It used to be, 100 or 200 years ago, that your workplace, your home, and your usual hang-out place were all within reasonable walking distance of each other. It wasn't a huge deal to go out and meet new people, as you'd naturally bump into them every day.

Nowadays we have a large portion of people in bedroom communities, isolated in a sea of houses. They drive in isolated cars to their workplaces, swing by to get some Starbucks on the way in, and that's the extent of their social interaction. Apart from libraries and parks, there's not many places that you can regularly go and just "hang out" without spending money just to exist in that space. It's incredibly easy to go for weeks or months without any substantial social contact outside of work or your few neighbors.

I feel like this is a reason why internet organizations and social media have exploded in popularity, for that matter. It's the new "default place" to hang out and get social interaction, for better or for worse.

(I expanded on this in an article I wrote, https://invisibleup.com/articles/31/, if you want to check that out.)

You had a room just big enough for a bed, a desk, and a sink. Everything else was common.

If I was a developer I'd build a "dorm for adults" right next to places like Amazon, but at least around here zoning won't permit it.

It's great if you're single and don't have many possessions. Inexpensive, too.

Feeling a little agoraphobic with the above floor plan? Don't like those vast sweeps of empty space? No problem, try $875/mo for 147 square feet: https://seattle.craigslist.org/see/apa/d/seattle-apodment-su...

Carefully examine the bathroom photos. No sink! You wash your hands in the kitchenette. Easy enough, when it's three steps away. (After all, where would you put a bathroom sink? The entire apartment is the size of an RV.)

One upside: if the landlord gets on your nerves, it would be real, real easy to move out. A one-backpack apartment.

A couple of years ago I inquired about the prize in a room in a hotel in San Francisco I happened to walk up to -- the front desk person cautioned that it offered 'european style' shared bathrooms. plonk -- I never encountered a hotel in Europe with shared bathrooms, but I've never been to Albania either.

The hotels with shared bathrooms are very common even in Switzerland, and everywhere else in Europe.

The small apartments are more common the richer the country. Larger apartments are more common in the poorer countries. You can find the small ones in every capital city though.

Truly curious. Could you provide a link to one?

As a young lad (on a tight budget) I stayed in youth hostels in Europe and USA as well. Those (at that time) not only were equipped with shared bathrooms, but also commonly with bunk beds in dormitories (separated by gender -- yeah, such were the times) and usually expected you to take on chores. I enjoyed my stay as it allowed me to go to places I couldn't otherwise afford and meet like-minded young travelers, but it would be impossible to mistake those places for hotels.

Even if there is a troublemaker people can't get rid of, they'll graduate sooner or later and will be forced to move out.

I'm not familiar with varying types, but AFAIU (or hope), the organizer / owner is not usually the main employer. It's foremost a community where people live. Some people work there or self-employ, but it's not usually a corporate-dictated, top-down governed establishment, which would be something quite different. At least in the examples I know of.

There were a couple of places in this space when I was looking but I didn't go with them for a few reasons: - cost was high - contractual terms were long (6-12mo minimum) - reviews were mixed, but the general vibe was a "tragedy of the commons" type situation - location / transit links didn't appear great

I ended up boarding with an older couple for a while before finding a more traditional share house with other young professionals.

If I'd been able to try it out with a 1/2 month minimum I would've looked past the other issues to give it a chance, it seemed like it could've a great way to accelerate finding your feet in a new country/city

[1] https://therealdeal.com/2020/06/08/wework-may-abandon-welive...

Seems to be trying it, rebranded as 'co-living' as I imagine dormitories holds a bit of a stigma.

Now I know people shitting on suburbs is the fashion, but the fact is if you are the kind of person who has hobbies that don't involve going out and socializing a bedroom community is perfect. You get your own land and a detached home with plenty of space to do mostly whatever you want. Woodwork, swimming in a pool, running around with your dog, playing loud music and movies, hosting dinner parties, whatever. It's so much more comfortable for people who don't have urges to just "hang out".

I love in a sea of houses. Bu where I live I can take 30 minute walk to the doctor, or ironically, the gas station.

Doctors, dentists, hairdressers, cafes, bakeries and flower shops all fit nicely with housing.

