[HN Gopher] The case for hanging out
___________________________________________________________________
The case for hanging out
Author : LordAtlas
Score : 101 points
Date : 2023-02-20 14:15 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (slate.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (slate.com)
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I suspect if hanging out was as fulfilling as the author
| suggested, people would be doing it more.
|
| I just know from experience, more often than not, I walk away
| from a hangout feeling worse than before.
|
| Things like walking groups are great, but more often than not
| hangouts seem to be based around an activity that is as unhealthy
| as possible (staying up late, drinking, smoking, eating shit
| food) and the social interaction is pretty surface level.
| [deleted]
| legerdemain wrote:
| I can vouch for the La Quinta Inn mentioned in the article. It's
| a comfortable and affordable place to spend a night if you flew
| in to Burlington on the way to somewhere in the region (Lake
| Placid, in my case).
| panaffa wrote:
| GenZ here. 95% of my life so far has been spent alone lol. Prices
| for everything are crazy, a 1-BR apt cost 2-3K a month, and jobs
| barely pay enough to cover that while taking up half my waking
| hours. I've totally burned out
| paulpauper wrote:
| _Pushed further into isolation by the pandemic, we're all losing
| the ability to engage in what I view as the pinnacle of human
| interaction: sitting around with friends and talking shit. I
| agree with Liming that no one is down to hang out anymore, and
| agree with her that it's a "quiet catastrophe."_
|
| A tad strong, no? It seems like there is this whole niche or
| genre of sociologists and commentators who go around
| catastrophizing things, looking for anything that is wrong or as
| reason for society failing.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| Programming meetups are pretty cool, I haven't been to one for
| ages but if anyone's ever looking for something to do and make
| some good connections most major cities have one. Where I'm at
| has a pretty nice and growing infosec scene which is highly
| appreciable too, most of it is organized around discord but
| there's plenty of in-person stuff happening.
| legerdemain wrote:
| I've been going to a few and I even have one of my own that I
| run twice a month at a local co-working space.
|
| I don't know why anyone comes to either my meetup or the ones I
| go to, but they are 100% not people I want to hang out and
| drink with. Mostly middle-aged Asian and Indian men who are
| polite, quiet, socially distant, usually with no particular
| enthusiasm for the topic of the meetup. I don't know why
| they're there or why they're so numerous, but they're
| definitely not there to socialize and have fun.
| goodoldneon wrote:
| I totally agree -- especially grabbing drinks somewhere else
| after the meetup talks are done
| whstl wrote:
| I love the ones in Berlin. There's always more Pizza and
| Drinks than needed, so the post-talks hanging out can go on
| for pretty long.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Something happened with the pandemic.
|
| Before Covid, I was finally starting to get my social life
| together, I had a group of people I could hang out relatively
| regularly, close enough to my age. We would go out on the
| weekends, have a few drinks, talk, maybe go dancing or something.
|
| Post pandemic everything is drastically different. Suddenly, no
| one can organize. If someone tries to get a group together,
| everyone flakes last minute. Certain people don't like each other
| anymore, and in general people feel more antagonistic, myself
| included at times.
|
| I used to go out by myself a lot too. It used to be fun. I could
| go out and by the end of the night I would meet cool people, have
| some interesting conversations, maybe fuck around and hop bars
| all night Now, no one talks to me, people seem less... amicable
| and going out by myself now means "sit and drink for hours
| because it's still better than sitting around at home doing
| basically nothing".
|
| Hanging out hasn't really been fun since Covid.
| colonCapitalDee wrote:
| This is something I've been struggling with myself. I remember
| how easy it was to just kill time with friends in high school,
| but now as an adult it feels so much harder. Thankfully, I think
| I've found a solution (or at least part of one): poker. Poker is
| like social crack. It makes players directly engage with each
| other, acts as a conversational centerpiece, and provides the
| perfect backdrop for shooting the shit. You start talking a smack
| after winning a hand, your buddy fires back, and people start
| laughing. Someone starts a sentence with "that reminds me of..."
| and suddenly you're all hanging out. As people get more
| comfortable (and inebriated) the game slows down. Add in some
| music or a game on TV, some snacks, drinks, and maybe some weed,
| and the entire experience becomes sublime. It's also easy to
| invite new people. Maybe you've always thought your coworker was
| a cool guy, but you've never been able to find a non-awkward way
| to start the transition from work-friends to just friends. With
| poker it's as easy as "hey, I'm hosting a poker game this Friday.
| Want to come?"
|
| I was inspired by my Dad; he and his poker buddies (mostly other
| dads in the neighborhood) have been playing together for over a
| decade. They take trips to cities like Vegas every couple of
| years for milestones like 50th birthdays, and occasionally meet
| up on lazy sundays at sports bars. I started my own poker group
| with my friends after my dad brought me to one of his games.
|
| A few tips for your first game: - make sure at
| least one person has the rules down pat - play with
| a small amount of money at stake (I do a $20 buy in). Without
| money on the line it's way to easy for people to lose interest
| and play recklessly, derailing the game - start the
| game late if you're worried about the group not gelling together.
| Starting late (I'd recommend 9 pm, YMMV) makes it feel more
| intimate, lessens the pressure to sustain a good time for hours,
| and reduces the suffering if the game flops - if the
| game is a success reach out within a couple of days to schedule
| the next one - you only need about two friends to
| put together a poker game. If they each bring a buddy then you've
| got a 5 person game
| dmichulke wrote:
| Main drawback: There are people who just need minutes to
| deliberate over their next action, this can kill a complete
| poker round.
|
| To make this actionable: Invite only people where you suspect
| they're comfortable with uncertainty and don't want to optimize
| the s** out of every weak hand.
| izacus wrote:
| Analysis Paralysis is a common affliction known in pretty
| much any gaming and it's one of main reasons to avoid people.
| Nothing ruins a social night like someone dragging a game out
| for 6 hours because they think the result of said game is
| worth pissing off everyone else at the table.
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| sounds interesting and well thought out. do you have any viable
| alternatives for people who don't gamble or drink?
| exolymph wrote:
| Board games serve this purpose for a lot of people. YMMV
| though, not everybody likes them. (I would put myself in the
| "manages to have fun but wouldn't bother if my husband didn't
| love them" category.)
| asdff wrote:
| Golf! Same thing really, a dedicated couple hours to
| socialize with your buddies. Plus you are enjoying the
| outdoors too, and if someone has mobility issues they can
| rent a cart.
| timst4 wrote:
| Catan or DND has a similar competitive yet low stakes vibe.
|
| Here's my secret: I host a night about once every two months
| and I bake soft pretzel bites with varying dipping sauces.
| People know I'm going to bake pretzels and this familiarity
| is comforting, but they also come to see what sauces I'm
| gonna have. I try to make them exotic at times
| colonCapitalDee wrote:
| Alcohol is optional! Money is too. I know I recommended
| playing for money, but as long as people respect the game and
| don't play overly recklessly you don't need money. I will
| note however that there's a big difference between gambling
| for a small amount of money with friends, and gambling for
| real stakes in a casino.
|
| If poker is completely off the table then board games are a
| great alternative. Make sure to pick a game that forces
| players to regularly interact with each other. I would
| recommend Wits and Wagers or the classic Settlers of Catan.
| If you're looking for a more serious strategy game (and if
| your group can tolerate the emotional highs and lows) I would
| strongly recommend Diplomacy.
|
| Pen and paper RPGs like D&D can be great fun too, but they're
| harder to get started with and require the same group of
| people to play every time. If someone can't make it to a
| session the entire group can't play, and it's hard to bring
| in new people. But if you can get a game established with a
| good group it's amazing. I'm still friends with the people I
| played with in high school.
