Third Places - What Made Life Back Then Fun

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Is the Third Place Essential for the Human Condition?

  • Yes

    Votes: 9 75.0%

  • No

    Votes: 5 41.7%
  • Total voters
    12
Agent of Misinformation

Agent of Misinformation

kiwifarms.net
Joined
Dec 25, 2023
The past is filled with both happiness and sadness. Both are intertwined by those emotions existing within the same area of the brain and the impact those events made on us. No matter how much of an Autistic Anti-Social NEET you are, you were able to find fun within specific spaces for people to gather around. This place is called the Third Place. Coined by Ray Oldenburg in his 1989 book The Great Good Place, he believed that the Third Place was essential to civil society, civil engagement, and democracy as a whole. The Third Place exists last from the Second Place (work) and the First Place (home).
With the decline of socialization in Western society, both people and businesses have started to view the third place as nonessential. This worsened after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Ever wonder why adults and kids congregate on similar websites? Or why do people nowadays act socially retarded to the point that you question how they survived life until now? This is because of the decline of the Third Place. Robert Putnam, another author similar to Oldenburg, noticed this issue in his 1995 essay "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital." As time passes, regular people on social media will notice this but will do nothing about it. Argue how we can prevent further damage and improve the third place within the modern world.
 
The difficulty is that most of these places people congregated before were a consequence of the limitations of the world they lived in. You didn't really have any other option, you either hung out with people in your community or you sat inside staring at the wall. Now people can go to work, come home, indulge in entertainment, and repeat without ever once needing to speak to their neighbors. That means unless people make a deliberate effort it won't happen.

Thankfully the situation seems to be sinking in a little bit. I'm noticing more people making sort of clumsy attempts to prioritize irl relationships with people.

Basically that's what it comes down to: there needs to be a shift in attitude where people recognize that irl interpersonality has to be a priority even if it isn't always immediately convenient or comfortable, instead of being like fucking redditors who look for any possible excuse to cut people out of their life.

I sometimes like to be optimistic and imagine that the rise of the internet has simply been an awkward adjustment period and people will adapt in the future.

isalaide said:
go to the fucking pub
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They don't call them pubs here you ho and if a suburb in the US has access to a bar it's probably some fruity hipster shit where you get a "Strawberry Wopple IPA" for $8 a glass. Or you could go buy an entire bottom shelf handle of vodka for $12 and sit at home drinking like a depressed hermit.

There should be a program in the US where the government builds and subsidizes low price local bars to offer (limited) cheap drinks. Imagine if it actually saved money to go to the bar. It seems like a drastic solution but clown times call for clown measures.
 
The loss of "third places" is less about the actual spaces but more about the break down of social trust. I say this because muh third places still very much exist, its just that people do not use them. The space itself doesn't matter, since it can be anything from a mall to a certain area on the side of a road, the community is what makes these spaces third places. If you want to see third places filled with people again, you need to address what killed social trust.

No, its not social media since everyone only uses it out of necessity. Not to mention we would have seen the decline that we have today back when they were first introduced, not after covid. You can name factors like the decline in national/local identity, immigration, homelessness, & etc. I'd say what killed them was the whole "cancel culture" I.E. it being social suicide to either make a simple mistake or go against the grain even a little bit. It is why covid essentially killed social trust, since in many places doing either warrant a police reaction. It is why the decline really started around 2013-2014 when being the ""wrong"" political persuasion on certain issues (gay marriage especially) was grounds for termination. Why bother going out if you risk losing everything over the littlest shit, when you can easily be yourself online with practically zero penalty?
isalaide said:
go to the fucking pub
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You will not meet anyone under the age of 35 at a pub/bar, outside of maybe a college town.
 
Ultrapenguin said:
"Strawberry Wopple IPA" for $8 a glass
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Hmm...what's the ABV on that?

Ultrapenguin said:
I sometimes like to be optimistic and imagine that the rise of the internet has simply been an awkward adjustment period and people will adapt in the future.
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Unfortunately, that's delusional. There is a good book on the subject by some mathematician who's name escapes me, called Industrial Society and it's Future.

Speaking of good books, Robert Putnam wrote Bowling Alone (or free PDF version) 25 years ago calling all of this out and detailing what the repercussions would likely be, it's a good read.
 
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