4 ms·

I don't buy this explanation. There are plenty of things you can do together that don't cost very much - or anything at all. You can go take a hike. You can go

by johnfn 1y ago

I don't buy this explanation. There are plenty of things you can do together that don't cost very much - or anything at all. You can go take a hike. You can go to the park and hang out, or play a board game. You can go to a court and play pickleball. Heck, go to the library! All these things are free and many people do them.

taormina 1y ago
Gas costs money. The car costs money. You can only do the same hike that's an hour away so many times, before you're traveling to go to new places, and hotels cost money at that point. Pickleball courts cost money. The pickleball equipment costs money. People do go to the library, and then they go home and don't interact with other people.
- hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
  The fact that many young people don't seem to think that "Hey, we'd just go over to someone's apartment/house to hang out and have a meal or drink" as a primary form of entertainment (vs. some "activity") makes me realize how much we have fucked over many young people as a society in general.
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
    I did that as a kid and I loved it, but it made sense when everyone was in bicycling distance. Then one by one, we got cars and the friend groups shuffled from "Who is in bicycling range" to "Who is in driving range", and driving range is so big that it's not practical to drive 4 miles to my closest friend, knock on her door, hope she isn't having sex with her husband, and ask if she wants to chill
    - hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
      > and driving range is so big that it's not practical to drive 4 miles to my closest friend, knock on her door, hope she isn't having sex with her husband, and ask if she wants to chill Does she not have a phone? Calling someone up and saying "hey, let's hang out" and then driving over to hang out was literally how most of suburban social interactions happened in the 90s.
  - Atheros 1y ago
    I don't think the issue is that they are naive or lack social skills, I think they just choose against it, and then lie about the motivation for their choice. It's all over this thread: "No time and no money!" But you know it's false. I think they know it's a lie too they just don't want to admit to themselves and others that they like TikTok more than people. Being a lame couch potato is socially acceptable if and only if you connect it to the big class-based social cause. They relished in the COVID lockdowns for similar reasons. It's not naivete; it's dishonesty.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  Then go for a walk in the closest park instead of a hike an hour away. Play volleyball on the free net at the local park instead of signing up for pickleball and buying great. The people who want to avoid activities and socialization will always pick the more expensive activities so they can dismiss them. Yet go into the real world and people have no problem finding ways to socialize and have fun without spending much money.
  - dmoy 1y ago
    > Play volleyball on the free net at the local park instead of signing up for pickleball and buying great. Coincidentally, my neighborhood just put up its first volleyball net a week or so back. It was stolen within two days lol
    - Aurornis 1y ago
      That’s unfortunate. Generally the poles are metal and permanent. It’s common for people to bring their own net when they bring their own ball. A basic net is cheap
      - dmoy 1y ago
        Yea or really, people just go to the beach and chill without playing anything
- johnfn 1y ago
  Gas is at worst 6 bucks a gallon, which gets you 30 miles on a bad car. That’s enough for like 5 hikes; if you can’t afford a single dollar split across all your friends for multiple hours of entertainment and exercise then I do concede that you are in a bad spot; but I think most of us are not quite so destitute. (Also, my friends and I do the same hikes all the time.) Pickleball courts do not cost money, they are freely provided by the state. I go to free pickleball courts every week in SF, and I bike there for free. You can buy 4 paddles for $20 at sports basement and get literally hundreds if not thousands of hours of entertainment just on that. I dunno, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for this perspective. Almost everything I do with friends isn’t particularly expensive - if you can’t find cheap things to do you just aren’t even looking.
hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
I totally agree, though I'd like to frame OP's argument a little differently in a way that makes more sense I think. I agree the "shit is just too expensive" is a pretty lame excuse. I think to back when I was a poor ballet dancer around college age, and we always found lots of cheap things to do - a lot of it was like you said, usually just going over to people's houses to hang out, or doing stuff in the city that was cheap or free. Going out to restaurants was a rare treat, and it was almost always a cheap dive place. I had to laugh about the comment about the expense of "8 oz cocktails" - we weren't drinking cocktails, we were drinking 6 packs of Natty Light in someone's studio apartment. But what I think has changed is that it's so much easier to not be bored with modern tech, even if it makes you lonely. There is TikTok, YouTube, Netflix, multiplayer gaming, etc. It's just a lot easier to sit at home with these kinds of entertainment, so the "activation energy" required to go get up and plan things with friends just feels a lot higher.