| graeme wrote:
| You can set the poker stakes so low that it effectively isn't
| gambling. And poker _is_ a game of skill, where good players
| can be profitable long run.
|
| Huge difference between playing for $10 vs nothing. In a free
| game people tend to be much more reckless.
|
| But $10 is not remotely like playing blackjack in a casino
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Whenever I read things like this I feel like I must be an alien
| or have something pathologically wrong with me or something like
| that. I _can_ hang out with people, I think. I just don 't like
| to. I have been in an exclusive romantic relationship for
| decades, and I am reasonably social when it comes to task-based
| things, but gathering with people in unfocused social situations
| is best case an obligation and worst case fills we with something
| approaching dread.
|
| I am very happy working on my own things, discussing things on
| the internet, hanging out with spouse, etc. I am also happy to
| participate in things that revolve around getting something
| productive done, or communicating asynchronously in a way that
| allows consensual focus - when people can send me a message that
| I can respond to whenever I want, and vice versa.
|
| To me, it seems like society is just slowly starting to adapt to
| communicating in the way that I like to communicate. Selfishly,
| it's great. I have tried and failed to understand how it's a bad
| thing, but I have trouble doing so.
| [deleted]
| drukenemo wrote:
| On a very similar boat, I can relate to what you're saying. I
| would just like to hang out with some pals a few times a year
| (so not every week like many). But it can be difficult to keep
| relationships close seeing each other not that often, but I
| guess technology can help us with that.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| meetup.com offers a large collection of interest groups to join.
| It probably is less useful for low density areas, and I don't
| know if they operate outside the US. If you live in a large urban
| area (I'm in Austin) there are literally hundreds of meetup
| topics. Knitting? Music? Hiking? Books? Psychedelics? Religion?
| Sports? Investing? Meditation? Learning a language?
|
| There is no guarantee that you'll make a friend there, but the
| odds are much higher than watching TV at home.
| legerdemain wrote:
| I'm a member of 125 Meetup groups at the last count.
|
| Most Meetup groups are zombie groups with thousands of members
| and no events.
|
| The Meetup engagement algorithm drives people to keep joining
| groups and keep RSVPing to events, but very little to encourage
| repeat attendance or to prune zombie groups and events from
| your calendar. As a consequence, most groups have tons of
| inactive "members," and most events have tons of fake
| "attendees."
|
| Even though I'm a "member" in over 100 groups, my Meetup
| calendar is mostly full of corporate Zoom events that are
| basically ads.
| mydriasis wrote:
| There are plenty of social clubs, guaranteed to exist in your
| town, that are looking for members.
|
| Masons, Rotary, Lions, Elks, Knights of Columbus.
|
| Optimists, Eagles, Moose, Odd Fellows, Kiwanis.
|
| Sons of Norway, Daughters of America, Active 20-30...
|
| I joined a social club when I moved way out to work remote. The
| members are a bit older. They have good stories and great advice,
| and they're experiencing a resurgence of membership applications
| from people just like me. There are plenty of clubs that focus on
| friendship and community service that are waiting on your
| application!
|
| A question I see asked _all the time_ is "How do you even make
| friends, now?" People have been asking that for a long time --
| one answer is definitely to try out a social club near you.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Many of our local clubs include, in their charter, a
| requirement that the members be religious.
|
| Now, I'm sure they don't _check_. They probably don 't pray,
| they won't quiz me about what church I go to. I could _lie_.
|
| But I don't want to. I don't want to _have_ to.
| mydriasis wrote:
| And there are some that don't! There're options for everyone.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Not to sound ungrateful, but they tend to be exclusively
| occupied by senior citizens. I do enjoy spending time with the
| elderly, but it's no replacement for peers in one's own life
| stage.
| mydriasis wrote:
| That's a totally fair assessment, and not everyone's into
| that. I am sure, though, that if you look locally, you'll
| find a club or group that matches your age range more
| closely!
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Not to sound ungrateful, but they tend to be exclusively
| occupied by senior citizens.
|
| One solution to that would be for younger people to join.
| mydriasis wrote:
| Exactly :)
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Fancier (more expensive) versions of this are country clubs,
| private clubs of various sorts (fictional example: The Diogenes
| Club in Sherlock Holmes stories--but these are real things, see
| also "gentleman's club" when that's not being used as a
| euphemism for "strip club"), and rich-people service
| organizations--this latter sort is typically dominated by
| women.
| trillic wrote:
| Another mention here is Sailing Clubs. There are expensive
| and cheap Yacht Clubs. Many smaller clubs are entirely
| volunteer run. Sailing is an awesome social scene that's
| surprisingly welcoming to beginners. Obviously there are the
| New York Yacht Club's of the world, but also clubs like
| Chicago Corinthian Yacht Club which has a volunteer-run bar
| with prices set to just cover costs as well as catered casual
| food. Membership is under $1000 a year.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Oof, right, big miss there. Good call.
| aschearer wrote:
| I was looking into a bunch of these recently. Many of them were
| white, male, Christian-only affairs within living memory. Took
| some of the sheen off.
| mydriasis wrote:
| Sure, I get that. There are many out there that aren't,
| though, and I definitely encourage you to keep digging to
| look for clubs and groups near you that more closely align to
| the kind of social environment you're looking to engage in --
| it's worth the effort, in my opinion. I think you'll be
| surprised by what you find!
| themaninthedark wrote:
| If the history of an organization(and not it's current goals
| and practices) is going to be prevent you for being able to
| join, then life must be very difficult.
| teeray wrote:
| Meetup can be this for younger folks, but you have to be
| willing to put in the work to organize and be the first-mover.
| Find things you want to do, then make open events, effectively
| inviting random people to them. Bar trivias, karaoke, hikes,
| etc. are all fairly easy to coordinate and they will attract
| other people who are also wondering "how do I even make friends
| now?"
|
| EDIT: Also, always make an effort to talk to the new people
| that join your events, because other people in the group will
| tend to mostly talk with those they feel comfortable with. It
| makes new folks feel welcome and they'll want to come back :)
| sulcate wrote:
| What?
|
| Do you notice a trend in the membership of your named
| organizations, mainly that they seem filled with old
| conservative men?
|
| Re: "daughters of the america"
|
| "Council of the Daughters of America, a patriotic fraternity,
| which seeks to aid in preserving and perpetuating the Public
| School system; to instill a spirit of patriotism into the youth
| of our land; to place our flag over every schoolhouse; to
| promote the reading of the Holy Bible therein; and to protest
| against the immigration of paupers, criminals, and the enemies
| of our social order"
|
| Ugh, yeah, my queer self is not really looking for that kind of
| engagement and I doubt they're looking for me.
|
| It has to be noted that there is absolutely an increasing
| poverty of community life and hyper individualization. It's
| kind of incentivized in currently existing systems.
| thanatropism wrote:
| Maybe he doesn't know enough queer people/isn't queer enough
| to frequent queer social clubs.
|
| People are different.
| sulcate wrote:
| Yes, people are different, but you'd imagine that
| organizations promoting nativist ideology and religious
| education in schools might also very likely not resonate
| with a more highly-correlated-with-atheism hackernews
| crowd, no?
|
| The point being, the offered easy solutions aren't
| undeserving of critique and we can discuss real reasons
| people might not be joining these dying institutions. There
| was an issue in framing and I discussed it.
|
| A la the other conmments around not wanting to hang
| exclusively with senior citizens, or ham radio not offering
| the kind of bustling community one might want. Perhaps
| there's are reasons said organizations are struggling and a
| reason why people might feel the choice to find meaningful
| community isn't always easy, when it's disincentivised in
| society.
