6 ms·

What are third places? How do I find one?

56 points by ColinWright 2y ago

bowling_alone 2y ago
I think the problem is two-fold: 1. Third places are few and far between. 2. People have lost the will and/or ability to spontaneously socialize with strangers around them. I don't see any realistic solution to this problem. The convenience of online "socialization" is too much for people to resist and I don't think most people understand what a poor substitute that is for actual human interaction.
- maigret 2y ago
  Very true all. It might be harder to find a third place, but I think it is still very possible. There are people out there who like to be social. That muscle might be hard to rebuild after COVID, but many communities are still there.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  If you build environments where people bump into the same people with high frequency and low stakes, they will socialize.
  - citizenkeen 2y ago
    I recently got into TCGs for the first time in 20 years (I’m in my 40s), and holy hell is the structured activity with recurring people liberating. I’ve made more fiends in the last six weeks than I had in the previous three years.
    - brg 2y ago
      I had a similar path. In the 90’s I was very much into Magic. Too much. But in 2017 I picked up Pokémon TCG and enjoyed it immensely. The local scene was strong pre-covid, and regional tournaments were a blast.
    - sneak 2y ago
      The formula is simple: show up in the same place at the same time, over and over again, as part of a group that does the same. This is why so many friendships and relationships come out of work and school. For me, it happened by accident, first in the techno music scene (clubs and parties are third places), and then again in the poker scene in Las Vegas. 100% of my local friends in Vegas are math/strategy nerds.
    - jaredsohn 2y ago
      TCG = trading card games from what i can tell (looked it up)
  - randomdata 2y ago
    The premise here seems to be that people are generally no longer explicitly looking for socialization (if they ever did). If you build an environment for the sole purpose of socialization, they aren't apt to come. People haven't stopped going outside. Certainly if you give some other reason to get together (to play a sport, to listen to bands play music, whatever) on a frequent basis, then yes, socialization is bound to occur as part of that, but that is not the same as having a place centred around socialization; a place where you can turn up when you feel like it and find other people there also waiting to socialize.
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      Did you mean to reply to a different comment? The trick is not to have socializing be a destination. It ought to be a byproduct of normal life. In a car-dominated world there are no such things as chance encounters and we’re all acting confused as to why people can’t build relationships.
      - randomdata 2y ago
        > The trick is not to have socializing be a destination. The trick of the third place is that it is a destination. But perhaps you are recognizing why the third place is difficult to support: There are a million other places to socialize. A destination isn't necessary. > In a car-dominated world there are no such things as chance encounters Why not? Hell, just last night I was driving my car and noticed the aurora, so I stopped to look at it, and then someone else came along and stopped too. We had a good 20 minute chat before parting ways. Without cars, I would have probably been at home and probably wouldn't have talked to anyone.
        llamaimperative 2y ago
        A third place is difficult to support because people don’t want to go there to socialize with people they don’t know. That’s the whole point! Neighborhood pubs are great because you run into the same people you run into in various other parts of your life. When you meet someone at the grocery store you can say “I’ll be at the pub later if you wanted to come by” and that is a low stakes invitation both to offer and to accept. You need loose connections to make a third place functional whatsoever, and those loose connections cannot emerge when everyone is going from steel box to drywall box to steel box. Your example is a great argument but not for the point you’re trying to make. People talk when they are given the chance to talk in a low stakes environment. It took an extremely rare natural event to get you to stop your car and by golly, look, people talked!
- randomdata 2y ago
  > Third places are few and far between. Or is it that the places are too common? When I lived in the big city, there were all kinds of places that could have been the third place, but with so many options to choose from nothing ever established itself as the place to be. People would just aimlessly bounce around to them all instead of settling on one place to consistently show up to. Now that I live in a rural area, where there are only a few places to go – period – everyone seems to congregate around them, and thus finding that third place is quite easy.
  - xxxtentachyon 2y ago
    Oh dang this is a good take. I live on a city block that has no fewer than 300 people, but we have at least three options for third places depending on your criteria. If we had just one in reasonable travel distance, and people couldn’t self-select, perhaps we’d be more neighborly
