Here's an article from 1999[1]:
> Although you may think your parents are unreasonable when they tell you to get off the phone after you've "only" been talking two hours, it doesn't have to turn into a big blow-up.
It honestly feels like a lot of people are trying to find excuses to be anti-social these days.
[1] https://www.ucg.org/watch/beyond-today/virtual-christian-mag...
Now that I can talk to anyone for free at any moment, I have no desire to
What would I even talk about? We have little in common
I agree the "shit is just too expensive" is a pretty lame excuse. I think to back when I was a poor ballet dancer around college age, and we always found lots of cheap things to do - a lot of it was like you said, usually just going over to people's houses to hang out, or doing stuff in the city that was cheap or free. Going out to restaurants was a rare treat, and it was almost always a cheap dive place. I had to laugh about the comment about the expense of "8 oz cocktails" - we weren't drinking cocktails, we were drinking 6 packs of Natty Light in someone's studio apartment.
But what I think has changed is that it's so much easier to not be bored with modern tech, even if it makes you lonely. There is TikTok, YouTube, Netflix, multiplayer gaming, etc. It's just a lot easier to sit at home with these kinds of entertainment, so the "activation energy" required to go get up and plan things with friends just feels a lot higher.
Ding ding ding!
> There is TikTok, YouTube, Netflix, multiplayer gaming, etc.
With the one caveat that 'multiplayer gaming' can indeed be a proper socialization experience if you're playing with friends/etc (vs say just YOLOing in something like FPS lobbies etc.)
Or, at bare minimum, it's still more effort than the other options you mention.
In the last few weeks I've tried to be extra mindful about being more 'interactive' with other things in my free time. It's shocking how easy it gets to just fall into a Youtube video rabbit hole. It reinforces how sad I get about my partner's constant scrolling through Facebook.
Heck even now I feel guilty about just doing HN, on the other hand I am still recovering from a good proper bike ride this morning so I guess there's that.
It is just a much more postmodern world than when I was young. There is a whole level of digital simulation on top of the activity that I never had to think about. The post about the expensive cocktail is the real social activity now.
We may as well be comparing dating on tinder to a rural barn dance in the 1950s. Technology has moved faster than our language as these aren't even the same activities but the words are the same. "Dating", "socializing".
Play volleyball on the free net at the local park instead of signing up for pickleball and buying great.
The people who want to avoid activities and socialization will always pick the more expensive activities so they can dismiss them. Yet go into the real world and people have no problem finding ways to socialize and have fun without spending much money.
Coincidentally, my neighborhood just put up its first volleyball net a week or so back. It was stolen within two days lol
Pickleball courts do not cost money, they are freely provided by the state. I go to free pickleball courts every week in SF, and I bike there for free. You can buy 4 paddles for $20 at sports basement and get literally hundreds if not thousands of hours of entertainment just on that.
I dunno, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for this perspective. Almost everything I do with friends isn’t particularly expensive - if you can’t find cheap things to do you just aren’t even looking.
Then one by one, we got cars and the friend groups shuffled from "Who is in bicycling range" to "Who is in driving range", and driving range is so big that it's not practical to drive 4 miles to my closest friend, knock on her door, hope she isn't having sex with her husband, and ask if she wants to chill
It's not naivete; it's dishonesty.
It’s no longer a nice or safe place to go.
The homeless problem is all downstream of shit like the Sacklers pushing opioids and creating millions of addicts for profit. Yet they avoided jail and even can start up new businesses.
The libraries near me are not like this at all.
One library has some homeless people but anyone being disruptive is quickly removed.
We take the kids to the libraries all the time and it’s fine.
Not that shit is expensive as a be all explanation in and of itself.
It’s a point on the relative ease/benefit of content vs meeting people. And you can even meet people over zoom or a video game now.