| mydriasis wrote:
| Yeah, that's all very fair. I think, though, that there
| are definitely organizations out there that align with
| different views. What I was going for in my original post
| was to give a whole bunch of examples to demonstrate that
| there are a whole bunch of organizations one might look
| into -- and there really are, if you look for social
| clubs, there are loads and loads of them.
|
| I'm hoping that we don't necessarily lump all of these
| into one category, because social clubs are really very
| diverse, and I think they're very much worth trying out
| for those looking for social engagement.
|
| Yeah, some of these clubs have musty old ideals, some are
| conservative or strictly religious. Then, there are other
| clubs out there -- perhaps not as wide in size or scale,
| but still looking for members -- that have ideals that
| might be more modern, less conservative, secular, etc.
|
| I think a lot of people these days are strictly thinking
| of grandpa when they hear about these social clubs, or
| group organizations, so they immediately write them off.
| But there are good organizations out there, and it might
| be worth a second look.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| > disincentivised in society
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/society
|
| You are society when you bring people together. You are
| isolated when you stay away.
|
| I mean this literally: start a society that shares common
| values with yourself but is broad enough to include the
| values of others so you're not standing on an island
| alone.
|
| I might be wrong here, but generally when I've felt alone
| and tried to start a society for people like me, other
| existing societies that overlap shake out of the woodwork
| and I realize there was a rich network of people to join
| up with.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >highly-correlated-with-atheism hackernews crowd
|
| For what it's worth, I've definitely noticed an uptick in
| respect for religion in our type of crowd, often but not
| always channeling Jordan Peterson's ideas.
|
| I think after losing the last culture war, religion has
| had to do some real soul searching and is beginning to
| adapt to the new, hyper-scientific world.
| mydriasis wrote:
| These were just some examples. There are hundreds of social
| clubs to be sifted through, and I'm sure that there are some
| that would love to have you / align with your personality
| better than the ones which I've posted! Take a look around
| your town and see what might be available, you might be
| surprised at what you see.
| sulcate wrote:
| I'm going to be transparent: I'm interested in a structural
| analysis as to why there's a crisis of loneliness.
|
| Humans are wired for sociality and interdependence. Our
| brains pretty much literally wither away, in ways, without
| meaningful social stimulus.
|
| Given this, I can't immediately simply lay the blame at the
| feet of individuals as to why people seem increasingly
| lonely and thirsty for meaningful connection. So what might
| be some other causes for this type of isolation that seems
| increasingly common?
| tomgp wrote:
| The commodification of social spaces? If you can't spend
| time in places without paying (in the cost of coffee,
| beer, gym fees, etc ) then that excludes big chunks of
| people, or they alert ration their social times to some
| extent
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Marketing.
|
| If you recognize my user name at all then you've heard me
| bang this drum a few times before, but marketing is among
| the top reasons Everything Sucks in modern society.
|
| Your attention is constantly being assaulted by people
| who want to sell you something. In order to sell you
| something, they have to convince you that you need it,
| but chances are you don't need it, so they exploit your
| insecurities.
|
| You're not manly enough, buy our pickup truck.
|
| You're not pretty enough, buy our makeup.
|
| You're not working hard enough, buy our productivity
| enhancement programme.
|
| You're not healthy enough, buy our fad diet.
|
| You're entitled to money because of a minor screw up,
| join our class action.
|
| Everything sucks because of that other political party,
| vote for us instead.
|
| We're encouraged to treat each other as competitors and
| seek the material above all, because that makes it easier
| for companies to sell us shit.
|
| We're encouraged to be entitled, because that makes us
| get angry when we don't get things, like the stuff
| they're trying to sell us.
|
| Carl's Junior: Fuck you, I'm eating.
|
| The side effect is we isolate ourselves, but that's just
| fine by them because they are selling us the junk we try
| to fill the hole in our lives with anyway.
|
| The message fucks us up on a personal level, and that
| radiates out to the sociological level. It forces us to
| be defensive with the systems we put in place to keep
| people connected (email, phone calls, the web, search
| results, etc.) because they will exploit any opportunity
| to hijack your attention. Is it any wonder we're wary of
| connecting with people too?
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| TL;DR: I was stuck in a local optimum where the screen
| provided so much relative value, and leaving the screen
| required so much relative energy and vulnerability, that
| I'd opt for screen time.
|
| I can only share my experience, can't do a structural
| analysis.
|
| For me, it was screens. Not anything in particular about
| the screen being bad in and of itself, but that the
| screen was so easy and efficient.
|
| I can do my work better on a screen. I can create more
| value on a screen. I can have a meeting more efficiently
| on a screen. I can communicate more efficiently on a
| screen. I can entertain myself more efficiently on a
| screen.
|
| Going out requires effort. I have to "get ready." I have
| to go somewhere. I might not know people so I have to be
| vulnerable to cross a threshold of familiarity. I have to
| either be comfortable with myself and how others see me
| or I have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. These
| things pretty much aren't a problem for me on a screen.
|
| So my default is to wake up, go to a screen to work (I
| WFH because it's more efficient), get done with work and
| find entertainment on another screen. Go to bed and start
| over again. I just bounced from screen to screen.
|
| Being social. Taking care of my body. Taking care of my
| mind. These all require effort above that baseline.
|
| It took me a long time to realize and appreciate that I
| was stuck in a local optimum and being inefficient in the
| short term was necessary to break out of it.
| softsound wrote:
| Why is loneliness more common? Look at the work week.
| Everyone is working long hours, doesn't get time off, or
| is too broke to spend it doing social stuff in America or
| other countries. Lots of fear increases this too, with
| people working too much social skills go down and mental
| health issues become an issue. And lack of interactions
| with others increases fear in general.
|
| Now if you are lucky enough to be well off enough not to
| have that issue then the second thing is tech replaces
| people in a lot of areas - food, entertainment, health,
| ways we connect with others etc. If you had to rely on
| others more I bet most people would be less lonely in
| general. Isolation becomes easier the more tech you have
| available - be it cars or computers it can easily isolate
| you if you don't purposely avoid isolation. Now tech
| _can_ bring people together, I 'm in a long distance
| relationship and tech makes it very easy nowadays but
| it's still not the same, as in person face to face
| experiences.
|
| But I also think people will always face loneliness in
| every generation, it just might go by other names.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| But people worked a lot more in the past. The 5 day work
| week is a relatively recent invention. The 8 day work
| hour is also relatively recent. Why are we having a
| crisis of loneliness now and not when 18 hour workdays 7
| days a week was the norm in a factory somewhere?