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  People have lost the willingness to build/contribute to such spaces, they just want them to magically exist in the off chance they might want to drop in. The very act of creating social clubs has been stigmatized as dumb/dork/out culture. The places that did exist other than the VFW only have the generation before baby boomers left going to them which is now self fulling in guaranteeing no new people will join. Next to go will be any local symphony/theaters/museums that depend on season ticket holders and committed fundraisers as the new 'everything just exists in case I want to just drop in' culture stops buying season tickets and only come on the 'free' open hours intended to get new supporting members to see the value of the places' existence.
walterbell 2y ago
An important topic. The article would benefit from interviewing (in person!) the hosts of local private/public institutions known for their hospitality and culture, often for decades. There may not be many of those places remaining, but we can learn from their stories. It's also worth comparing cities with some public (boulevards alongside commerce) vs mostly privatized space.
rufus_foreman 2y ago
I work from home. I don't even have a second place.
- m3kw9 2y ago
  You have a virtual place via zoom
- wnolens 2y ago
  Changing this improved my mental health significantly. I'll try to never work fully remote again
- input_sh 2y ago
  So do I, that's why I leave my house around 5pm, 5:15 at the latest. To the gym, to my favourite cafe, walking alone in a random direction, doesn't particularly matter.
- andrei_says_ 2y ago
  I take a walk on the beach or in a park every day after work to switch my brain away from the buzzy-ness of screens and multitasking. Plus dance classes and events at least three times of week. No longer dealing with sleep issues and symptoms of depression.
- andrei_says_ 2y ago
  I take a walk on the beach or in a park every day after work to switch my brain away from the buzzy-ness of screens and multitasking. Plus dance classes and events at least three times of week. No longer dealing with sleep issues and symptoms of isolation. Not spending 2h on unnecessary commute is a big bonus too.
Animats 2y ago
"The low-cost luxuriating necessary for healthy third places isn’t considered profitable." The author has a good point, although link in the article is to an ad for Toast, the not very good point-of-sale system. Starbucks has removed chairs and tables, and covered power outlets, at many locations. This was not accompanied by a price reduction.
- packetlost 2y ago
  > Starbucks has removed chairs and tables, and covered power outlets, at many locations. This was not accompanied by a price reduction. Wait, what!? I don't frequent Starbucks but this is insane to me. Where is this happening?
  - jayd16 2y ago
    It happened during covid and they just haven't returned in the same way. It's unfortunate. I really hope the small late night coffee shop makes a return.
    - packetlost 2y ago
      I live in a tier 3/4ish city and the coffee shop scene here is sad, but it was sad before COVID.
      - ghaff 2y ago
        I’m not sure how Starbucks ( or most coffee shops) are really third places. I imagine most people immersed in their phones or laptops would tend to brush off any serious attempts at conversation. To another comment about this being all about lack of walk ability in many places I’m also not sure that being able to walk around an urban core suddenly makes it a social center absent some persistent stimulus. My experience is groups of friends and activity partners generally tend to happen without close physical proximity.
        a1o 2y ago
BillFranklin 2y ago
It's a nice article actually; > If you do hope to stay, expect to keep spending. The low-cost luxuriating necessary for healthy third places isn’t considered profitable. A lot of people struggle with this after college and a social club (sport, dining etc.) is usually the best way to keep your social life going. But yeah you usually have to value and invest in it, which maybe people aren't doing so much as prices have increased in the physical world while prices for entertainment over the wire has decreased. I also think communities (third places FTA) that enable these friendships need to be, to some extent, closed or invite-only. I feel like as a social network grows each individual edge is a little weaker, which is the reverse incentive of developers of social networks and explains why socialising over the Internet feels the way it does.
formerly_proven 2y ago
I'd assume this is one of those things where, if you have to ask, you're not invited.
- financltravsty 2y ago
  It is. Make some friends first. Be the type of person that people want around. Then the third place will naturally form
_bfhp 2y ago
> At their very best, third places allow people of differing backgrounds to cross paths — to develop what are known as bridging ties. As opposed to our closest connections, bridging social networks encompass people who have varying identities, social and economic resources, and knowledge. “Studies have shown that just having a diversity of folks in your life … more informal and infrequent and unplanned, can be really protective for health and well-being,” Finlay says. What is intrinsically valuable then: third spaces, diversity, or individual health? It feels like the first has the most value in service of the second, which is really just a supplement for the third. Almost like we stopped believing we can convince people to get on the same page about anything that looks like a shared value... Also much respect to the persistence of patronizing Vox-speak in 2024: "to develop what are known as bridging ties" Known to who? "Studies have shown that" Studies where?
- howenterprisey 2y ago