Went home for Christmas and as part of it swung by the nursing home where my Grandma lives.

She is basically in actual prison for the past nine months. For a good part of it she was confined to her room. It appears that they've relaxed the restrictions after Coronavirus ripped through the place and everyone that didn't die is now immune. She is at least allowed to go sit in the lobby area now and talk with the other residents.

Nothing quite like watching a 98 year old woman break down in tears every time someone reminds her that she can't actually come outside and give us a hug or talk to us in person.

How do they know?

The only question is how long-lasting it is, and so far the answer is "indefinite / a long time".

“Huh well that was interesting”

so honestly theyll say whatever is convenient. nobody knows anything, nobody has any plan, we’ll see

Within 5-10 min walking distance we have all daily activity requirements like grocery stores, gyms, pharmacies, restaurants, bars, schools, large year-round indoor swimming pool that blows away any private pool that I've seen, etc. If I did want a car we have underground parking or I could buy a private garage in a self-storage warehouse type area nearby for parking it or using as a hobby workshop. The one thing I do miss is being able to crank up my electric guitar, still looking for a solution to that one. Maybe a music space that rents by the hour or something.

I don't miss the car centric lifestyle for a second, and I'm saying this as an amateur race car driver. With all the time I used to spend driving around for the most basic of activities, I now have much more time available for my family, hobbies, side projects or even the occasional nap. You can't buy this quality of life anywhere in the US at any price or income level.

I am a reluctant, but accomplished touring cyclist, and I've ridden hundreds of miles through American landscape that is positively hostile to pedestrians and vehicles operating at less-than-car scales. The assumption of cars has led urban designers to implement travel distances that are only grueling to traverse, and the interstitial spaces are inhospitable, bedecked with exhaust ports, bad lighting, narrow spaces or vast, entirely unfurnished without shade, let alone water or public facilities for miles, even, in larger towns. Sometimes, just crossing the street to go a kilometer I've found the American cityscape impassable without hopping in the car, and popping over a minimum of one (1) freeway exit.

That's just one aspect of the alien dimensions to which our environment's built.

Going from the Cupertino Hotel to One Infinite Loop on foot felt like I was risking life and limb, despite it having pedestrian lights [1].

[0] http://thetrendler.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Maps-Icons...

[1] https://goo.gl/maps/ZMBq8RzpZLc6xwM97

That road was a 3-lanes-each-way road with no pedestrian crossing points. We just had to run across when there was a gap. It wasn't a fast road - there were plenty of traffic lights for traffic purposes - but still, nothing for pedestrians.

https://themreport.com/daily-dose/09-02-2020/as-more-stay-ho...

So either the source claims that the average apartment has three or more bedrooms (and this is false, very few 3BR+ apartments are built in most buildings), or that the average apartment offers palatial luxury. Maybe they miscalculated?

Translation: "As someone that lives in desirable parts of high cost of living areas, even the largest premium units are below the average square footage mentioned in that article, I generally try not to think about it but it is fascinating to see, I think I can relate to other people that earn enough to comfortably live in these areas, but it is not common to ever talk about being financially stable in an expensive area, lets go back to pretending that we are all struggling and 'got a good deal' on our 900 sq ft penthouse."

I wanted to get a larger house with a garden before the pandemic (which is ridiculously expensive given the rent / value ratio in Europe is a joke) and the pandemics reinforced that tenfolds.

How long before the government lock us in our tiny homes again?

This is like saying buy a Hummer for that one off road drive you take in a decade and suffer its drawbacks for 99% of your use case.

Have vast sprawling houses protected US from COVID-19 ?

Let's make data driven decisions please.

The problem of relying too much on "data-driven decisions" is that it leads to absurd optimizations that make the overall system more fragile.

We had only one pandemic in our lifetime, yet. But don't forget about Avian Flu and Swine Flu also happened and caused concern less than 10 years ago. The world is way more connected and we never had so many people being able to go across the world spreading a virus in less than 24h. The likelihood of another pandemic threat is increasing with time, not decreasing.

