I lived in NYC for a few years, and every so often I'd find myself wandering around the city on a weekend afternoon, wondering what I should do. Ideally, there'd be an app where I could simply open it up, look at a map, set it to the current time or maybe within an hour or so, and easily see events near me.
That app just does not exist. You can get kinda close with a few apps, but not really. In this context, I don't care what my friends are doing, I just want to find something cool period.
In many places, the list of "things happening this hour on a weekend afternoon within 10-20 minutes of where I am right now that I might possibly be interested in" approaches zero.
On the other hand, if there is a huge list of events happening close to you soon at any given time, the problem is "that I might possibly be interested in." The "things my friends expressed interest in" is useful not just because my friends might be there (although that can be a plus, or a prompt to text one of em and say hey you wanna go to this), but because if a buncha my friends are interested in it, that makes it more likely it will be something that will appeal to me, because my friends in aggregate are more likely than random to be interested in things I am.
This led me to spending something like 30-45 minutes trudging through various websites, the local paper, etc. I eventually found about 3-5 different options.
Simply broaden the definition of "things happening" and the number is definitely not zero.
Yeah, it's true for me. I barely use messenger anymore (married the person I wrote the most with), and even then I use it via Trillian. I open facebook maybe 2-3 times per week to check events and that's it. But with all their crappy UX, events is still better than alternatives to see what friends are doing and what's going on locally.