  "known to" isn't patronizing; it indicates jargon, and in this case likely indicates a scientific term used in those studies. I agree that it would've been nice to link to the studies.
- cjpearson 2y ago
  The article references four books including "The Great Good Place" which originated the term along with the classic "Bowling Alone", which documents the decline of social connections in the United States. Additionally they interview four university professors who have studied the topic and they link to at least five academic papers, three surveys and several more newspaper articles. It seems to me that the article offers quite a bit of information on where the studies are.
lwansbrough 2y ago
My belief is that this can be mostly or maybe entirely traced back to the way Americans ruined their cities. At one time, before urban neighbourhoods were demolished for freeways, Americans more commonly lived in denser neighbourhoods. The transition from urban to suburban living (partially fuelled by cost of living being subsidized in suburbia, and partially caused by NIMBY advocates blocking the development of new housing to keep housing prices affordable in cities) completely destroyed any chance Americans had to be independent from their cars. Instead what they have in the states are a bunch of disjointed metro areas that demand a car to do anything. So teenagers need to be chauffeured around and lose independence because of the reliance on parent transport. I think that feeds into the mental health crisis but it also makes third places more expensive (fewer people using them than if the area was more densely populated) and more hostile (housing unaffordability drives homelessness and the use of third places as homes for the homeless.) You’ll find an exceptionally strong correlation between viable third places and cities that don’t demand that you own a car.
- rayiner 2y ago
  I think you’ve got the causation reversed. People built freeways so they can live in car-dependent suburbs. I’ve got a lot of immigrant family that came through New York City because there is a large community of our ethnic group there. Every single family has moved out to the suburbs as soon as possible. The folks who came with a bit more education went straight to places like Dallas Fort Worth where you could buy a big house for not too much money.
  - underlipton 2y ago
    *Social engineers built freeways because it was a convenient way to raze minority neighborhoods while subsidizing suburbs that were care-dependent largely in order to limit who could move there by class. It's important to tell the full story because similar dynamics drive our current stumbling blocks.
    - rayiner 2y ago
      That’s obviously coincidental. Many countries (and even parts of the US) that have no minorities to oppress developed car-dependent suburbs around the same time.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
animaomnium 2y ago
Only 15 bucks a month for unlimited hangouts with your friends! Satire, in any other universe.
- cole-k 2y ago
  Also in ours: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gfru6GskeCc https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gfru6GskeCc (sorry for the shorts link, it was all I could find...)
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  Weak take. Social clubs have been the norm for this forever. How ignorant to reality are you? Social clubs require funding in some form to exist. How would you expect them to work? Someone donates their space and the club exists entirely on their good will? It's weird how all of the sudden in 2024 people have completely forgotten how things work. There is a local symphony because of the people that buy season passes and attend fundraisers. People don't buy season passes to see every performance, they do it to support having XYZ. When I lived in Santa Cruz we bought season passes to the State Parks, Monterey Symphony, Monterey Aquarium, and others because we wanted them to exist. We attended fundraisers for things like museums, etc. My parents did similar. It seems like now people just expect everything to be there 'in case they happen to want to drop in'. It doesn't work that way. Someone has to actively keep things going both by running them and by funding them (and create them initially). I think the next generation is either just too used to 'someone else' doing all that, or they really don't understand that someone else did it in the past and think things just magically existed. It's the equivalent of growing up and being shocked you have to pay for your own food, with your own money. I think part is also having so many 'free passes' people forget this stuff takes money. 'Free state park pass if you have kids' is a great idea, but families are the people that use the parks the most. Families are the people that originally banded together to do fundraisers. To build the trails. Not passing on funding/maintaining something to the next generation ensures it's death when the older people pass. At some point it has to stop being 'other people' that take care of making sure all the stuff you enjoy exists and is maintained. Free park days, totally. Free park pass and it just becomes expected, like state parks always existed and always will somehow. No, they exist because people pushed to create them, fundraised/crowdsourced to create them, and fundraised/crowdsourced to maintain them. When I was a kid we had community social events. And most of those events were also fundraisers for things that benefited the community. It seems like people now expect all the stuff that in the past the community fundraised for to just