If anything, one of the lessons that I hope we take from this year is that we need to think our environments (on all scales, from the bedrooms in our homes to our cities and schools for our kids and the city altogether) for robustness and longevity, not for cost, practicality or marketability.

https://eurocities.eu/stories/reclaiming-the-streets/

and an article in the Guardian about Barcelona https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/17/superblocks-r...

I'm personally heartened by people's moves to de-focus the car in urban places.

Internet communication, with its much richer modes of communication, is essentially social junk food. It's not a real substitute for meatspace interactions, but it satiates the hunger for socialization. Thus people feel ever more connected and ever more lonely at the same time - loneliness being social malnourishment.

Even here in the Bay Area I live just a couple blocks down from a huge and well-appointed Elks lodge, and just a few miles away in downtown Mountain View, there is an Eagles lodge across the street from an Odd Fellows, itself a block away from a Freemason lodge.

If something exists but people aren't using it, it isn't the right solution. It might be hard to say why it isn't, it could even just be a marketing problem, but nevertheless the problem isn't solved by its existence.

I live in the mid-west, where these organizations were very common. I'm ~50 years old, and I don't know ANYONE who's in one of them, and every one of them around the area that I drive by is in disrepair. I expect them to disappear with the boomer generation.

Another feature of my location are all the small "mainline" churches (Presbyterian, Methodist, et. al.), who hover around 30-50 people, and have no members younger than 60. There's a business opportunity coming to buy up a lot of prime real estate when these churches fold in another 10 years.

I think a huge problem with finding "community" now is the utter isolation caused by social media and access to the thinnest slice of the news you want to tolerate. It has created a culture where people are only tolerant to their SPECIFIC view of the world, and it's just really hard to find people who think EXACTLY like you.

I actually tried to join a couple of those sorts of organizations, and I found them all very off-putting. Between the weird elitism, the arbitrary and time consuming hurdles for membership and the feeling that everybody there felt 20+ years older than me (even when they probably weren't) didn't make it seem like a good time.

I like the concept though, I just wish there was one that felt more up to date and actually felt like a sort of thing I'd want to join.

I think just talking to an Apple dad about his life and priorities would be extremely eye-opening for a lot of people on HN.

For the tech and maker types, a hackerspace/makerspace might be more appropriate.

Part of the problem is many are invitation-only clubs. That kept them mono-culture and full of the 'right people'. And the current members have at some time quit inviting? Don't know why.

So, basically people just wanted to hang out but now everyone thinks they want to take over the world.

Advertising basically works this way. Nudges demonstrably work at a population level without anyone feeling coerced. In aggregate, for the population as a whole, it likely makes a statistical difference, even though no one in particular feels like it makes a deciding factor. Like, say, with organ donation. Make opt in default, an enrollment goes up.

Unless some other factor associated with suburban living cancels the effect, it seems extremely unlikely that it does not make a difference, even if every individual feels like "the only thing that dictates it is my desire/initiative/ability".

Plus, most work related social functions are quite cringey.

Just give me my pay-check. I'll skip the booze and small talk with coworkers I should be friend with so I have less excuses to quit.

- They miss their kids

- They prefer friends and activities much closer to where they live

- Transit home gets far more complicated the later it gets, particularly when alcohol is involved

Big contrast to being able to catch an underground/subway within a few minutes with no planning, and fall back to a relatively affordable Uber if you get carried away and miss the last one

Socializing, there can be a substantial difference between interaction and meaningful interaction. Both can require time away from favored/necessary activities; both can have multiple consequences (desirable or not). A perceived need for constant contact may be unhealthy.

Tech is a crappy substitute for the real thing (as E. M. Forster famously noted), so has some destructive potential.

I agree though that it's annoying that going out = spending a lot of money.

Having seen the finances for several churches, I can say pretty confidently that most church-goers do not tithe 10%.

http://gruberpeplab.com/teaching/psych131_fall2013/documents...

There are fascinating implications for those that are closer to 10% than the average tithe.

There are all kinds of issues. Setting an agenda. Getting people to follow the agenda. Fostering conversation. Finding venues. Getting the right mix of people. I've been to so many meetups where these kind of issues were not handled well.

If you just want random people you can go to a bar. If you want "like" people it's much much harder.