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I think it mostly boils down to how trivial it is to
| entertain yourself these days with a smartphone.
|
| I was just on a weekend beach trip with friends and, at
| the end of the day, we considered playing some card
| games, but frankly we all wanted to just chill on our
| phones in bed for the last hour of the day, and we
| chuckled that we would have opted for the card games back
| in the days without smartphones.
|
| It's hard for going out and socializing to compete with
| solitary smartphone time. And it's easy to avoid ever
| doing the former, especially once you need it the most.
| whstl wrote:
| Agree.
|
| This is chilling to hear. Sometimes I really hate the
| industry I work on. We're really destroying mankind, and
| it's not in the ways most people predicted. Even Huxley's
| Brave New World looks optimistic compared to what we're
| doing.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| The 5 day workweek and 8-hour workday weren't won _that_
| long after unvarying (same job every day, same amount
| every day, no seasonal variation) optimized cog-in-a-
| machine industrial wage labor started to not just exist,
| but be common.
|
| Incidentally, a ton of early cinema (1900-1930, say) is
| very concerned about the dehumanizing effects of
| industrial (and office!) work, and the anti-social lost-
| in-the-crowd effects of cities (usually contrasted with
| rural or small town living) which nonetheless draw the
| masses with promises of money and glamor. Those seem to
| have been their major anxieties, in this realm of
| thinking.
| floren wrote:
| > Lots of fear increases this too, with people working
| too much social skills go down and mental health issues
| become an issue. And lack of interactions with others
| increases fear in general.
|
| I think fear is an important thing to bring in here,
| because it's easier than ever to go down a path of "only
| the specific subculture on this
| subreddit/discord/whatever understands and accepts you,
| if you go to the Elks lodge the elderly crypto-nazis will
| literally murder you. Best to stay inside and post more
| about how scary those other people probably are"
| whstl wrote:
| It's the modern stuff we have.
|
| People prefer binge watching a 10 episode Netflix show on
| a weekend rather than hanging out. Or playing video
| games. Or Youtube. I know some streamers and some people
| spend 5 hours a day watching them play video games on
| Twitch. Others spend 2, 3 hours an evening on TikTok or
| Instagram. Or are on Twitter all day, that's their hang.
| Or Reddit and 4chan. Or Hacker News!
|
| Even older generations are spending an awful amount time
| on messaging apps. My father isn't much into that but
| he's all day on news websites looking for whatever
| important thing. I know some Guitar web-forums where the
| average age is between 50 and 60 and they complain all
| day about kids these days and they Polyphia guitars.
|
| Back when TV was king I remember only going out when the
| boring stuff started. Whenever I hear the Full House
| theme song I get the urge to go hang out with my friends.
| I was really really lucky there was enough boring stuff.
|
| I also remember a teacher jokingly answering why he had
| 10 or so siblings to a classmate when we were in our
| teens: "well my parent's didn't have TV".
|
| I remember going to random shops with friends as a
| teenager to play guitars we couldn't afford, think of
| video games we wanted to buy, or which anime figures were
| cool. If we were kicked out, we would go hang in a park,
| or at the front of a specific building that had cool
| looking stairs we could sit. Can I even do this today? I
| can still do the other stuff, but as an adult it seems
| that this is only possible with my significant other.
| Whenever I visit, there's no groups of friends in those
| hobby shops anymore, it's only couples or solo people.
|
| Everything was a social activity back then. Today you
| gotta call people before you go to their houses because
| they're incredibly busy with Netflix or some video game.
|
| We need more boredom. Not you and me, but society.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| That but I would also add:
|
| We feel that it is taboo to approach others, rather than
| try and start a conversation and seem weird we all stare
| at our phones.
|
| We are also hesitant to try something new, when we were
| young we had parents who would push us but now when we
| are independent we no longer have that push.
|
| The thread started gave a list of social clubs, the reply
| is that all of them are old white men who would not be
| accepting. Perhaps they had visited each club and
| experienced rejection but the Eagles and the Odd Fellows
| don't strike me as particularly conservative
| organizations. Neither do the Optimists, Kiwanis and
| Active 20-30.
|
| In order to meet people, you must step out of your
| comfort zone!
| whstl wrote:
| Yeah, I strongly agree. These factors you mention are
| probably bigger than than the ones in my post, haha.
| svachalek wrote:
| I'm gonna trot this one out again: I read somewhere that
| people reflexively choose convenience over happiness, and
| I don't have a source for that but I find that it
| explains nearly everything about modern life. Sitting at
| home watching Netflix fails to fulfill all kinds of basic
| needs, but it's _easy_. Similar patterns are everywhere;
| our lives are so filled up with the path to least
| resistance, there's very little room for intentional
| effort to do things that are actually fulfilling.
| unity1001 wrote:
| The current economic system - capitalism - and the
| philosophy and behavior patterns that it enforces on
| people. I saw how the system changes a society first hand
| when the free market ideology took over the society I
| grew up. People started to compete with each other,
| everybody was pushed to make more money, a 'good' career,
| the youth were pushed to study hard for getting good jobs
| to acquire such good careers, even as the society started
| to prioritize monetary/wealth gain before everything
| else. Social relations, from friends to relatives get
| loosened as everybody was immersed in his or her own
| survival and self gain. Worst impacted were the youth,
| who were pushed to drop social concerns and work harder
| to secure their future. It caught the youth in their
| early teenage years by them being pushed to prioritize
| studying and success over any social relation.
|
| So, in such a society, you enter a rat race very early in
| your life by starting to study hard for qualifying for a
| good college, and it chains forward from there on while
| destroying any social connections that you might have
| built. You already move to another city when going to
| college. Then the college itself quite short, merely 4
| years, without enough time to create and solidify bonds.
| That is if the students can even find enough time to
| socialize in between the classes. Whatever bond was
| forged gets immediately broken by people moving to
| different cities, regions or even countries after
| graduation, to maximize their income and career chances.
|
| By this point the person is already hampered in the
| social department. Not only he or she was not able to
| socialize with his or her peers and the system already
| forced him to isolation and alienation from the peers to
| compete, but also because his peers have been brought up
| and educated with the same competitive mentality, the
| human social traits that our species have developed are
| already hampered or repressed. The peers are competition,
| not people to cooperate, collaborate, less, live together
| to support each other. The co-workers or acquaintances
| frequently leaving their jobs for a better opportunity
| somewhere does not help - you know that even if you hit
| it off with some person you met in your job or locale,
| that person can move away tomorrow in a flash. Which
| makes you further wary of creating any social bond that
| can be broken by next week.
|
| When the entire society is taken over by this mentality
| that enforces its behavior patterns, there is no escape -
| everybody is in a fight for survival or bettering his or
| her circumstances. Its a societal level alienation of
| people from each other and from what makes us humans a
| social species.
| pjlegato wrote:
| It should be noted that, empirically, all other economic
| systems that have been tried _are even worse_ than
| capitalism as far as people 's perceptions of their
| existence.
|
| Capitalist countries have border guards to keep
| foreigners from coming in illegally. Socialist countries
| have border guards _to keep their own people from
| escaping._
|
| Capitalism does not enforce behavior patterns. You are
| free to opt out and be poor and not compete with others,
| if you want. You can be homeless, or subsist on minimum
| wage, or go on welfare benefits, and many do.
|
| Compare this to socialist economic systems, where opting
| out is illegal and classifies you as a social parasite.
| "Being unemployed" is a felony that gets you ten years in
| a forced labor camp. "Complaining about how it is unfair
| that you are not allowed opt out" is also illegal, and
| also gets you a stint in the labor camp. _That 's_
| "enforced behavior patterns."
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It should be noted that, empirically, all other
| economic systems that have been tried are even worse than
| capitalism as far as people's perceptions of their
| existence.
|
| The modern mixed economy, which has displaced the system
| for which the name "capitalism" was coined during the
| early to middle 20th century in virtually every place
| that it existed at the time the term "capitalism" was
| coined for the dominant economic system of the
| industrialized portion of the West in the mid-19th
| century, has, empirically, _not_ been worse than
| capitalism as far as people's perceptions.
|
| If you compare only _precapitalist_ systems and Leninism
| and its derivatives, you'd be right.
|
| > Compare this to socialist economic systems, where
| opting out is illegal and classifies you as a social
| parasite.
|
| The modern mixed economy is the closest (though not a
| very close) thing to a socialist economy system that has
| been tried on any large scale basis (its even the closest
| thing - though again not a very close thing - to a
| _Marxist_ system, despite Leninists trying to claim the
| name.)
|
| Vanguardist elite authoritarian state capitalist command
| economies are not socialist, and not (despite the
| aspirational claims originally made for them) empirically
| an effective way of bypassing the need Marx identified to
| go through a period of private capitalist development on
| the way to a socialist system.
