16 ms·

I think you're correct, but one thing that is really missing nowadays, especially with phones and the internet, is active communities that exist in real life ou

• ironman1478 5y ago
  There is a book on this topic called "bowling alone" if you are interested. These observations are ones people were making pre-covid.
  • ethbr0 5y ago
    I was going to recommend that as well. Am in the process of reading it, after a previous recommendation on HN. Or as the previous commenter quipped to a similar question 'Yes, Robert Putnam identified all these trends by the 80s and 90s, but nobody liked how gloomy he was about it.' Link: https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/0743203046 https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Commu... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam
    • randycupertino 5y ago
      Does Bowling Alone have any suggestions on how to create a "third space" for ourselves? Or is it more just identifying the phenomena?
      • null_shift 5y ago
        i am also very interested to know this as well. the absence of “irl” community is something i have thought a lot about over the years. seems nowadays most people hang out with either: 1. existing friends/family 2. coworkers 3. go online with wfh, you lose #2. if you are a transplant, or never had #1, that doesn’t leave you with any options. it seems inevitable that the future of socialization will be online and niche. and there will be a small minority that reject that trend and go “off the grid” to connect with nature. i’m interested to research these topics/themes more thoroughly, if anyone can recommend further reading.
        • cableshaft 5y ago
          Before the pandemic, I made a conscious effort to meet people by regularly attending a bunch of local meetups, over the course of two years. I made a ton of new acquaintances that way, and about 15 of those people ended up being part of my two main friend circles now. I always thought of myself as an introvert before, but I just kept attending these things, and being present a bunch, not being too irritating of a person (I don't claim to be full of social graces, but overly irritating people did tend to be filtered out over time), and having activities to focus on instead of just talking at a lot of these (board games, scavenger hunts, movies, etc) helped me make those friendships over time. Since the pandemic I've regressed quite a bit and haven't maintained a lot of the weaker friendships, but I still do things with those two main friend circles, mostly board game nights at their houses. Helps that everyone that attends is vaccinated, otherwise I'd feel less comfortable about it. Anyway, it's possible if you make an effort, or at least it was before the pandemic (it probably still is possible, I'm just personally more cautious now).
          • randycupertino 5y ago
            Can you give me an example of the type of meetup you're attending? Will look for some in my area. Ty!
            • cableshaft 5y ago
              Sure. I'm only attending things online right now though. Here's a few of my past ones: - Writing Meetup (talk about what you're writing right now, or share a passage and get feedback) - Virtual Tour Meetup (a tour guide gives a presentation about a travel destination, past presentations are still up on their website): https://www.girltraveltours.com/ https://www.girltraveltours.com/ - Improv meetup - practice Improv with others online (now in person so online stopped and I don't live close enough to go to it) - Game meetups - the local library and another group have regular Jackbox, Among Us, Gartic Phone, and BoardGameArena online game nights - Book Club meetups - attended one discussing 'How to Avoid a Climate Disaster' by Bill Gates recently, but I've been to others as well - History meetups - attended a few lectures about past events in history, like Shackleton's disaster of an exploration attempt in Antarctica (pretty crazy story), one on the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior, one on HH Holmes, etc. - Virtual hack night or coding presentation events - Talking about something related to code, sometimes getting online to talk about and work on our own projects and keep each other accountable, etc.
• Ancalagon 5y ago
  This is the other point I wanted to make (but frankly I was too scared that maybe it’s just because I suck at meeting people now that I haven’t socialized like a normal person in a year). It just seems harder to meet people _in general_ than it did even two years ago. Like where is everybody? Does everyone stay home literally all the time now?
  • krageon 5y ago
    I find the trick was (and is, really) to meet people online and to make appointments to meet them IRL.
  • IggleSniggle 5y ago
    Well, yes. If not "everyone," certainly lots and lots of folks are just staying home whenever possible. Because we are in the middle of a global pandemic. I think this has much more to do with "we are in a global pandemic" than "you can't meet people doing remote work." Certainly, there were a number of larger groups that I used to hang out with consistently pre-pandemic, but now have totally abandoned. I'm not interested in maintaining an online relationship with those groups; their value to me was in the face-to-face moments. But that's just not a thing right now. I'm certainly not going to go out of my way to expose my family to people who may or may not even believe in vaccinating themselves.
    • sim_card_map 5y ago
      Life has always been normal here in Sweden. No lockdowns, mask mandates, restaurants have always been open. And no excess deaths. So don't speak for everyone.
      • IggleSniggle 5y ago
        I made a point to only speak for myself, my own situation, and subjective but certainly true "lots and lots of people," whereas the person I was replying to spoke in generalities.
      • smt88 5y ago
• noir_lord 5y ago
  I have a bunch of friends on IRC, we generally hang out in a single channel (it spun out of a topic specific channel but we sorta moved to been adjacent years ago). That acts as my digital water cooler since I'm remote forever.
  • Svperstar 5y ago
    I'm old, my online friends moved from IRC to Discord around 2017.
  • idiotsecant 5y ago
    IRC is becoming the HAM radio of our generation. Pretty soon there will just be a bunch of crusty old men who do it as a hobby but insist how vital and relevant it is.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
• IggleSniggle 5y ago
  Relatedly, I think this is part of what fuels more extreme social groups. If you don't have rotary/bowling/church/golf whatever group that you hang out with in real life, and you've got nothing else, then when you finally find a group they will be more likely to be a group that by its very nature has a stronger set of convictions; enough so that it overcomes the social norms and inertia and gathers in-person.
  • geofft 5y ago
    Aren't lodges, churches, and golf clubs kind of the stereotypical examples of race- and class-exclusionary groups? I suppose it's not exactly a strong set of convictions if you're passively going along with broader social pressures to segregate on race and class, but if we're talking about the health of society (which I think we're implicitly doing), I think segregating on worldview is actually a whole lot healthier.