magically exist/stay forever. Now fundraisers all seem to be a very specifically charity versus general 'build the community. I remember my grandparents town holding events (which brought people out, like dances, concerts in the park, etc) in order to fundraise to add a beautiful fountain to downtown. I bet people today think that fountain just magically came into existence and 'someone' should pay to maintain it (and don't understand how the trust the does maintain it was funded and how precarious it's existence is). Edit: this is already too long but here's a better example. When was the last time you went to your local library when they were having a book sale? You don't go because you want a warn out copy of a random book you are barely interested in, you go because you believe in local third spaces. You buy worn out random books you barely have interest in because you want your library to exist. If you can't go do that and spend the $1 a book on that, the future is really bleak for society. So I will ask again, when was the last time you did that? They sell off old books multiple times a year. If we can't count on the HN community types to go do this multiple times a year to help out their local library we are doomed. Go buy crappy old books. Go buy starter plants from your local horticulture garden's/parks department's fundraiser. Buy a season pass to your local/state parks. Buy season tickets to things you enjoy having around.
lolinder 2y ago
> Declining church membership suggests organized religion is no longer the community builder it once was. This is all they have to say about this, which is unfortunate, because it dramatically understates just how important religion has been as a community builder and just how much of the loss of the third space is actually just a loss of religion. In 1999 70% of Americans were a member of a formal organized church/synagogue. In 2023 that number was down to 45% [0]. That is an absolutely staggering difference. Some commenters have noted that it's hard to find a third space in suburbia. This is true if and only if you ignore churches as an option. In your average US suburb or small town you'd have a hard time finding a home that isn't within walking distance of some church or another. These were the third space for most of America for most of history, and they were very accessible. No matter your opinion on what the future of organized religion should be, it's weird to have a discussion about the disappearance of third spaces in the US while only giving a token nod to our single most significant historical source of community. [0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/358364/religious-americans.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/358364/religious-americans.aspx
- xxxtentachyon 2y ago
  When people talk about third spaces, they usually mean a place you can casually show up to at 6pm (with or without family members), take a seat, and maybe chat with some familiar faces. As someone who grew up going to church, I feel like my church was neither my parents’ third place nor my own! It was simply a place we went to on Wednesdays and Sundays to worship our God. We would hang out afterwards, but that was limited to 0.2857 of our free afternoons/evenings. I think the article gets it right in that the collapse of American third places goes beyond just church attendance. Ideal third places are things like guild halls, bars, parks; places where you can show up and no one asks why you’re there or what you did today. The leveling and inclusive aspect is key: you need to be able to bring anyone who might otherwise need a third place, and they must be greeted as just another conversation member. This is how high school Super Smash Brothers days were at Blaine’s house: unlocked door, say hi
  - lolinder 2y ago
    > We would hang out afterwards, but that was limited to 0.2857 of our free afternoons/evenings. I fully believe you that church never felt like your third place. That disconnect between generations is a large part of why churches have declined. But speaking as a parent of small children—if your parents were allocating two nights a week to go hang out at church with church friends, that was absolutely a third place for them. Parents simply don't have enough time with other adults to justify hanging out for hours two nights a week with adults that we don't enjoy chatting with. > The leveling and inclusive aspect is key: you need to be able to bring anyone who might otherwise need a third place, and they must be greeted as just another conversation member. A month ago I attended a random Protestant denomination with my father-in-law that we'd never been to before in our lives and had no intention of joining. We went to the gathering after the service and were welcomed as part of the group. They had lots of questions for us because we drove across the country to get there, but there wasn't anything weird about it, it was just people hanging out chatting. I do want to clarify that I'm not saying that there weren't other third spaces that have also declined. But church was the universal third space that almost everyone had and generally assumed that you had. You might also have been a Freemason or a member of the Elks Lodge or have gone to hang out at a coffee shop, but the rest of our third space infrastructure was all built on the assumption that church was already there filling a lot of the needs.
rifjnfti 2y ago
[flagged]
pizzafeelsright 2y ago
I've got church, teach a few times a week, schedule regular lunches and dinners. We thrive when we are doing well in our roles. Learn your role. Execute well.