- bearl 1y ago
  So you actually disagree, it’s not the prices, it’s the tech. I agree. The person you responded to claimed it was prices not tech.
  - hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
    No, I responded to someone who said it was not the prices - I believe you are referring to the GP comment.
- to11mtm 1y ago
  > It's just a lot easier to sit at home with these kinds of entertainment, so the "activation energy" required to go get up and plan things with friends just feels a lot higher. Ding ding ding! > There is TikTok, YouTube, Netflix, multiplayer gaming, etc. With the one caveat that 'multiplayer gaming' can indeed be a proper socialization experience if you're playing with friends/etc (vs say just YOLOing in something like FPS lobbies etc.) Or, at bare minimum, it's still more effort than the other options you mention. In the last few weeks I've tried to be extra mindful about being more 'interactive' with other things in my free time. It's shocking how easy it gets to just fall into a Youtube video rabbit hole. It reinforces how sad I get about my partner's constant scrolling through Facebook. Heck even now I feel guilty about just doing HN, on the other hand I am still recovering from a good proper bike ride this morning so I guess there's that.
intended 1y ago
Shit is expensive is in context of the option to watch tikitok. Not that shit is expensive as a be all explanation in and of itself. It’s a point on the relative ease/benefit of content vs meeting people. And you can even meet people over zoom or a video game now.
newsclues 1y ago
The library has become a place for drugs addicts and homeless people who use the free computers to look at porn. It’s no longer a nice or safe place to go.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  This is true where I live also. This feral subset of the homeless are ruining every nice public space that we used to have. Libraries, parks, trails. Patience and tolerance is wearing thin; everything that is tried to help them is just abused and shit on (often literally). More and more people are starting to say no, we don't want to tolerate this behavior here, if that's how you want to live then do it somewhere else.
  - esseph 1y ago
    Reading this makes me extremely nihilistic about humanity.
    - newsclues 1y ago
      My nihilism is exacerbated by the people who are actively making the problem worse and viciously attacking anyone who criticizes the problem or proposes solutions. IMO some activists are exploiting homeless people and drug addicts for power and profit.
      - esseph 1y ago
        I think your last sentence is full of shit, and I'm not even saying it's wrong. What I am saying is that even if "activists" are doing... whatever, I kinda don't give a fuck? These are people. Human beings. The only shit people seem to give is to get them out of their sight and make them somebody else's problem.
        newsclues 1y ago
        You don't care that people exploit other humans beings for power and profit? https://apnews.com/article/los-angeles-homeless-audit-spending-transparency-45a5aa98fc0d4ff88a08b8ad43b530a6 https://apnews.com/article/los-angeles-homeless-audit-spendi... https://invisiblepeople.tv/unveiling-corruption-the-dark-reality-of-homeless-shelter-contracts/ https://invisiblepeople.tv/unveiling-corruption-the-dark-rea... You are right, the people being exploited are human beings, and rather than working to end the suffering, some people end up prolonging the suffering and creating more of it, because fixing problems ends the flow of funds and power. You aren't refuting what I am saying, you only seem to justify corruption and incompetence because the apparent intention is noble.
gonzobonzo 1y ago
Or even just...call a friend for a chat. Few people are interested in that these days. A few decades ago, you'd even see media where people were chatting on house phones so much that different people in one house would fight over the phone. "Get off the phone" used to mean "stop talking to your friend on the phone." Here's an article from 1999[1]: > Although you may think your parents are unreasonable when they tell you to get off the phone after you've "only" been talking two hours, it doesn't have to turn into a big blow-up. It honestly feels like a lot of people are trying to find excuses to be anti-social these days. [1] https://www.ucg.org/watch/beyond-today/virtual-christian-magazine-august-1999/when-you-and-your-parents-dont-see-eye https://www.ucg.org/watch/beyond-today/virtual-christian-mag...
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
  There's a weird anti-induced demand. Now that I can talk to anyone for free at any moment, I have no desire to What would I even talk about? We have little in common
  - HPsquared 1y ago
    That's another thing. People have less in common with each other than they used to. People consume different media, pursue different specialized careers, and so on.
    - lotsofpulp 1y ago
      In conjunction with the fact that people (or bots) you do share interests with are available in a second with the device in your pocket. Such as posting here.
IgorPartola 1y ago
See my second point: financial stress leaves people depressed.