| panaffa wrote:
| You hit the nail right on the head
| unity1001 wrote:
| > It should be noted that, empirically, all other
| economic systems that have been tried are even worse than
| capitalism as far as people's perceptions of their
| existence.
|
| That's patently false. Socialist implementations like the
| USSR's lifted people from mud huts and being barefood to
| apartments and space age within the same generation. The
| only reason that it ran out of steam was because the US,
| who controlled 75% of world's resources at the time,
| started an all encompassing economic warfare and arms
| race to starve it of GDP by forcing it to allocate all to
| defense. Which is not something hypothetical or anything
| interpreted by historians - we have the Kennedy
| administration' internal memos and planning that
| envisaged this plan and implemented it. If ANYone did
| even a fraction of that to the US, the US would initiate
| a nuclear war as can be seen from the various examples
| during the Cold War. That the Soviets were way too less
| aggressive and they let themselves to be starved out of
| GDP has been a fortune for the human civilization for
| averting nuclear war.
|
| > Socialist countries have border guards to keep their
| own people from escaping.
|
| That's also a flat out lie that the system propagates to
| protect itself: Castro opened the doors of Cuba and told
| anyone who didnt want to stay to f... off in mid 1980.
| Yet the Cubans are there, except from a few who still
| think that the Muriel boatlift law is still in effect and
| they will be getting tens of thousands of dollars in US
| taxpayer money if they step into US soil from a boat.
| Otherwise they could just fly in. All the immigration
| from Cuba has been a few hundred thousand people, most of
| them people who had a good time during Batista and their
| relatives. Thanks to US taxpayer money, of course.
|
| You could also leave the USSR at any time by paying back
| the free education and other services that the state,
| therefore the society, has given you for free. Which is
| not even an option in the US, for example - if you are
| born poor you just stay poor instead of someone giving
| you anything free.
|
| > Capitalism does not enforce behavior patterns. You are
| free to opt out and be poor and not compete with others,
| if you want. You can be homeless, or subsist on minimum
| wage, or go on welfare benefits, and many do.
|
| First, welfare benefits dont exist in capitalism. They
| are part of social democracy, first advocated by the
| socialists in the First Socialist International. So
| that's not the argument you want.
|
| Second, all that you said do sound like enforcing of
| behavior. "You dont have to participate - you can just
| starve". Sounds utterly sociopathic.
|
| > "Being unemployed" is a felony that gets you ten years
| in a forced labor camp.
|
| There is no such thing anywhere. Don't make up falsities
| for argument. Doing the same in any country during
| wartime gets you the same kind of repercussion, including
| the 'democratic' ones who have all those written in as
| 'emergency laws'. If any rando like you ever knew what
| the 'emergency laws' in the most democratic countries
| involve, you would swiftly lose all the farcical
| illusions that you had about 'democracy'. Unfortunately
| such knowledge requires either special interest, or doing
| service in any NATO country's military or paramilitary
| tasked with enforcement of such laws. So that the masses
| like you can remain in blissful ignorance about the legal
| system that they live in...
|
| ...
|
| So basically capitalism is the best system solely because
| people like you believe in a lot of falsities and lies.
| Which is of course the only way to sustain a system that
| kills people when they cant pay for healthcare etc...
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| I felt this way after losing my religion. Your situation is
| different for sure.
|
| But I joined a group workout gym with a local owner and a
| good community, it's helped a lot with isolation.
|
| I'm in the process of joining a BNI and, being surrounded by
| people motivated enough to run their own small business, it's
| helping a lot.
|
| I'm going to be meeting up with some folks who run a local
| hackerspace and do a weekly "coffee and code" - that seems
| promising and I'm hopeful it'll help a lot.
|
| All of these have something in common:
|
| * A local business owner decided to start a BNI chapter and
| get a group of like minded individuals together to talk about
| business and share referrals
|
| * An employee at a gym was disappointed in how gyms operate
| and wanted to do better, so started a space to bring people
| together around their interests.
|
| * A smallish group of local hackers got together to create a
| shared space where they can geek out together
|
| If you look at that list of social groups and say "I only see
| spaces for old conservative men" and "there is a poverty of
| community life" - maybe start a space or group for people
| like you? Or find people who are already doing that. Unless
| someone creates that space and brings people in it's not
| going to exist.
|
| Having the spaces OP listed isn't mutually exclusive with the
| existence of any other social group.
| mydriasis wrote:
| This is awesome, I love to hear about groups like what
| you've posted.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| So a conservative organization is not for you!
|
| Perhaps you could join the local Democratic party?
| Participate in the process and help candidates campaign!
|
| Or if that is not for you, you could volunteer as a poll
| worker. While not strictly a club, it is generally the same
| people very time and the goal is very noble.
|
| Some gyms are great for meeting people. I would say
| independent bookstores as well!
|
| Good luck!
| throwaheyy wrote:
| I'm quite sure those clubs are focused around community
| activity and do not restrict membership by a member's
| political alignment or religion.
|
| Clubs that do revolve around members' politics and identity,
| honestly aren't all that much fun.
| 65 wrote:
| Do you know of any clubs that attract younger people? I'd
| prefer to not be 40 years younger than everyone at these clubs.
| bell-cot wrote:
| At least in my area (SW Michigan), the Jaycees seem to be a
| fairly big thing. They require member ages to be in [18,40] -
| so "40 years younger" is not a risk.
| jneumann004 wrote:
| This is one of the biggest problems I see for getting new
| friends as a millennial. About a year ago I got my amateur
| radio license. I started to talking to a few people locally
| and eventually went to club meetings and lunches. I'm in my
| mid-30s; almost everybody else involved in amateur radio in
| my area is old enough to be my parent or grandparent.
| thewebcount wrote:
| Well I'm in my 50s and wouldn't consider a single one of
| the clubs listed in the GP as I feel like the people in
| those clubs would all be older than _me_. (Plus I hate
| religious and quasi-religious organizations like those.) On
| the other hand, I 've considered going to some meetups and
| usually don't because I'm sure I'd be the oldest person
| there. (Plus the few meetups I've gone to were mostly
| attended by people who were desperate for attention and
| socialization, or who were trying to sell stuff to the
| other members. But that may just be where I live.)
| huehehue wrote:
| Thanks for unlocking the memory I have of getting my radio
| license in my early 20s. Got a lot of questions about why I
| was interested in radio, but in the sort of way that you
| might ask an alien what the purpose for their visit is.
|
| Also if anybody is reading this and interested in radio -
| take the test! It's cheap and you can cram the material in
| a day.
| nicbou wrote:
| I made a few friends through Reddit and LinkedIn. I build in
| public and it attracts some people. In other cases I was the
| one reaching out.
|
| If you consider small online communities as a sort of club,
| you can make a few friends there.
|
| Otherwise Meetup.com was a good place to find groups of
| people. Dog owners and parents tend to find their peers at
| the park. There are WhatsApp and Facebook groups for just
| about anything else, but many of them spread through word of
| mouth.
| mydriasis wrote:
| If you're interested in a service organization, Active 20-30
| looks pretty cool. It aims to help out kids.
|
| https://www.active20-30.org/Get-involved
| toasteros wrote:
| Voluntary organisations like the Scouts have been a good
| choice for me. It's tricky to get into if you're in the US
| because of all the dogma, but Scouting is an awesome thing to
| get into as an adult leader.
|
| If not the Scouts, then any voluntary org with a cause at its
| centre is great for forming connections.
| comfypotato wrote:
| I've visited a board game club before and there were only a
| few people over 30. And a lot of younger. Very fun if you
| like board games. Literally just people there to have fun.
| Some cute girls too if that's what you're looking for.