56 points by ColinWright 2y ago

I think the problem is two-fold: 1. Third places are few and far between. 2. People have lost the will and/or ability to spontaneously socialize with strangers around them. I don't see any realistic solution to this problem. The convenience of online "socialization" is too much for people to resist and I don't think most people understand what a poor substitute that is for actual human interaction.

maigret 2y ago
Very true all. It might be harder to find a third place, but I think it is still very possible. There are people out there who like to be social. That muscle might be hard to rebuild after COVID, but many communities are still there.
llamaimperative 2y ago
If you build environments where people bump into the same people with high frequency and low stakes, they will socialize.
- citizenkeen 2y ago
  I recently got into TCGs for the first time in 20 years (I’m in my 40s), and holy hell is the structured activity with recurring people liberating. I’ve made more fiends in the last six weeks than I had in the previous three years.
  - brg 2y ago
    I had a similar path. In the 90’s I was very much into Magic. Too much. But in 2017 I picked up Pokémon TCG and enjoyed it immensely. The local scene was strong pre-covid, and regional tournaments were a blast.
  - sneak 2y ago
    The formula is simple: show up in the same place at the same time, over and over again, as part of a group that does the same. This is why so many friendships and relationships come out of work and school. For me, it happened by accident, first in the techno music scene (clubs and parties are third places), and then again in the poker scene in Las Vegas. 100% of my local friends in Vegas are math/strategy nerds.
  - jaredsohn 2y ago
    TCG = trading card games from what i can tell (looked it up)
- randomdata 2y ago
  The premise here seems to be that people are generally no longer explicitly looking for socialization (if they ever did). If you build an environment for the sole purpose of socialization, they aren't apt to come. People haven't stopped going outside. Certainly if you give some other reason to get together (to play a sport, to listen to bands play music, whatever) on a frequent basis, then yes, socialization is bound to occur as part of that, but that is not the same as having a place centred around socialization; a place where you can turn up when you feel like it and find other people there also waiting to socialize.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    Did you mean to reply to a different comment? The trick is not to have socializing be a destination. It ought to be a byproduct of normal life. In a car-dominated world there are no such things as chance encounters and we’re all acting confused as to why people can’t build relationships.
    - randomdata 2y ago
      > The trick is not to have socializing be a destination. The trick of the third place is that it is a destination. But perhaps you are recognizing why the third place is difficult to support: There are a million other places to socialize. A destination isn't necessary. > In a car-dominated world there are no such things as chance encounters Why not? Hell, just last night I was driving my car and noticed the aurora, so I stopped to look at it, and then someone else came along and stopped too. We had a good 20 minute chat before parting ways. Without cars, I would have probably been at home and probably wouldn't have talked to anyone.
      - llamaimperative 2y ago
        A third place is difficult to support because people don’t want to go there to socialize with people they don’t know. That’s the whole point! Neighborhood pubs are great because you run into the same people you run into in various other parts of your life. When you meet someone at the grocery store you can say “I’ll be at the pub later if you wanted to come by” and that is a low stakes invitation both to offer and to accept. You need loose connections to make a third place functional whatsoever, and those loose connections cannot emerge when everyone is going from steel box to drywall box to steel box. Your example is a great argument but not for the point you’re trying to make. People talk when they are given the chance to talk in a low stakes environment. It took an extremely rare natural event to get you to stop your car and by golly, look, people talked!
randomdata 2y ago
> Third places are few and far between. Or is it that the places are too common? When I lived in the big city, there were all kinds of places that could have been the third place, but with so many options to choose from nothing ever established itself as the place to be. People would just aimlessly bounce around to them all instead of settling on one place to consistently show up to. Now that I live in a rural area, where there are only a few places to go – period – everyone seems to congregate around them, and thus finding that third place is quite easy.
- xxxtentachyon 2y ago
  Oh dang this is a good take. I live on a city block that has no fewer than 300 people, but we have at least three options for third places depending on your criteria. If we had just one in reasonable travel distance, and people couldn’t self-select, perhaps we’d be more neighborly
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
People have lost the willingness to build/contribute to such spaces, they just want them to magically exist in the off chance they might want to drop in. The very act of creating social clubs has been stigmatized as dumb/dork/out culture. The places that did exist other than the VFW only have the generation before baby boomers left going to them which is now self fulling in guaranteeing no new people will join. Next to go will be any local symphony/theaters/museums that depend on season ticket holders and committed fundraisers as the new 'everything just exists in case I want to just drop in' culture stops buying season tickets and only come on the 'free' open hours intended to get new supporting members to see the value of the places' existence.

