> we probably have 1000 more ways than every decade in the 20th century to keep up with cultural events and local dev meetups.

Yes, that's part of the problem. That's part of why so many people prefer to have one way of keeping up, and choose Facebook for it by default because that's what "everyone else" uses.

It might be more country specific (I don't live in the United States, nor in a metropolis), and specific to the art/music scene and venues I'm interested in, but Facebook really covers most bases for me. And I often discover great events because some Facebook friend is interested in them. Some dev meetups are crossposted to meetup.com or eventbrite.com, but only some, and Facebook aggregates both for me. There's even a group for local IT events.

I understand that things happened before 21st century, obviously, there's still posters, word of mouth, newsletters (in some cases, but they're not that popular over here), but these days, at least where I live, event organizers are using Facebook as a core platform to spread awareness. I certainly didn't know about a lot of these events before I joined Facebook.

And there's events like bike rides, hiking trips etc. organized by individuals... on Facebook.

I wouldn't mind any of this about Facebook except for the fact that it is mostly a walled off portion of the internet. Content has a hard time behaving like a normal part of the internet. So to make it work you absolutely have to have an account.

Not totally true. You can invite people via email to your Facebook events.

But if facebook was around in the 60s onwards what do you think the organizers would be using to publicize the events?

They would.

But if Facebook was around in the 60s, there would be no 60s -- the spirit I mean.

That's true. However, for better or worse, FB knows a lot about me (and my friends) so it can recommend somewhat related events to me without any effort on my part. There's at least some value there.