by johnfn 1y ago

taormina 1y ago

Gas costs money. The car costs money. You can only do the same hike that's an hour away so many times, before you're traveling to go to new places, and hotels cost money at that point. Pickleball courts cost money. The pickleball equipment costs money. People do go to the library, and then they go home and don't interact with other people.

hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
The fact that many young people don't seem to think that "Hey, we'd just go over to someone's apartment/house to hang out and have a meal or drink" as a primary form of entertainment (vs. some "activity") makes me realize how much we have fucked over many young people as a society in general.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
  I did that as a kid and I loved it, but it made sense when everyone was in bicycling distance. Then one by one, we got cars and the friend groups shuffled from "Who is in bicycling range" to "Who is in driving range", and driving range is so big that it's not practical to drive 4 miles to my closest friend, knock on her door, hope she isn't having sex with her husband, and ask if she wants to chill
  - hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
    > and driving range is so big that it's not practical to drive 4 miles to my closest friend, knock on her door, hope she isn't having sex with her husband, and ask if she wants to chill Does she not have a phone? Calling someone up and saying "hey, let's hang out" and then driving over to hang out was literally how most of suburban social interactions happened in the 90s.
- Atheros 1y ago
  I don't think the issue is that they are naive or lack social skills, I think they just choose against it, and then lie about the motivation for their choice. It's all over this thread: "No time and no money!" But you know it's false. I think they know it's a lie too they just don't want to admit to themselves and others that they like TikTok more than people. Being a lame couch potato is socially acceptable if and only if you connect it to the big class-based social cause. They relished in the COVID lockdowns for similar reasons. It's not naivete; it's dishonesty.
Aurornis 1y ago
Then go for a walk in the closest park instead of a hike an hour away. Play volleyball on the free net at the local park instead of signing up for pickleball and buying great. The people who want to avoid activities and socialization will always pick the more expensive activities so they can dismiss them. Yet go into the real world and people have no problem finding ways to socialize and have fun without spending much money.
- dmoy 1y ago
  > Play volleyball on the free net at the local park instead of signing up for pickleball and buying great. Coincidentally, my neighborhood just put up its first volleyball net a week or so back. It was stolen within two days lol
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    That’s unfortunate. Generally the poles are metal and permanent. It’s common for people to bring their own net when they bring their own ball. A basic net is cheap
    - dmoy 1y ago
      Yea or really, people just go to the beach and chill without playing anything
johnfn 1y ago
Gas is at worst 6 bucks a gallon, which gets you 30 miles on a bad car. That’s enough for like 5 hikes; if you can’t afford a single dollar split across all your friends for multiple hours of entertainment and exercise then I do concede that you are in a bad spot; but I think most of us are not quite so destitute. (Also, my friends and I do the same hikes all the time.) Pickleball courts do not cost money, they are freely provided by the state. I go to free pickleball courts every week in SF, and I bike there for free. You can buy 4 paddles for $20 at sports basement and get literally hundreds if not thousands of hours of entertainment just on that. I dunno, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for this perspective. Almost everything I do with friends isn’t particularly expensive - if you can’t find cheap things to do you just aren’t even looking.

hn_throwaway_99 1y ago

I totally agree, though I'd like to frame OP's argument a little differently in a way that makes more sense I think. I agree the "shit is just too expensive" is a pretty lame excuse. I think to back when I was a poor ballet dancer around college age, and we always found lots of cheap things to do - a lot of it was like you said, usually just going over to people's houses to hang out, or doing stuff in the city that was cheap or free. Going out to restaurants was a rare treat, and it was almost always a cheap dive place. I had to laugh about the comment about the expense of "8 oz cocktails" - we weren't drinking cocktails, we were drinking 6 packs of Natty Light in someone's studio apartment. But what I think has changed is that it's so much easier to not be bored with modern tech, even if it makes you lonely. There is TikTok, YouTube, Netflix, multiplayer gaming, etc. It's just a lot easier to sit at home with these kinds of entertainment, so the "activation energy" required to go get up and plan things with friends just feels a lot higher.

