Fighting Loneliness with Public Living Rooms
citylab.com
citylab.com
While I sometimes understand the bemoaning of top engineers spending time on trivial apps, sometimes those apps aren't as trivial as you would think when you consider how they positively impact loneliness. Of course, there's plenty of garbage out there, but I do love to see efforts to connect people in ways that can be serendipitous and have the possibility of leading to more meaningful connection.
I can think of multiple long-time valuable real-life relationships I've had where our first connections were on some trivial platform. Sometimes it's hard to see past the glaring negatives that come with some of those platforms, but I'm hopeful that better options will evolve over time.
For example, here in Berlin you can get out almost every evening in the week, and you'll find one public meetup with similar-interested people. Well, usually not just one, but multiple events happening at the same time, so you have to decide where to go.
There are political groups such as FSFE (Free Software Foundation Europe), DigitalCourage, DigiGes. There are general-topic technology groups such as CCCB (Chaos Computer Club Berlin) and the various LUGs (Linux User Groups). And there are lots of specialized groups for various programming languages, frameworks, technologies or editors: Haskell, C++, PHP, JavaScript, Bitcoin, Freifunk, Android, Drupal, Vim, Emacs, and so on.
Even for children, there is a growing community that oranized various CoderDojo events.
Alternatively, you could blindly visit one of the many hacker spaces (IN-Berlin, c-base, Fablab, E-LOK, AFRA, Raumzeitlabor, ...) and just step into whatever event is happening there this evening.
Of course they have a value, but it's good to go in different directions, especially for people that already work and do a lot in that domain
I've been to lots of those, almost always found something interesting about them and many times I've even had fun, but I've always left them just as lonely as I was when I went in. They're a great way to learn something, pass the time and find people to chat tech with for while, but I've never found them particularly good for making social contacts.
Absolutely not. Abstracting a layer of communication, shedding it of any humanity, and lazily pasting over emotion with emoji, is hardly a 'cure' for loneliness. If anything it makes you feel more lonely.
Some Silicon Valley dipshit with a Macbook isn't going to solve loneliness with an app. Sometimes I wish Zuck just had a girlfriend who would have told him FB was a stupid idea and we would have never found ourselves 'here'.
I draw the line in 'social tech bullshit' at the phone call, at least I can hear the vocal inflections. Anything below phone call like texting is used strictly to meet up.
Would hanging out with someone in person have been a better cure for that loneliness? Sure, but I didn't have anyone and was too stressed out to make finding a group setting worthwhile.
I certainly have moments when I unrealistically dream that I'd never had the issues that I do. I say to myself 'you know all that bullshit stress you had? Instead of trying to cure it through technology you should have just gone out and done it that way.' In those moments I try to remember what it was really like, getting through hard times. I always accept that I wasn't in a position to do that yet.
There isn't one app that ever 'solved' loneliness, and some of those that tried didn't work for me. Facebook still makes me feel anxious and judged by others, for example. But I speak with friends for whom Facebook is a pleasure to use.
I'm glad there are a ton of engineers focusing their time on the trivial task of helping solve loneliness. They certainly made apps and programs and protocols that have helped me. And the more I talk to other people about it, the more people I find have been helped through technology.
Certain apps and strategies for fighting loneliness won't work for everyone, and acknowledging what doesn't work for you is great. But I'd never wish for a time when there weren't people out there trying.
But I signed up for Nextdoor and there is tons of connection happening between neighbors. There are the obligatory complaints about homeless, but people are also swapping goods, hiring each other, warning about burglars, etc. I have a hard time imagining how all of this happens in a place like this without a social network.
It's customary, when you move in, to knock on your immediate neighbor's doors and introduce yourself. The full-blown cheesy 1950s housewife thing to do is offer homemade baked goods to whoever just moved in. My dad frequently borrowed and lent woodworking tools with the neighbor on one side, and I walked a dog after school for the neighbor on the other side. We'd have each other over for dinner occasionally. We chat over the fences while letting our dogs out or walking to our garages. We run into other families we know at the parks.
