> You wouldn't even go to drink necessarily but just go by default because that's what everyone else was doing. Price, health aspects, time (when two people wo

> You wouldn't even go to drink necessarily but just go by default because that's what everyone else was doing. Price, health aspects, time (when two people work full time, fitting in hours of drinking is harder) and possibly good availability of alternative neuro-affective substances aside, I think this is the actual "problem" pubs have now. Not long ago, in living memory even of millennials, "going down the local" was literally your only option in a lot of rural and suburban places. People just have things to do with friends these days that tickle the dopamine centres more than cheap beer, dirty toilets and sticky carpets. Phones, games, thousands of hours of TV and films, hacking on Linux kernel drivers over Discord, whatever. You don't even have to always physically meet up any more to hang out, and you certainly don't have to pay by the minute for telecoms any more. Once the network effect of "that's just where my mates are going to be" is gone, so are you.