| mydriasis wrote:
| That's a great idea! I've seen these pop out of local game
| shops pretty often.
| voisin wrote:
| What prevents me from going to those clubs is a lock of
| understanding of the structure. I can understand something like
| a soccer team, but a "social club" gives me "networking event"
| vibes which are a huge turnoff.
| mydriasis wrote:
| So I see what you mean -- some clubs definitely have
| "networking event" vibes. Others have "sit around and chat"
| vibes, "go have a drink and maybe some fries" vibes,
| "volunteer at a local org" vibes, etc. It all depends on what
| you're looking for, and it all depends on what you're
| interested in. There's no real set agenda that we can apply
| to all of these clubs -- as similar as they may seem, they do
| have a diverse set of goals that they try to achieve.
| anovikov wrote:
| Indeed this is super scary. I see it growing among peers and a
| part of this trend myself. We simply no longer hang out unless
| there's some particular event or need to do so. People plain out
| lost interest in it. It's absurd how quickly the (rather mild,
| i'm not in say, UK where it was really strict) lockdowns killed
| the social gene in us.
| spicyusername wrote:
| This definitely resonates with my experience.
|
| To me, it seems to be a death by a thousand cuts. Just a few
| challenges that come to mind:
|
| - The housing crisis has made it very difficult to live close to
| your friends and just pop in throughout the week.
|
| - Organized religion is in decline and nothing has yet taken its
| place as a "third place" for a community to congregate.
|
| - Needlessly intense working conditions and / or working remotely
| has taken away the "second place", where you would typically
| "hang out" with your co-workers.
|
| - Many people today choose not to have children, starkly dividing
| adults into mutually exclusive schedules and social personas.
|
| - Many people move frequently throughout their young-adult and
| early-adult years, fragmenting their social lives and preventing
| mature friendships from forming.
|
| - There is a significant cultural gap between older and younger
| generations, creating social friction within the nuclear family
| unit and across generational boundaries.
|
| - The digital age has moved the location of many common past-
| times from a public "third place" to your private bedroom.
|
| - etc, etc, etc
| jarjoura wrote:
| Hopefully, I think the generation after Gen-Z will rebel
| against a lot of that on your list. I'm already noticing my
| nieces and nephews make a point to spend time with their real-
| life friends even when their parents are glued to their phones.
|
| They are a generation who collectively "lost" a year because of
| zoom home schooling and so they all seem to make a point to
| have other outside activities to connect with their friends on.
| I know most of us had that too, but for some reason it seems
| more important to them than it did even for me.
| asdff wrote:
| I think things were going that way for a while, but in recent
| generations (millenial and Z) this is going the opposite way
| where the third place is emerging again.
|
| So many people I know are doing stuff, like joining a pickup
| soccer league, rock climbing, board gaming, video gaming,
| gardening, surfing, knitting, hacking, making, etc. All of
| these interests come with their own new circle of friends you
| meet, who I then meet through knowing you when you invite your
| soccer team to your birthday party. People will keep up these
| things even when they have kids.
|
| My parents generation never seemed to do any of this. They were
| contented with basically not socializing or engaging much
| beyond what they already knew, never taking personal trips or
| even eating out even though they can afford it, just staying
| busy with the house making tasks for themselves, since there is
| really no limit of potential repairs or projects to do around a
| house if you don't limit yourself (e.g. you don't need to
| polish the floors that many times a year). In my generation it
| seems like everyone has something they are really into that
| isn't work or their immediate family. You see this starting to
| shift how these suburban towns you grew up in look like, too.
| Main street suburbia is no longer dead antique shops. There's
| now an arthouse cinema, axe throwing, duck pin bowling, and a
| brewery.
| [deleted]
| password11 wrote:
| > _In my generation it seems like everyone has something they
| are really into that isn 't work or their immediate family._
|
| Not all zoomers. I pretty much confine myself to work,
| lurking online, occasional periods of HN commenting,
| drinking, and the occasional walk or hike. Just biding my
| time and collecting my tech TC. When I get into late 20s and
| am rich, then I'll think about doing those things.
|
| > _Main street suburbia is no longer dead antique shops.
| There 's now an arthouse cinema, axe throwing, duck pin
| bowling, and a brewery._
|
| I always hear junior tech workers and interns saying how much
| they do these rock climbing/top golf/etc. type of activities.
| I always assumed they were signaling. Maybe it's great and
| more people should try axe throwing.
| asdff wrote:
| >When I get into late 20s and am rich, then I'll think
| about doing those things.
|
| This is pretty unhealthy honestly. As I got out of my early
| 20s my worldview on a lot of this sort of "hole up and just
| grind, rest later" has changed a lot. Who knows what your
| late 20s will be like? I've seen them end up going all
| sorts of ways for different people. Maybe you will end up
| with some expensive medical condition, maybe you will just
| be older and not have the body you had in the early 20s.
| Some of your friends and loved ones will have died by then,
| you might even die, who knows? Live today for today,
| because there's no guarantee for a tomorrow. If this
| lifestyle makes you happy then by all means do what makes
| you happy, since avoiding stress is very important to a
| healthy long life, but don't ever defer enjoyment or
| happiness to some later time you assume will happen.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| brandonmenc wrote:
| The problem imo is simply that there is no need for "rallying
| points" anymore.
|
| Before cellphones, I had to go hang out at the coffee shop if I
| wanted to catch my friends in person so we could all go do
| something.
|
| Before the internet, I had to go to the coffee shop and read
| event flyers off of the community board if I wanted to find out
| what was happening around town.
|
| The coffee shop became a hub of social activity in and of
| itself partly out of necessity, and it was awesome. I had
| probably a hundred friends back then and they were all just
| people who hung out at the coffee shop.
|
| Nowadays everyone can just veg out in their pod until their
| friends call them on-demand. The result is missing out on all
| the opportunities to make friends by accident.
| dehrmann wrote:
| And with ChatGPT, you don't even need real friends.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| "Hanging out" has been the resting state of humans for 99% of
| humanity [1] [2].
|
| That is to say, most of our time as humans has been spent sitting
| around with other people telling stories and sharing our feelings
| and thoughts. Full stop.
|
| The fact that loneliness is so pervasive is a symptom of the
| larger social crisis that will certainly be our ruin.
|
| Simply hanging out with strangers, being vulnerable, giving and
| receiving emotional and physical care in platonic ways with no
| social expectations, is one of the key things we need to do to
| get humanity onto a safe trajectory.
|
| [1] Chan, E.K.F., et al. (2019) Human origins in a southern
| African Paleo-wetland and first migrations. Nature 575, 185-189
|
| [2]Sahlins, Marshall (2009). Hunter-gatherers: insights from a
| golden affluent age. Pacific Ecologist. 18: 3-8
| pessimizer wrote:
| > most of our time as humans has been spent sitting around with
| other people telling stories and sharing our feelings and
| thoughts.
|
| We replaced that with spending most of our time listening to
| made-up narratives by massive media companies who share
| portfolios with financial scammers and military contractors.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Podcasts especially scratch this itch of "hanging out" with
| other people in the most alienated and commerce intermediated
| way
| panaffa wrote:
| Can all this pent-up trauma be undone?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I think so but it's going to take centuries of serious
| dedicated work by millions of patient, sophisticated and
| persistent non-violent pro-social volunteers.
|
| This is the path in my view:
|
| 1. Mutual cooperatives become the dominant form of labor
| organization over corporations (definitely possible)
|
| And
|
| 2. Mutual Aid Communities become the dominant form of social
| organization over Churches and Families (harder but I think
| still possible)
| panaffa wrote:
| Great ideas!! Especially the concept of mutual aid
| communities, I bet they could be implemented right now. If
| only we could get a bunch of engineers to build a
| worldwide, decentralized, nonprofit platform to organize
| them...