If I were to start something up, it would start with a clubhouse and probably two employees—one is an event organizer who plans parties and other special gatherings, and the second would be a host/hostess that is responsible for welcoming new members and ensuring they’re comfortable as they try to fit in. Maybe something like an “onboarding partner” would work too when you’re trying to scale.

I think in-person power dynamics are often not immediately obvious, and "inclusive" groups sometimes make it worse.

For example, cases where the inclusion of someone who's socially awkward lead to the self-exclusion of some other people.

Someone's social awkwardness could lead them to constantly stare at people they find attractive; the leaders or organisers of the group might be too nice to exclude said person, since they didn't do anything criminal like harass people, just awkwardly stare at them; and other people might choose to self-exclude themselves because of this.

It’s generally funded by synagogues and charity foundations.

I’d of thought the Christian churches/denominations have similar programs.

It could be unique to Jews due to historical and present anti-Semitism. E.g. Jews were (and still are in a few establishments) barred from many fraternities, country clubs, athletic clubs, summer camps...etc

I think about this often, but then I go for a walk (or in other cities, a drive) and see packed bars and restaurants every night with people from all ages having a good time. Makes me feel like the problem is on me - people are obviously able to make friends and hang out without any special apps beyond what is available now.

The only new people I’ve met at bars are friends of friends, not random strangers. And when people are with their group of friends, it’s hard for a stranger to jump into that dynamic.

For recent transplants they roam bars until they find one with more singles and folks looking for social interaction. They do exist, but are probably more rare.

My theory of course is that the latter type of bar morphs over time (decade+) into the prior type of bar as "friend groups" get established at the new place. The new place slowly turns into the old hangout spot.

Nix the thought of walking to do the following activities: - fetching a missing ingredient from a local shop/store that would take 25min round trip and benefit you with additional exercise. - spending an evening going between bars being mildly intoxicated but not requiring a taxi.

Bedroom communities established during the mid century tend not to have those. My experience with those have been Fairfax County, VA; Fayetteville, Arkansas; and the suburbs around Sarasota, Florida. These are places that if you walk or bike around or take a bus, people seem to assume you are poor or a servant

I guess one distinction between those and your examples of country clubs, fraternities, and churches is that the latter are long-lasting institutions: you find a group of people, potentially spend an extended period of time interacting with them without commitment, and then you become a "member," which carries informal commitment. (In the case of cults there's formal/irrevocable commitment, but for the rest, you're free to leave, there's just a social norm that you don't do so casually.)

The flip side is that a lot of people have either first-hand bad experiences at such organizations or know people who have, and committing to an organization that turns out to be mentally draining (even if not abusive per se) is a worry. So maybe if you want to add some sort of structure on top, find a way to manage that risk. Certainly one step is to not accept as customers/members people who make your organization less fun to join, and be very up front about that. But beyond that, there might be ways to demonstrate to newcomers that the existing members are good people, or to support the organization in establishing social norms that discourage bad experiences, or possibly even figuring out what sorts of things toxic people tend to latch onto and designing your society in a way that lacks those.

(One other danger here is that the easy way to provide some of these benefits, like better career opportunities, is to be exclusionary and offer your members favorable treatment from each other and unfairly treating those outside the organization in a correspondingly unfavorable way. Country clubs, fraternities, and churches all have a reputation of helping the rich and powerful remain rich and powerful. It's possible to provide the benefits in a non-zero-sum way, by actually using the connections to make your members better people, but it's harder.)

Does this sound like something for you? https://doubleunion.org/

It's a bit unfortunate that most of them might have shut down (either temporarily or permanently) due to COVID-19, but I hope you'll find what you're looking for!

Let us know more, I have similar issues and intentions to try to improve up the social fabric around my neighborhood.

I think this is the reason Crossfit got so popular. People could go every day, see the same people, compete against them, etc. Definitely more expensive than a regular gym but offered more than just renting time on equipment.

At the end of 19th century workers got better working hours. In the hours after work they set up clubs for everything you can think of. Sports, rabbit breeding clubs, pigeon clubs, shooting clubs etc.