walterbell 2y ago

An important topic. The article would benefit from interviewing (in person!) the hosts of local private/public institutions known for their hospitality and culture, often for decades. There may not be many of those places remaining, but we can learn from their stories. It's also worth comparing cities with some public (boulevards alongside commerce) vs mostly privatized space.

rufus_foreman 2y ago

I work from home. I don't even have a second place.

m3kw9 2y ago
You have a virtual place via zoom
wnolens 2y ago
Changing this improved my mental health significantly. I'll try to never work fully remote again
input_sh 2y ago
So do I, that's why I leave my house around 5pm, 5:15 at the latest. To the gym, to my favourite cafe, walking alone in a random direction, doesn't particularly matter.
andrei_says_ 2y ago
I take a walk on the beach or in a park every day after work to switch my brain away from the buzzy-ness of screens and multitasking. Plus dance classes and events at least three times of week. No longer dealing with sleep issues and symptoms of depression.
andrei_says_ 2y ago
I take a walk on the beach or in a park every day after work to switch my brain away from the buzzy-ness of screens and multitasking. Plus dance classes and events at least three times of week. No longer dealing with sleep issues and symptoms of isolation. Not spending 2h on unnecessary commute is a big bonus too.

Animats 2y ago

"The low-cost luxuriating necessary for healthy third places isn’t considered profitable." The author has a good point, although link in the article is to an ad for Toast, the not very good point-of-sale system. Starbucks has removed chairs and tables, and covered power outlets, at many locations. This was not accompanied by a price reduction.

packetlost 2y ago
> Starbucks has removed chairs and tables, and covered power outlets, at many locations. This was not accompanied by a price reduction. Wait, what!? I don't frequent Starbucks but this is insane to me. Where is this happening?
- jayd16 2y ago
  It happened during covid and they just haven't returned in the same way. It's unfortunate. I really hope the small late night coffee shop makes a return.
  - packetlost 2y ago
    I live in a tier 3/4ish city and the coffee shop scene here is sad, but it was sad before COVID.
    - ghaff 2y ago
      I’m not sure how Starbucks ( or most coffee shops) are really third places. I imagine most people immersed in their phones or laptops would tend to brush off any serious attempts at conversation. To another comment about this being all about lack of walk ability in many places I’m also not sure that being able to walk around an urban core suddenly makes it a social center absent some persistent stimulus. My experience is groups of friends and activity partners generally tend to happen without close physical proximity.
      - a1o 2y ago

BillFranklin 2y ago

It's a nice article actually; > If you do hope to stay, expect to keep spending. The low-cost luxuriating necessary for healthy third places isn’t considered profitable. A lot of people struggle with this after college and a social club (sport, dining etc.) is usually the best way to keep your social life going. But yeah you usually have to value and invest in it, which maybe people aren't doing so much as prices have increased in the physical world while prices for entertainment over the wire has decreased. I also think communities (third places FTA) that enable these friendships need to be, to some extent, closed or invite-only. I feel like as a social network grows each individual edge is a little weaker, which is the reverse incentive of developers of social networks and explains why socialising over the Internet feels the way it does.

formerly_proven 2y ago

I'd assume this is one of those things where, if you have to ask, you're not invited.

financltravsty 2y ago
It is. Make some friends first. Be the type of person that people want around. Then the third place will naturally form

_bfhp 2y ago

> At their very best, third places allow people of differing backgrounds to cross paths — to develop what are known as bridging ties. As opposed to our closest connections, bridging social networks encompass people who have varying identities, social and economic resources, and knowledge. “Studies have shown that just having a diversity of folks in your life … more informal and infrequent and unplanned, can be really protective for health and well-being,” Finlay says. What is intrinsically valuable then: third spaces, diversity, or individual health? It feels like the first has the most value in service of the second, which is really just a supplement for the third. Almost like we stopped believing we can convince people to get on the same page about anything that looks like a shared value... Also much respect to the persistence of patronizing Vox-speak in 2024: "to develop what are known as bridging ties" Known to who? "Studies have shown that" Studies where?