bearl 1y ago
So you actually disagree, it’s not the prices, it’s the tech. I agree. The person you responded to claimed it was prices not tech.
- hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
  No, I responded to someone who said it was not the prices - I believe you are referring to the GP comment.
to11mtm 1y ago
> It's just a lot easier to sit at home with these kinds of entertainment, so the "activation energy" required to go get up and plan things with friends just feels a lot higher. Ding ding ding! > There is TikTok, YouTube, Netflix, multiplayer gaming, etc. With the one caveat that 'multiplayer gaming' can indeed be a proper socialization experience if you're playing with friends/etc (vs say just YOLOing in something like FPS lobbies etc.) Or, at bare minimum, it's still more effort than the other options you mention. In the last few weeks I've tried to be extra mindful about being more 'interactive' with other things in my free time. It's shocking how easy it gets to just fall into a Youtube video rabbit hole. It reinforces how sad I get about my partner's constant scrolling through Facebook. Heck even now I feel guilty about just doing HN, on the other hand I am still recovering from a good proper bike ride this morning so I guess there's that.

intended 1y ago

Shit is expensive is in context of the option to watch tikitok. Not that shit is expensive as a be all explanation in and of itself. It’s a point on the relative ease/benefit of content vs meeting people. And you can even meet people over zoom or a video game now.

newsclues 1y ago

The library has become a place for drugs addicts and homeless people who use the free computers to look at porn. It’s no longer a nice or safe place to go.

SoftTalker 1y ago
This is true where I live also. This feral subset of the homeless are ruining every nice public space that we used to have. Libraries, parks, trails. Patience and tolerance is wearing thin; everything that is tried to help them is just abused and shit on (often literally). More and more people are starting to say no, we don't want to tolerate this behavior here, if that's how you want to live then do it somewhere else.
- esseph 1y ago
  Reading this makes me extremely nihilistic about humanity.
  - newsclues 1y ago
    My nihilism is exacerbated by the people who are actively making the problem worse and viciously attacking anyone who criticizes the problem or proposes solutions. IMO some activists are exploiting homeless people and drug addicts for power and profit.
    - esseph 1y ago
      I think your last sentence is full of shit, and I'm not even saying it's wrong. What I am saying is that even if "activists" are doing... whatever, I kinda don't give a fuck? These are people. Human beings. The only shit people seem to give is to get them out of their sight and make them somebody else's problem.
      - newsclues 1y ago
        You don't care that people exploit other humans beings for power and profit? https://apnews.com/article/los-angeles-homeless-audit-spending-transparency-45a5aa98fc0d4ff88a08b8ad43b530a6 https://apnews.com/article/los-angeles-homeless-audit-spendi... https://invisiblepeople.tv/unveiling-corruption-the-dark-reality-of-homeless-shelter-contracts/ https://invisiblepeople.tv/unveiling-corruption-the-dark-rea... You are right, the people being exploited are human beings, and rather than working to end the suffering, some people end up prolonging the suffering and creating more of it, because fixing problems ends the flow of funds and power. You aren't refuting what I am saying, you only seem to justify corruption and incompetence because the apparent intention is noble.

gonzobonzo 1y ago

Or even just...call a friend for a chat. Few people are interested in that these days. A few decades ago, you'd even see media where people were chatting on house phones so much that different people in one house would fight over the phone. "Get off the phone" used to mean "stop talking to your friend on the phone." Here's an article from 1999[1]: > Although you may think your parents are unreasonable when they tell you to get off the phone after you've "only" been talking two hours, it doesn't have to turn into a big blow-up. It honestly feels like a lot of people are trying to find excuses to be anti-social these days. [1] https://www.ucg.org/watch/beyond-today/virtual-christian-magazine-august-1999/when-you-and-your-parents-dont-see-eye https://www.ucg.org/watch/beyond-today/virtual-christian-mag...

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
There's a weird anti-induced demand. Now that I can talk to anyone for free at any moment, I have no desire to What would I even talk about? We have little in common
- HPsquared 1y ago
  That's another thing. People have less in common with each other than they used to. People consume different media, pursue different specialized careers, and so on.
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    In conjunction with the fact that people (or bots) you do share interests with are available in a second with the device in your pocket. Such as posting here.

IgorPartola 1y ago

See my second point: financial stress leaves people depressed.