Entertaining other families in your home is a big deal in suburbia. Everyone has the space for it, and most families put a great deal of money and effort into making that space welcoming and impressive for guests.
Beyond that, most social life revolves around children: parents who pick their kids up from school (mixture of on foot and in cars) stand around and chat while waiting for their kids to be released. They invite each other over for dinner, form book clubs and knitting circles, converse while picking up and dropping off children from playdates, on the sidelines at youth sports, in the auditorium lobby before school performances and PTA meetings, etc.
You won't see too many people interacting in the street or front yard in suburbia, and little more than dog walkers or pre-driving-age children on the sidewalk. But anytime you see a bunch of street-parked cars on a street where everyone has a garage, that's a dinner party. Smoke rising from a backyard, that's a BBQ or fire pit in use. Bicycles on the lawn, kids meeting at a friend's house.
Suburbia can be full of life, it's just not immediately visible.
How does interacting with an app and text on my phone instead of interacting with actual speech and people who are present in my surrounding impact loneliness?
I especially like this one as well:
"Humanist try to behave decently and honorably without any expectation of rewards or punishments in afterlife. Andsince the creator of the universe is unknowable to us so far, we serve as best as we can the highest abstraction ofwhich we have some understanding, which is our community."
His views on community have been slowly changing the way I interact with people.
I know that many places already have communal tables but I find that unless there's some explicit display a place is meant for a certain purpose, many people who want to chat / meet new people won't initiate because they can't be sure their neighbours are open to it. If they purposefully decide to sit at a 'talk table', then you can be sure they are.
1) In the case of coffeeshops, many people go there to work. The noise of people gabbing could drive them away. This is a pet-peeve of mine; the local Starbucks seems to double as a daycare, making it really difficult to focus.
2) How likely is it that the people gathered share enough common interests that they want to talk to each other? E.g. in my case I'd want to be able to strike up a conversation about politics or philosophy or music-making or tech. If no one already-gathered shares any of those interests then I'm not staying very long.
These aren't insurmountable and there's probably others that haven't occurred to me. Again, I like the idea.
1.) The coffeeshop isn't an office - people can talk. If it's too loud, that's on you (the person using it as an office) to find another place.
2.) You already have something in common - you want to talk!
I've seen this idea of the "talk table" work in retirement homes, not sure how well it would fare with a younger crowd.
2.) Right, I do want to talk, but the number of subjects I can converse about is a tiny fraction of those on offer. If I show up and the topic is rebuilding engines or flower arranging - two topics I know nothing about - I'll have nothing to contribute.
A slightly ironic statement from someone whose blog apparently covers "frankly anything". :)
There are many social differences to regular coffee shops, but people who go there watch sports, play cards and argue with each other over politics, usually. We call these places "καφενεία" (kafenea). The expectation there is that most people know most other people, everyone knows the owner and the setting is usually not lavishly furnished (just a few tables and cheap chairs).
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/08/mcdonalds-c...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/arts/design/lessons-from-m...
I guess this is what cafes are could be like, but somehow they have turned out to be places where you are expected to keep to yourself.
The smart phone is looking like The Adult Pacifier. I'm getting old, but I remember social anxiety. I might have been that person who pulled out the phone?
Talking to people older than me, they often seem to say that a timeless feature of living in cities is that you try to pretend that the masses around you aren't there.
Today the iPhone in my pocket completely replaces all of those interactions, since I can (and am supposed to be able to) map my way to absolutely anywhere in NYC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_coffeehouses_in_the_17...
After four years of living in our town with kids, I almost always bump into people I know when we are out and about. I've never been so connected to the local community where I live before and I really love it. :)
And it's not just the social part of the community, or the moral lessons, although I liked both of those things - a church gives you an entire framework for your life. What's a secular wedding? A secular funeral? How do your kids get involved in the community outside of the public school system (Boy Scouts is hardly secular) and how do you celebrate their coming of age? What are your standing plans for Wednesday night and Sunday morning? We have to reinvent all these things from scratch when we're not involved with a church, and people do that, but I've never seen such an in-depth and positive out-of-the-box experience as what a church provides. They've been optimizing this stuff for literally millennia.