    • jdavis703 5y ago
      I don’t know much about lodges and golf clubs, but most churches are overwhelmingly of one race or another. Finding a church that reflects the broader community is quite rare, most of the community tends to self-segregate on Sunday mornings. That said, growing up churches seemed fairly class-integrated (I’m atheist now, maybe this has changed?). But growing up we had everyone from an American Football quarterback on a multi-million dollar contract to working class folks in the same room.
      • ethbr0 5y ago
        Most of the larger lodges (Loyal Order of Moose, Modern Woodmen of America, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks) were explicitly sexist (male only) and racist (white only). Although some operated female-open auxiliary organizations. Freemasonry is interesting, in that it actually had a schism in part over exclusionary membership clauses around 1877 (Regular vs Continental). Although apparently, masonry itself forbids discussion of religion or politics during its meetings. But much of the early lodge structure and exclusion has since been rewritten and broadened, as the majority of them were founded in the 1870s - 1910s, when prevailing social attitudes were themselves much more sexist and racist. (Interesting, a majority were operated for the purpose of effectively providing their membership a social safety net and insurance, both of which were lacking in government terms at the time!)
• ugh123 5y ago
  I thought thats what Meetup was about, for both tech and non-tech communities. I haven't been involved for a while due to life changes (kids + relo), so not sure if its as vibrant in some cities as it used to be.
  • BoorishBears 5y ago
    I literally never saw a Meetup group last for more than a year. The closest thing to an exception was a group that existed a decade then happened to get a Meetup for convenience, and they closed within a year of getting on (for unrelated reasons)
    • Kihashi 5y ago
      Most of the meetups I'm in have been going on for several years, at least. My backpacking group is on meetup. I joined in 2016. Not sure when it was started, but it was a few years before that. Admittedly, the group existed in some form before Meetup did, but it has grown to over 2000 members on Meetup. There's a core group of about 50 or so who are very regularly active. There's also a local hiking group, a python user group, a biking club, and a climbing club. Quite a few of these existed before meetup and will probably exist after meetup.
    • cableshaft 5y ago
      We kept one going for five years in the local region. Had about 50-ish people to certain events at its peak, probably a few hundred active members (including inactive it was over 1300). But paying $180/year didn't feel worth it as soon as the pandemic hit. I was the main one paying it also. Kind of shitty too because you can't really kill a Meetup group as long as someone is willing to pay for it. I stepped down as admin and some speed dating thing swooped in and started paying for it, so now the page is still up but there's only speed dating events on it now. I think Meetup has almost doubled in price in the past 5 years, and it's gotten some major competition from Facebook's groups and events, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's on the decline. I don't think I'd bother to create a Meetup group nowadays, just create a Facebook group. I do still use it to find some online events to attend periodically, though. Still haven't done any events with random people in person yet, just friends I know are vaccinated.
• ghaff 5y ago
  They exist. They're just not your almost stereotypical, mostly working class, traditional organizations. Depending upon age and interests, at least larger cities have options and, as you get involved, more options get opened up.
• perlpimp 5y ago
  It seems that to participate in group activities you have to bring friends you have nowadays instead of going out and making friends. My view might be wrong.
  • spbaar 5y ago
    truth. went to a gyms happy hour and me and a girl were there alone otherwise everyone else went off in their groups of 3 or 4 they knew already lol.
    • acwan93 5y ago
      Yep. This has been studied in MBA networking events too where the only person who ended up meeting everyone was the bartender. >The few new meetings that did take place tended to be with others who were like themselves: the consultants talked to consultants, and the bankers talked to bankers. In terms of both new conversations and diverse connections, the most successful networker at the event turned out to be the bartender. https://hbr.org/2018/05/go-ahead-skip-that-networking-event https://hbr.org/2018/05/go-ahead-skip-that-networking-event
      • andrei_says_ 5y ago
        Could it be that there's a bit of bias in the study? Similar to the biases related to the fact that the majority of psychological studies were run on predominantly rich, predominantly white students at well-funded universities?
• throwawaysea 5y ago
  Can you demystify what an elks lodge is? I’ve never really understood the concept of these lodges and they seem like some kind of closed off private club or something cult like. I’m guessing I have the wrong perception.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • taurath 5y ago
    It sort of is/was a private club - they would have a lodge, functionally sometimes like a tavern, they might have a liquor license, and membership was fairly controlled/via word of mouth and voting by the existing members. Often members would do business deals, help each other if someone say lost a job, or helped out with things in the community. Its not a great example for a model that would work now as a huge part was how exclusionary it was - white/male/believe in god/not a commie etc. - society has moved on somewhat from that era. Still there’s a sort of sense of place that you get when actually involved in a community that is in a local area - I hope we can start to figure out how to do things more locally again.
• danielecook 5y ago
  I have seen a few new cool club ideas that might help fill this void. In Kansas City there is a dog club (your dog is the member), but it features a bar, workspace, food, events: barkdogbar.com. You drop off your dog to play with the others and can socialize with others, work, etc. In Chicago - there is guild row (guild row.co) (disclosure: my cousin is a cofounder). This social club is centered around making things.
• bluekite2000 5y ago
  Also wanted to add in developed countries (and by corollary, big cities) it is very hard to make friends once you are an adult. When I lived in Vietnam it is 10x easier to date/make friends/get involved in the local community (vs NYC,LA or SF)
  • vecinu 5y ago
    Did you ever figure out a way to do so as an adult? Maybe meetup.com / local interest groups like cycling, tennis or board games?
• veltas 5y ago
  Church, and charities, can help finding social outlets outside of work (or be that themselves).