howenterprisey 2y ago
"known to" isn't patronizing; it indicates jargon, and in this case likely indicates a scientific term used in those studies. I agree that it would've been nice to link to the studies.
cjpearson 2y ago
The article references four books including "The Great Good Place" which originated the term along with the classic "Bowling Alone", which documents the decline of social connections in the United States. Additionally they interview four university professors who have studied the topic and they link to at least five academic papers, three surveys and several more newspaper articles. It seems to me that the article offers quite a bit of information on where the studies are.

lwansbrough 2y ago

My belief is that this can be mostly or maybe entirely traced back to the way Americans ruined their cities. At one time, before urban neighbourhoods were demolished for freeways, Americans more commonly lived in denser neighbourhoods. The transition from urban to suburban living (partially fuelled by cost of living being subsidized in suburbia, and partially caused by NIMBY advocates blocking the development of new housing to keep housing prices affordable in cities) completely destroyed any chance Americans had to be independent from their cars. Instead what they have in the states are a bunch of disjointed metro areas that demand a car to do anything. So teenagers need to be chauffeured around and lose independence because of the reliance on parent transport. I think that feeds into the mental health crisis but it also makes third places more expensive (fewer people using them than if the area was more densely populated) and more hostile (housing unaffordability drives homelessness and the use of third places as homes for the homeless.) You’ll find an exceptionally strong correlation between viable third places and cities that don’t demand that you own a car.

rayiner 2y ago
I think you’ve got the causation reversed. People built freeways so they can live in car-dependent suburbs. I’ve got a lot of immigrant family that came through New York City because there is a large community of our ethnic group there. Every single family has moved out to the suburbs as soon as possible. The folks who came with a bit more education went straight to places like Dallas Fort Worth where you could buy a big house for not too much money.
- underlipton 2y ago
  *Social engineers built freeways because it was a convenient way to raze minority neighborhoods while subsidizing suburbs that were care-dependent largely in order to limit who could move there by class. It's important to tell the full story because similar dynamics drive our current stumbling blocks.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    That’s obviously coincidental. Many countries (and even parts of the US) that have no minorities to oppress developed car-dependent suburbs around the same time.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

animaomnium 2y ago

Only 15 bucks a month for unlimited hangouts with your friends! Satire, in any other universe.

cole-k 2y ago
Also in ours: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gfru6GskeCc https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gfru6GskeCc (sorry for the shorts link, it was all I could find...)
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
Weak take. Social clubs have been the norm for this forever. How ignorant to reality are you? Social clubs require funding in some form to exist. How would you expect them to work? Someone donates their space and the club exists entirely on their good will? It's weird how all of the sudden in 2024 people have completely forgotten how things work. There is a local symphony because of the people that buy season passes and attend fundraisers. People don't buy season passes to see every performance, they do it to support having XYZ. When I lived in Santa Cruz we bought season passes to the State Parks, Monterey Symphony, Monterey Aquarium, and others because we wanted them to exist. We attended fundraisers for things like museums, etc. My parents did similar. It seems like now people just expect everything to be there 'in case they happen to want to drop in'. It doesn't work that way. Someone has to actively keep things going both by running them and by funding them (and create them initially). I think the next generation is either just too used to 'someone else' doing all that, or they really don't understand that someone else did it in the past and think things just magically existed. It's the equivalent of growing up and being shocked you have to pay for your own food, with your own money. I think part is also having so many 'free passes' people forget this stuff takes money. 'Free state park pass if you have kids' is a great idea, but families are the people that use the parks the most. Families are the people that originally banded together to do fundraisers. To build the trails. Not passing on funding/maintaining something to the next generation ensures it's death when the older people pass. At some point it has to stop being 'other people' that take care of making sure all the stuff you enjoy exists and is maintained. Free park days, totally. Free park pass and it just becomes expected, like state parks always existed and always will somehow. No, they exist because people pushed to create them, fundraised/crowdsourced to create them, and fundraised/crowdsourced to maintain them. When I was a kid we had community social events. And most of those events were also fundraisers for things that benefited the community. It seems like people now expect all the stuff that in the past the community fundraised for to just magically exist/stay forever. Now fundraisers all seem to be a very specifically charity versus general 'build the community. I remember my grandparents town holding events (which brought people out, like dances, concerts in the park, etc) in order to fundraise to add a beautiful fountain to downtown. I bet people today think that fountain just magically came into existence and 'someone' should pay to maintain it (and don't understand how the trust the does maintain it was funded and how precarious it's existence is). Edit: this is already too long but here's a better example. When was the last time you went to your local library when they were having a book sale? You don't go because you want a warn out copy of a random book you are barely interested in, you go because you believe in local third spaces. You buy worn out random books you barely have interest in because you want your library to exist. If you can't go do that and spend the $1 a book on that, the future is really bleak for society. So I will ask again, when was the last time you did that? They sell off old books multiple times a year. If we can't count on the HN community types to go do this multiple times a year to help out their local library we are doomed. Go buy crappy old books. Go buy starter plants from your local horticulture garden's/parks department's fundraiser. Buy a season pass to your local/state parks. Buy season tickets to things you enjoy having around.