And I think that society is ripe for a group that will provide all of this, while not also trying to tell us about spirits doing magic tricks. And if you think about it that way, then the "this is where the world comes from" part of religion is almost a sideshow to the "here's a community and framework for your life" part, and yet it's what people focus on and what turns people away.
Meanwhile there are ordinary churches in London that are centuries old...
Some religious institutions provide strict, rigid answers, and others are more flexible. Most I would say have fallen at least somewhat behind the times, especially as modern society finds it more difficult to accept that God exists.
For example, my wedding, and those of most of my friends, were secular. They were very much similar to the religious weddings in my culture, but the official part was done in front of a judge instead of a priest.
In my (European) country, we have two groups of Scouts, one aligned with the Catholic Church, and one secular. It seems some people are trying to do the same in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigators_USA
A somewhat similar organization: http://www.unity.org/ It's based just outside of KC at Unity Village and I can highly recommend a visit if you're in the area. The site is beautiful and an incredibly peaceful place. I'm an atheist so I can't speak for any of the religious or quasi-religious beliefs of the two entities but they definitely have an established social infrastructure.
Church is a place where they help you figure out how to live your life. You learn about family. You learn about money. You learn about grief and loss. You share your own insecurities and learn about the insecurities of the others in your community.
We would sit down once a week for about 90 minutes in a group of ~7 and try to apply lessons (moral, financial, social, etc.) to our lives.
I'd love to see an analog spring up in the tech community.
Whatever the hell I feel like doing. It's nice not having to attend service two days a week (and twice on one of those days)
Churches can be full of the most hypocritical, judgemental, and gossipy people.
So in other words, humans. They are full of humans.
i.e, humans with those attributes more than the average human
The secular weddings had a feeling that every minute was purposeful, that there wasn't any going through ceremony to "get to the good stuff".
Scouts is pretty secular around here. At least my troop was. Never a mention of religion, really.
This sounds like you live in a region where the majority of people are religious. I live in East Germany, where the majority of people don't belong to any church. Consequently, all of the things that you mentioned exist here:
* A secular wedding consists of a ceremony wherein a state-appointed official solemnizes the marriage (basically like the wedding service without the prayers and the singing), followed by the usual reception.
* A secular funeral is basically the same, a funeral service without the religious parts. The last time I attended a funeral, I was 4 years old, so I cannot comment on this, but I imagine that a secular funeral would focus more on the history of the person to remember, rather than on the religious interpretation of the event.
* There is a secular coming-of-age ceremony called Jugendweihe [1].
* There are clubs etc. that organize activities for children, they're just secular.
* "Standing plans for Wednesday ngiht and Sunday morning" are not a problem either because no-one goes to the church.
My comment about plans for wednesday/sunday is just that having church activities automatically twice a week provides something to do without specifically planning. On wednesdays I used to sing, play my instrument in a group, or attend church classes all with friends. Now I drink beer.
There are societies where this concept is pretty foreign. I live in Thailand and when I tell Thai friends that foreigners often sit down at a pub and talk to complete strangers, many are quite surprised.
Games have helped me be around strangers and give me a reason to talk to people I would be too shy to talk to normally. Now a lot of those strangers are no longer strangers, but friends, and that's because we played a lot of games together.
I also believe that you can learn more in much less time about the character and personality of a person by how they act in a game (especially games about devising your own strategies and negotiating with people) than you can with most traditional social outings.
Surprisingly video games don't really do this for me anymore. I do still play a lot of them, but I mostly play single player games. If I play multiplayer, it's got to be something in the same room now, which is why I have a Wii U.
But! The mechanics of the game itself are inevitablely social. Pretty soon you're interacting with your fellow players in dozens of small ways. Maybe you're even striking bargains and forming alliances. By the time the game ends, these people you've been chatting around a table with for almost an hour don't seem like such strangers anymore, and you've got a shared experience to talk about, as you trade views on how the game went and what you'd do differently next game.
If you want to meet completely new people, I think you're better off joining some activity.