| radicalriddler wrote:
| I moved to Melbourne, AUS for a year last year (moved back at the
| start of this year). My purpose was clear, find people to hang
| out with, and build a more social life.
|
| I succeeded. It was all with the help of Meetup, just hanging out
| at bars with groups lead me to talking to more and more people,
| and usually afterwards, I'd talk to people outside of Meetups at
| different bars.
|
| This led to gaining friends, and we'd just hit each other up to
| "hang out". It was the best year of my life due to this "hanging
| out" so I 100% relate to this whole article.
| lolinder wrote:
| There are multiple people here recommending clubs and interest
| groups, but I think this is missing the point of the article.
| "Hanging out" as defined in the article is explicitly about _not_
| having anything specific to do or to talk about. It 's
| _unstructured_ socialization, being together with no particular
| goal in mind.
|
| What struck me reading this is that our cultural obsession with
| productivity has bled over into our private lives--socializing
| has to be a calendar item in order for it to fit in, and if it's
| going to be a calendar item it should have a specific purpose.
| This is sad. We've lost something important: spontaneous,
| purposeless social interaction.
| comfypotato wrote:
| As one of the club-recommenders, this is specifically because
| socializing for the sake of socializing is boring. One phone
| call every few months or a few hours in person a year are
| enough to be completely up to speed with someone. Any more than
| that and it gets awkward unless you have very good chemistry.
|
| I don't want to give the wrong vibe: I love said phone call or
| in-person hours.
|
| The activity, even if it's a meal or a walk, make it infinitely
| better and something that can happen on a more regular basis
| with less-close friends. Golf gets a lot of flak for being a
| game that men play because they're too toxically masculine to
| ask their friends to just hang out. My perspective: there's
| something to be said for people being too boring to just hang
| out with as often as you would be willing to play golf with
| them.
|
| This might be an extrovert/introvert divide. Extroverts being
| driven to have more casual friends where you need an activity
| to avoid awkwardness while introverts limit their friends to
| those with whom just existing is entertaining enough. The club
| attendance would be for extroverts here.
|
| I would tend instead to think that it's a transition in
| civilization where we just have more fun things to do and don't
| need to sit around "talking shit" as the article mentions.
| Roman gladiator events were a big deal and everyone attended,
| now you pick what sporting events you want to watch from home.
| Why would I sit around doing nothing when I can find people and
| make relationships while simultaneously having fun doing
| something I enjoy? Your comment portrays them as mutually
| exclusive and they aren't.
| whstl wrote:
| This sounds so alien to me.
|
| Even as an adult I still hang out with my college buddies at
| least once a week, to do absolutely nothing, sometimes we'd
| go to bars, often just chat. My parents also do it with their
| limited circle of friends. Same with my sister and her group
| of friends, sometimes they include me too.
|
| I don't know where I stand on the extrovert/introvert
| continuum but boring clubs are definitely 10x more boring
| than just hanging out for me. And interesting ones aren't
| exactly for "just hanging out".
| comfypotato wrote:
| I have a small network (I think science says it averages 6
| people for most) with whom I'm comfortable killing time
| doing nothing. Unfortunately there aren't really any mutual
| ties among them.
|
| It's about the next tier of friends/acquaintances. Just
| hanging out with the next tier, for me, sucks. I have SO
| many things I would rather be doing than hashing out
| surface level conversations with anyone outside the network
| of 6 friends (who include my parents in my case). At the
| same time, social interaction of any kind is nice. If I can
| combine the things I like with "people" I will.
|
| Your comment strikes me as you being fortunate to have a
| group of close college friends around, and your
| parents/sister similarly being fortunate to have groups of
| people who mutually like each other enough to have fun
| hanging out.
|
| It's also very relative. Before I developed the hobbies and
| interest that took me away from kicking it with roommates
| etc., kicking it was better than nothing. I say "sucks" in
| this relative sense. I just have stuff I _really_ like
| doing now.
| whstl wrote:
| Well, I'm fortunate, yes, but to be fair I'm up for
| hanging out with pretty much everyone. I hang out at
| work, at the co-working space we have with people I never
| talked before, with my neighbors, with my sister's
| acquaintances, with my dad's people. And all those people
| also seem to love "just hanging out", because they do.
|
| I also have plenty of hobbies, I have a band, soccer
| weekly with some folks, I also have a garden, I play
| video games with another buddy...
|
| My point I guess is that some people have a higher
| tolerance for hanging out with others, even unknown
| folks. I find that almost everyone has interesting
| stories to tell if you let them, and I enjoy hearing. I
| have my share of funny anecdotes too. I thought that's
| down to the introvert/extrovert spectrum but from your
| post it seems to be something else.
| comfypotato wrote:
| Ah, I have identified our disconnect.
|
| Our definition of hanging out is different. I'm going
| with "killing time" in a sense of hours at a time, which
| you definitely don't do at work. Similarly, I doubt you
| often kill hours at a time with random people you don't
| know or your neighbors. And your dad/sister's people are
| different too if your dad/sister are there.
|
| Folks like me aren't sociopathic lol. I like a good
| casual conversation with a neighbor when you happen to be
| getting the mail at the same time. I had a great
| conversation today with a stranger about Apple watches.
|
| It's sitting in the garage with your roommates (and
| whoever else) for 6 hours on a Saturday smoking
| cigarettes talking shit that I'm highlighting as boring.
| (And the article is praising.) It's not "lost" as the
| article states, I just have better things to do. And that
| used to be every Saturday for me (pandemic aside).
| whstl wrote:
| Nope. I definitely do kill hours at a time with people
| from work or people I never talked with. :D
|
| My team has weekly happy-hours which are obviously after
| hours (I honestly thought every team did it!), my
| landlady often invites us tenants a monthly dinner that
| goes into the night, I attend random Meetups and just
| stay for several hours chatting, I participate in our co-
| working space "parties" and stay until late with people I
| never seen. Heck, yesterday I went to a restaurant with
| my (recent) language class and we stayed until 2AM.
|
| Of course you can claim "this is not really hanging out,
| this is other stuff". I hate cigarettes and don't have a
| garage, but I guess drinking and random location is
| equivalent, as long as we chat for hours, so why not?
|
| But I definitely _do not_ consider "chatting while
| picking up the mail" as hanging out. Not even in the same
| ballpark.
|
| In Germany we have a thing called "Men's day" where we
| get a cart of beer and go to the middle of the forest
| just to do nothing at all for a whole day. Now THIS is
| what I call hanging out. I wonder if the culture is where
| the disconnect is coming from.
|
| EDIT: Although honestly pretty much every other country I
| lived in my life had a similar culture and... it was the
| rule as far as I could tell.
|
| EDIT 2: I also don't think you're a sociopath! Far from
| it! I just think you're someone who doesn't enjoy long
| aimless chats with unknown people.
| wilburTheDog wrote:
| I think of clubs and interest groups as a good way to make
| friends that you can then hang out with.
| whstl wrote:
| What if you already have lots of friends? I think the crux of
| the issue is that there's lots of clubs and a lot of purpose
| but not enough "just hanging out".
| asdff wrote:
| Then you probably are hanging out with them plenty already.
| Start inviting them over to your place to hang out if you
| feel like you don't have enough hanging out time.
| steve76 wrote:
| [dead]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I feel like a lot of religious activities at
| temples/churches/whatever serve this purpose.
|
| The ceremony or whatever is an excuse to get together, and most
| people might not really care about the beliefs portion, but it
| provides a backdrop to hang out as a community.