lolinder 2y ago

> Declining church membership suggests organized religion is no longer the community builder it once was. This is all they have to say about this, which is unfortunate, because it dramatically understates just how important religion has been as a community builder and just how much of the loss of the third space is actually just a loss of religion. In 1999 70% of Americans were a member of a formal organized church/synagogue. In 2023 that number was down to 45% [0]. That is an absolutely staggering difference. Some commenters have noted that it's hard to find a third space in suburbia. This is true if and only if you ignore churches as an option. In your average US suburb or small town you'd have a hard time finding a home that isn't within walking distance of some church or another. These were the third space for most of America for most of history, and they were very accessible. No matter your opinion on what the future of organized religion should be, it's weird to have a discussion about the disappearance of third spaces in the US while only giving a token nod to our single most significant historical source of community. [0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/358364/religious-americans.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/358364/religious-americans.aspx

xxxtentachyon 2y ago
When people talk about third spaces, they usually mean a place you can casually show up to at 6pm (with or without family members), take a seat, and maybe chat with some familiar faces. As someone who grew up going to church, I feel like my church was neither my parents’ third place nor my own! It was simply a place we went to on Wednesdays and Sundays to worship our God. We would hang out afterwards, but that was limited to 0.2857 of our free afternoons/evenings. I think the article gets it right in that the collapse of American third places goes beyond just church attendance. Ideal third places are things like guild halls, bars, parks; places where you can show up and no one asks why you’re there or what you did today. The leveling and inclusive aspect is key: you need to be able to bring anyone who might otherwise need a third place, and they must be greeted as just another conversation member. This is how high school Super Smash Brothers days were at Blaine’s house: unlocked door, say hi
- lolinder 2y ago
  > We would hang out afterwards, but that was limited to 0.2857 of our free afternoons/evenings. I fully believe you that church never felt like your third place. That disconnect between generations is a large part of why churches have declined. But speaking as a parent of small children—if your parents were allocating two nights a week to go hang out at church with church friends, that was absolutely a third place for them. Parents simply don't have enough time with other adults to justify hanging out for hours two nights a week with adults that we don't enjoy chatting with. > The leveling and inclusive aspect is key: you need to be able to bring anyone who might otherwise need a third place, and they must be greeted as just another conversation member. A month ago I attended a random Protestant denomination with my father-in-law that we'd never been to before in our lives and had no intention of joining. We went to the gathering after the service and were welcomed as part of the group. They had lots of questions for us because we drove across the country to get there, but there wasn't anything weird about it, it was just people hanging out chatting. I do want to clarify that I'm not saying that there weren't other third spaces that have also declined. But church was the universal third space that almost everyone had and generally assumed that you had. You might also have been a Freemason or a member of the Elks Lodge or have gone to hang out at a coffee shop, but the rest of our third space infrastructure was all built on the assumption that church was already there filling a lot of the needs.

rifjnfti 2y ago

[flagged]

pizzafeelsright 2y ago

I've got church, teach a few times a week, schedule regular lunches and dinners. We thrive when we are doing well in our roles. Learn your role. Execute well.