Tot this day it's still a thing, and it's in the canon of the Netherlands.

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https:/...

Last year I did everything I could, to go to tons of concerts, meet up groups, and alumni events. I had a very successful year in terms of meeting new friends, finding high income partners , and generally loving my life. I've long been disillusioned with social media, and I completely blame it for destroying a generation of mental health.

You need to make friends, and you need to go back to the old fashioned way of having light-hearted discussions. Versus nasty arguments on social media. I had to stop using Reddit for the most part, since no matter what I said people would attack it in some way shape or form. Even something as mundane as I find Java to be difficult, turned into a personal attack on my abilities as a programmer. Tons of people are obviously angry for whatever reason, and you feeding into their anger isn't going to help anyone.

I went to tons of meetups, and even though and all of these cases I was a complete stranger I was never insulted or made to feel unwelcomed. There's community out there you just need to seek it out.

> [...] even though and all of these cases I was a complete stranger I was never insulted or made to feel unwelcomed.

My feeling is that once people no longer have a keyboard and monitor with which to "hide", they no longer have the ability to hurl insults at other people spontaneously and without being reprimanded for it (if anything they might get juicy upvotes).

The reason I put "hide" in quotes is because people don't act this way consciously. No one wants to throw personal attacks at other people for simply expressing a different opinion. In fact, I regularly read stories of politicians who were arch rivals politically but would still foster good friendships with one another. Another good example is the relationships the judges have in the US Supreme court. I have trouble believing that the judges would be able to form similar friendships with one another if they did that online through soulless text boxes, rather than face-to-face contact.

The anonymity provided online enables this subconscious switch in people's minds that allows them to do things they would never do face-to-face. And I want to add that it's not really the anonymity (though that does amplify this effect), it's the lack of seeing the other people. Posting online with your full name (e.g. Twitter) can still enable these subconscious switches simply by virtue of giving you the illusion of not talking to people because you can't see them. In the end, all the people responding to you are text boxes, not humans with feelings and emotions.

Seeing somebody face-to-face just cannot compete with online connections. The way you see what you say form an expression on somebody else's faces, or the way that looking into somebody's eyes somehow forms this inexplicable connection (I remember reading about how studies were done on the brain that noticed hormones being released when people looked into each other's eyes... not sure where to look for that now), or how you can listen to their voice tones change as they talk allowing you to subconsciously gain more understanding of what they feel as they express something. It's... just not the same.

---

There was this article I remember reading a couple of years ago an article that delved into what guaranteed anonymity does to people. It was very interesting, I highly recommend it: https://gawker.com/5950981/unmasking-reddits-violentacrez-th...

I think such people are called "bullies" in real life.

The better ones tend to be able to disguise their actions and gaslight people [1], and therefore get away with it.

[1] https://kickbully.com/hidden.html

When I tried using these apps, I found myself trying to reverse engineer the algorithm to figure out exactly how it was ranking me and how to optimize my match rates. Most of it comes down to picture quality and your looks in those pictures. I learned this by running my own A-B tests using different pictures, but unfortunately the apps don't really give any stats on which pictures on your profile are and are not performing. This gave me an idea to create an app to do just this. I called it Cupid's Critics, and you could upload candidate pictures and get people of a certain demographic to vote on them and collect statistics before pushing them live.

What I realized is that this is a band-aid to a broken system. I think a new system is needed entirely, which is why I am now trying to figure out how to make group dinner party dating scale.

If anybody is interested in building it out with me, please send me a DM. If you're interested in an invite/signing up for a group date, please fill out this survey: https://kadray.typeform.com/to/VmhktNHD

I can't see university grads opting for 5 remote work days a week unless they've already got a big bubble. It's the people in their 40s with kids already who love fully remote work the most.

Instead of dating-specific qualifiers, it'd ask for your interests, hobbies, values, age and other demos, then match you based on overlap.

Not Meetup - it's not quite solving the same problem, and so it solves things differently (focusing on shared interests and on discrete meetup events).

I've never used either, but I feel it likely suffers from "The problem with Tinder is that everyone on it thinks Tinder is a good idea" issue.