| ghaff wrote:
| That's true of a lot of things. People ostensibly go to
| conferences and the like to learn stuff. In practice, I think
| a lot of the structure of conferences exists to give people
| an excuse to attend whereas, I'm going to mostly go hangout
| with professional peers in some nice city wouldn't.
| mikrl wrote:
| That is one thing I noticed about North American social
| culture, the relative lack of [semi-]public spaces to just
| exist.
|
| In the UK there are countless nooks, crannies, parks etc to
| just kill time with people.
|
| Even the pub is an institution expressly for this purpose. You
| go in, buy a pint when you want and are left alone to your
| friends/business. None of this "What can I get you? How is
| everything tasting? Anything else?" hyper-commodification of
| simply being somewhere just for the sake of it.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| This makes me think that non pushy spaces like UK pubs should
| be given advantageous tax treatment.
|
| Are there any "coffee pubs"? I personally enjoy an occasional
| beer but I don't know if I'd want to repeatedly invite folks
| to hang out for hours in a place that largely serves alcohol
| drinks in mixed male/female company. Seems like it could
| become a headache in the US.
|
| One other issue in the US is that any third space becomes a
| long term hangout of all the local homeless, which causes
| people not to want to go there. Several local Starbucks have
| this problem and I stopped going there. It pushed me to drive
| 15 minutes to find one I can hang out without being
| distracted by people with obvious mental illness who need
| treatment.
| [deleted]
| Animats wrote:
| > One other issue in the US is that any third space becomes
| a long term hangout of all the local homeless, which causes
| people not to want to go there. Several local Starbucks
| have this problem and I stopped going there.
|
| Yes. Our local Starbucks, at the Redwood City CA train
| station, removed all their furniture and closed their
| bathrooms. Now it's a big empty room with a bleak counter,
| where people sometimes come in and buy something.
| legerdemain wrote:
| Almost all Starbuckses are bad, but you have several
| other options with plenty of seating near the Redwood
| City Caltrain.
|
| Try La Tartine just around the corner, which has
| plentiful seating, decent prices, and closes pretty late.
| legerdemain wrote:
| Also, the Philz down the street and Coffeebar further
| down the street (although both have higher prices and
| worse hours than La Tartine).
| [deleted]
| treis wrote:
| That's just a cultural difference on the expectation of
| service. Europe is more towards the "I'll summon you when
| needed". The US it's expected they'll check in on you and to
| some extent that you'll wait until they check in to ask for
| something.
|
| The US has bars and parks and coffee shops too. Plenty of
| places to just go and be
| mschuster91 wrote:
| A huge part of that is IMO the _absurd_ lack of free time. 40
| hours plus commute, overtime and on-call (=total 60-80h) is bad
| enough in a single-earner household where a spouse keeps up
| with chores, but _two_ full-time employees or singles not
| living with parents? They 're all but drained in the evening,
| and when you only have time on Saturday between dealing with
| leftover chores (=laundry, actual cleaning beyond letting the
| Roomba roam around) or catching up on sleep, the rare four
| spots for social life in a month have to be carefully planned.
| And no surprise either that people don't have children as a
| result - hard to have them when you're working all the time.
|
| The 40 hour work week needs to go. Now.
|
| ETA and don't forget so many restaurants and pubs either closed
| down completely, cut opening times or hiked prices thanks to
| inflation and exploding rents over the last years. It's not
| just the pandemic that fucked things up.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Just bringing back an actual "9-5" would help. None of this
| "8-5" (because breaks don't count) shit.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| Unstructured is uncontrolled, and uncontrolled is anathema to a
| culture that obsessively quantifies everything.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I wonder if there are any "just hanging out" groups on Meetup.
| whstl wrote:
| There's often meetups for going to bars.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Thing about bars is that they suck ass, though.
| whstl wrote:
| Well, they're great here. There's probably meetups to go
| to other random locations, maybe restaurants, I'm not
| sure.
|
| Either way, I wish there were more public places for
| random people to meet other than commercial
| establishments.
| dkarl wrote:
| Most of the time, social clubs and interest groups serve as an
| excuse to hang out. When I hang out with my friends, we play
| board games, work out, try out new breweries. There's always a
| reason, but the reason we find a reason is because we want to
| hang out. There are a lot of specific, structured things you
| can plan to do together that leave your social interactions
| completely unstructured.
|
| Even in the case of something that also serves a practical
| purpose, such as working out, the fitness purpose exists in
| symbiosis with the socializing purpose. Sometimes the reason I
| get a workout is that I want to hang out with my friend, and
| sometimes the reason I spend time with my friend is because I
| wanted to work out.
|
| Having another reason to hang out also helps friendships endure
| through times where you don't have much to say to each other.
| pastage wrote:
| The best clubs are the ones where you can hangout. It is just a
| way to gather like minded people.
| adzm wrote:
| Living in the suburbs, I'm happy I can host the occasional
| bonfire, which is a great opportunity to get a lot of people
| together and do whatever.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| What are some good places for 10-20 people to just hang out?
| Everywhere seems to involve a lot of spending or limited seating.
|
| A sports bar or English style pub would work, but I'd rather
| without encouraging everyone to continuously consume alcohol.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| bowling is fun, maybe karaoke if you're in a city
|
| if it's a group with a common interest, you can rent a room in
| a dance studio or something similar, set up tables/chairs
| there, and have a hobby night
| xwdv wrote:
| Parking lots, malls, outside of movie theaters, woods,
| riverbanks, people's houses, old docks at lakes.
|
| 10-20 friends used to show up at this one lake easily off one
| group text. We'd spend hours talking, sitting on an old wood
| dock drinking beers and skipping stones we picked up from the
| loose gravel along the shore, and yelling to hear our echoes
| spread through the mountains. One time we hung up a rope on a
| thick tree branch and went swinging off the hill and flinging
| ourselves into the water. As the sun would begin to set we'd
| lite a small bon fire on the shore and sit around it staring
| into the flames philosophizing, occasionally some guys and
| girls might wander off into the woods to make out, smoke some
| weed or do who knows what. And when it got very late, we'd
| drive out to whatever burger joint was still open and sit on
| the curbs in parking lots eating greasy food. Always 10 or 20
| people deep, just hanging out. Just another random day in our
| lives, oblivious to the dark shadow slowly crawling across our
| world.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Knowing how litigious the USA is these settings make me very
| nervous. Good way to lose everything because someone trips on
| a rock and blames you.
| floren wrote:
| Is that what makes you nervous, or is unexamined social
| anxiety making you nervous? Because it sounds like you're
| suggesting that, if you and 10 friends are hanging out down
| some forest service road in the woods, one of them might
| trip on a rock and decide to sue you... does that sound
| particularly likely?
| epicureanideal wrote:
| If I'm trying to meet NEW people, not long-term existing
| friends, it starts to sound like more of a reasonable
| concern, right? If they're existing long-term friends you
| can meet anywhere, including in your own home, parks,
| wherever, but I assume third places would also be
| intended to expand your friend circle, not just hang out
| with whoever you happen to already know.
| ravagat wrote:
| - Your local park
|
| - public library usually has rooms of various sizes plus you
| have the added amenities
|
| - local high school gym/auditorium can be rented
|
| - if you live in a house, your yard. if you live in an
| apartment, your rooftop
|
| - parking lot
|
| among others
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Some kind of sports bar type environment (TV, drinks, food,
| lots of seating) would be ideal, but without the emphasis on
| it being a bar... if there were a place like that but with
| tea or coffee I'd definitely invite people there more.
| throwaway24124 wrote:
| Slate readers are the only people who would rather read a book
| called "Hanging Out" instead of just... hanging out.
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