. People no longer have time for shared dinners, clubs, or adult sports leagues because they'd rather binge watch a new series every week. In my experience it’s not that people would rather watch videos than see their friends or do their hobbies, it’s that they’re working jobs which consume their lives to the point that watching Netflix is pretty much all they have the energy for. And before you know it, you don’t have any hobbies anymore so you watch more Netflix and the circle continues.
- munificent 5y ago
  ...and it gets increasingly hard to coordinate with your friends because they're also all watching Netflix and can't be bothered to make time.
- rdtwo 5y ago
  Man I envy you, to have time and emotional energy to invest in a tv show. It’s too much a commitment for me. This must be why folks just want to watch reruns of friends no investment
  - siquick 5y ago
    I don't really watch that many TV shows, I usually fall asleep by the 35 minute mark.
arrosenberg 5y ago
I think there are other issues driving the decreasing social activity - Netflix seems to have replaced existing TV practices, I don't think it vastly extended them. IMO, access is one of the biggest hidden issues. Everything is designed to require a car, which increases the cost/time/stress of doing anything, and decreases the number of available people to interact with. Neighborhoods built before WW2 are much more interactive and walkable, but we keep pumping out convoluted suburban layouts instead. Over time, peoples' dopamine system starts weighing the hassle as greater than the potential reward, and they become less socially active. If more people lived within a 5-10 minute walk of these activities, membership would go back up.
acituan 5y ago
> Anything that increases your exposure to strangers and builds trust will be a boon to society. It takes a few bad exposures to ruin your mental model of strangers. And I am not convinced it is entirely a bad thing. The concept of being surrounded by strangers is a 20-21st century urban phenomenon. In an environment where people are not strangers to each other 2 things happen; 1) they can build a more accurate model of each other and most of the time this leads to deeper reciprocal trust 2) they know their behavior is kept track by others and that changes individual behavior (I know, not always for the better. I am not trying to romanticize small town conformity). To expect the same dynamics in a city is a romanticism of different sort. Not trusting strangers because you don’t know them is rational. At least not to over-extrapolate your trust to every stranger you see. All you can stream crap is there because there is demand, because we are going crazy in our loneliness created with truncated interpersonal reciprocity of the urban life. If you removed Netflix today, it wouldn’t automatically improve our social lives, because the structure and organization of it heavily depends on the economic demands that shaped the living arrangements in the first place. See how even tech is capriciously resisting remote work and thus an alternative, less lonely arrangement for the workers.
- themacguffinman 5y ago
  Remote work is often more isolating and lonely for workers, I don't see how it's a "less lonely arrangement". If anything, tech's resistance of remote work is the struggle to preserve America's last community: the workplace. Friendships born in the workplace are a staple of urban life, it's one of the few places left where you can regularly and guaranteedly meet with people. Remote workers will still find themselves surrounded by strangers when they arrive at the cheap city they were incentivized to move into, but this time they'll have one less place to socialize.
  - acituan 5y ago
    You're exclusively focusing on the first generation of remote workers, which had already responded to an existing non-remote setup. A second or third generation of reliable remote work would play an entirely different strategy which would create a much different ecosystem. Either way, it is irrelevant. The gravity of "work here"ism is much higher than the agency of the workers. > If anything, tech's resistance of remote work is the struggle to preserve America's last community: the workplace. That's overly charitable on several accounts. Tech, or any mega corp, can't have such an intention while being a machine that merely responds to a single ultimate parameter that is profit, in some shape or form. The fact that people could have a simulation of a community in the workplace is an externality they will tolerate, as long as HR is happy. > Friendships born in the workplace are a staple of urban life, it's one of the few places left where you can regularly and guaranteedly meet with people. How many of your workplace friends do you think would let you stay over for months should you find yourself homeless? Lend you $20K if need hits? Take care of you while sick? Be at your funeral? And vice versa? Most of those folks we can make at a workplace are affiliates, acquaintances, not friends.