Think about as optical waveguide technology becomes more affordable enabling very lightweight comfortable headsets that actually are close to normal glasses in comfort. Combined with pose detection from cameras with fast AI.

Things like VR Chat are already pretty good.

And actually I think the potential to create perfectly tailored 3d workspaces in VR could make those spaces preferred in some cases over real ones. To me the biggest issue is the size and comfort of the headsets and new technologies are coming to mass deployment in the next couple of years to address that.

The best tool for this right now is calendar and email. There's a lot of room for improvement.

Please PM me if you're interested in a deeper discussion. I've thought a bit about what this tool might look like and how to get it off the ground.

Also, PM me if you're working on this problem (to anyone reading this :)).

My feeling is that we're losing the facilities to make general friends, and that void is being filled with the non-optimal but best-you-can-do interest-based groups. This is even more effective on the internet where you can find even the most niche group that may not have been possible when we were limited to our local area.

In short: Meetup is good for activities, but it doesn't fulfill the third space OP mentioned.

(This is my experience, YMMV)

The Meetup platform is pretty terrible. It’s designed to get people to join many groups, most of which they never engage with and just get a lot of spam from. I’m sure >99.99% of pre-pandemic “social” Meetup groups were totally inactive. Most of the rest would have semi-regular events that <4 people would sign up for.

That said, I think there’s a lot room to build a better version of Meetup.com. The main problem with it is that the managers just don’t know what they’re doing, or are in too deep with tech debt and legacy code. If someone here actually wants to build a better version of Meetup, let me know.

Lost Connections by Johann Hari The Great Good Place by Ray Oldenburg Better Together by Robert Putnam

Irl organizations surrounding particular interests do materialize as extensions of online enthusiasm (we see this for meetup groups) but this is still insufficient. What's missing is accessible infrastructure to facilitate new connections. For instance, there are today collaborative workspaces and makerspaces (or even University grounds): these can be a good spatial medium for meeting like-minded people. However, the cost of renting is a deterrent. So, that can be addressed in a myriad of ways. As a remote worker, prior to COVID, I'd periodically hit the coffee shops but this did not appear to be an appropriate medium for engaging others.

We are going about things backwards, because it was all we could do: create organizations surrounding particular subjects, then have people join in. In many cases people are surfing around these groups as a means to an end, they don't care the slightest about the subject but they need it as a medium to connect with others. Not only is this contrived, it can lead to friction between individuals who want to focus on the subject and others who want to go on tangents away from it. This problem disappears if you simply have a space where people can choose to mingle or focus on their projects. Historically, physical spaces like this were always important large communities. Now our socially acceptable avenues for engaging others we don't know include very loud pubs, just barely, sports complexes and the like.

As a long-time member of a hackerspace, I've always envisioned it as a "church" (of sorts) for tech. I feel like I've learnt quite a bit from just immersing myself in the place, and having conversations with people from various disciplines.

Unfortunately, we're always struggling to make rent. It's a pity that the concept doesn't seem to work well in high-rent areas — many people view use of such spaces as a transaction, and won't contribute financially if it's just like any other office or co-working space.

It seems like these social groups -- besides needing a non-financial mission, shared rituals and beliefs, and some kind of exclusivity -- need a strategy for dealing with the social connection-dissolving "market" that exists around it.

I think it’s hard to build a community around people who just want one, and it’s more effective if it’s based around a starting ground of an interest and better yet shared values.

Coffee shops are great for this. Game shops as well

The reality is the changing social dynamics of a population spending increasing amount of time on the internet and less inclined to do things in-person, amplified by people choosing to have 'busier' lives, is the direction we are currently heading in.

We need top down (govt) and bottom up (community) efforts to start real change that can gain momentum (network effects for the founder inclined).

Working on experiments to chip away at this from the bottom up .

No, it's going to drop. Think immigrants who can move from crowded cities back to their country or a place that feels more like home

Employers won't pay a first world salary while living in a low cost country.

Do tech companies also charge less for their products in non-rich countries?

Yes they do. They heavily adjust for PPP and local currencies

Here is a price chart for Cyberpunk 2077: https://steamdb.info/app/1091500/

Spotify, Netflix, YouTube Premium.