I don't see any real difference between your "online pub" and globalized-entity "pedestrian street" examples. They're both highly-controlled and highly-curated

I don't see any real difference between your "online pub" and globalized-entity "pedestrian street" examples. They're both highly-controlled and highly-curated venues. Environments like those just encourage conformity. That, in turn, results in interaction/discussion that's rather bland, homogeneous, and sterile. I definitely find this site to be like that. The "showdead" setting very slightly mitigates it, but even then, I almost never find any sort of truly thought-provoking discussion here. Those venues seem to exhibit a false sense of community to me. There's interaction, but the participants are either ruthlessly conforming, or they're walking on eggshells.