siquick 5y ago

> This is why consuming video content, specifically streaming services with all-you-can-stream crap is so damaging. People no longer have time for shared dinners, clubs, or adult sports leagues because they'd rather binge watch a new series every week. In my experience it’s not that people would rather watch videos than see their friends or do their hobbies, it’s that they’re working jobs which consume their lives to the point that watching Netflix is pretty much all they have the energy for. And before you know it, you don’t have any hobbies anymore so you watch more Netflix and the circle continues.

munificent 5y ago
...and it gets increasingly hard to coordinate with your friends because they're also all watching Netflix and can't be bothered to make time.
rdtwo 5y ago
Man I envy you, to have time and emotional energy to invest in a tv show. It’s too much a commitment for me. This must be why folks just want to watch reruns of friends no investment
- siquick 5y ago
  I don't really watch that many TV shows, I usually fall asleep by the 35 minute mark.

arrosenberg 5y ago

I think there are other issues driving the decreasing social activity - Netflix seems to have replaced existing TV practices, I don't think it vastly extended them. IMO, access is one of the biggest hidden issues. Everything is designed to require a car, which increases the cost/time/stress of doing anything, and decreases the number of available people to interact with. Neighborhoods built before WW2 are much more interactive and walkable, but we keep pumping out convoluted suburban layouts instead. Over time, peoples' dopamine system starts weighing the hassle as greater than the potential reward, and they become less socially active. If more people lived within a 5-10 minute walk of these activities, membership would go back up.

acituan 5y ago

> Anything that increases your exposure to strangers and builds trust will be a boon to society. It takes a few bad exposures to ruin your mental model of strangers. And I am not convinced it is entirely a bad thing. The concept of being surrounded by strangers is a 20-21st century urban phenomenon. In an environment where people are not strangers to each other 2 things happen; 1) they can build a more accurate model of each other and most of the time this leads to deeper reciprocal trust 2) they know their behavior is kept track by others and that changes individual behavior (I know, not always for the better. I am not trying to romanticize small town conformity). To expect the same dynamics in a city is a romanticism of different sort. Not trusting strangers because you don’t know them is rational. At least not to over-extrapolate your trust to every stranger you see. All you can stream crap is there because there is demand, because we are going crazy in our loneliness created with truncated interpersonal reciprocity of the urban life. If you removed Netflix today, it wouldn’t automatically improve our social lives, because the structure and organization of it heavily depends on the economic demands that shaped the living arrangements in the first place. See how even tech is capriciously resisting remote work and thus an alternative, less lonely arrangement for the workers.

themacguffinman 5y ago
Remote work is often more isolating and lonely for workers, I don't see how it's a "less lonely arrangement". If anything, tech's resistance of remote work is the struggle to preserve America's last community: the workplace. Friendships born in the workplace are a staple of urban life, it's one of the few places left where you can regularly and guaranteedly meet with people. Remote workers will still find themselves surrounded by strangers when they arrive at the cheap city they were incentivized to move into, but this time they'll have one less place to socialize.
- acituan 5y ago
  You're exclusively focusing on the first generation of remote workers, which had already responded to an existing non-remote setup. A second or third generation of reliable remote work would play an entirely different strategy which would create a much different ecosystem. Either way, it is irrelevant. The gravity of "work here"ism is much higher than the agency of the workers. > If anything, tech's resistance of remote work is the struggle to preserve America's last community: the workplace. That's overly charitable on several accounts. Tech, or any mega corp, can't have such an intention while being a machine that merely responds to a single ultimate parameter that is profit, in some shape or form. The fact that people could have a simulation of a community in the workplace is an externality they will tolerate, as long as HR is happy. > Friendships born in the workplace are a staple of urban life, it's one of the few places left where you can regularly and guaranteedly meet with people. How many of your workplace friends do you think would let you stay over for months should you find yourself homeless? Lend you $20K if need hits? Take care of you while sick? Be at your funeral? And vice versa? Most of those folks we can make at a workplace are affiliates, acquaintances, not friends.