It's funny how different this is. In my country i would barely ever go to a cafe alone, as it's supposed to be a social activity.
The café was a club that anyone could join.
It makes sense: it's a sparsely populated location. You could have called it a "cafe" and converted it, and maybe made a little extra money, but so much of the social aspect would be gone. The place actually adds more value to the community as a community living room than it would as a diner.
Edit: the place was also interesting in that it had the original "bedsteads" or box beds (example: [1]). These open (and latched!) from the outside: parents would basically lock their kids in these boxes overnight.
[1] https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/39/70/04/3970041ae...
I see one car accident on the sydney harbour bridge delay thousands of parents from getting home before their children's bed times - it's just not the right way to live, no wonder everyone is depressed and family units are struggling.
I live in high density housing - it's like being a caged hen compared to the freedom I had being brought up as a child in the countryside. The noise, the pollution, the high house prices. Not good.
Because separately, $300,000 is a beautiful 3bd/2ba house with a finished basement and a backyard in a safe, pleasant neighborhood with excellent services and infrastructure.
Together, it is maybe a "junior 1-bedroom" condo in a former industrial area just starting its gentrification curve where you really shouldn't let the 12-year-old walk the dog alone at night.
>It's shallow thinking
It's economics. High density apartments offer less space at higher cost.
We'll get back to the old way eventually, but it's going to hurt bad for a lot of people.
>it's going to hurt bad for a lot of people.
Well yes, anything that ends the economic conditions which make current residential arrangements appropriate will have significant consequences.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/CampingandHiking/comments/5aydxu/i_...
This doesn't work the same in other 'social' places. If you visit a coffee shop, 90% of people are meeting friends, doing work, or want to drink alone and browse the internet. I don't know how you'd start a place that only encourages visitors that want to meet new friends. What about a coffee shop that only has big round tables with 10 seats, so you need to share tables with a handful of strangers and face each other?
You could try local CouchSurfing meetups. I've been to some alone, and depending on the city they might have 5 or 100 people. They're typically at pubs, and some are better than others, but they're usually a mix of locals and travelers from around the world. Quite a few others go alone, so it's relatively easy to make some friends.
I've stayed in tons of hostels and for me, that relieves a lot of social pressures that I otherwise find overwhelming at home.
This is true but if you frequent the same place each day at around the same time people will start acknowledging you and making conversation. It takes time but it's a fairly reliable way of meeting people, especially if making the first move is something you struggle with.
Gentrification, etc, yadda aside, there are now big HOA club houses, sky decks, and other common areas designed to encourage mingling among neighbors. Now there will be undoubtedly those who will shut themselves in (just like in college), but I think it's bringing back a collegial atmosphere.
Our HOA is organizing a bring your own bottle and cheese event once a month on our sky deck.
Beyond "bringing back a collegial atmosphere", it looks and feels like a straight up dorm.
My rent is $1700/mo. My room is tiny. The common areas are fun. Location is v central, 1040 Folsom St.
With the caveat that I've been here less than a week: so far it's great.
My mortgage is $1800/month, for a 2400 sqft duplex and a two-car garage. I can rent out the downstairs unit for $1350/month. Location, location, location...
But yeah the modern world is super alienating for most people. The loneliness problem is, in my opinion, sort of like the 21st century version of slums. In the past the existence of slums was a sign that economic progress was not working to include everyone. In our times the isolation and loneliness of vast swaths of our population signals that the system is not creating the opportunity to form effective personal relationships. I doubt there is much we can do about that. Nobody is a stakeholder in the success of the lonely other than the lonely person themselves, and they wouldn't be lonely if the knew how to build relationships. So it's a catch 22 that only gets worse over time.
The same can be done with paper ballots. The trick with this article is that the perpetrator has full and unrestricted access to the building. If that were the case it wouldn't matter what the medium was, any of it can be hacked. They could throw cameras up in the booths, keyloggers, virii, etc.
https://soundcloud.com/user-925097294/simbi-ceo-11116-316-pm
We've met all of our basic needs except connectedness and community.