Why don’t more people live close to friends? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why don’t more people live close to friends?

#451

Post by bheadmaster » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 4:06 PM UTC

CalRobert wrote: post #355

I often come back to this comment on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20470085 """ The Screen and the Job have displaced almost everything else is our lives. Loneliness is just a primary symptom. The Screen, whether it’s TV, computer, or phone, has supplanted almost all social interactions. This manifests itself in things like SitComs on TV (just a bunch of friends or family hanging out) or Social Medi…

We're slaves to the machine, it's a depressing thought. The whole consumer culture, especially with the digital entertainment nowdays, seems more like an opiate of the masses than religion ever was.

Perhaps digital world is a new kind of quazi-religion?

Re: Why don’t more people live close to friends?

#452

Post by Moldoteck » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

mantas wrote: post #229

Moldoteck wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But after arriving at destination, people can talk, no? You also dont get bothered with parking and everything is much closer, so less time in traffic, so much less thinking about how to get to destination and more about how nice it will be spending time with friends. But imo trains are better, even less thinking about commute. Living in Zurich for a bit was eye-opening. I took a breakfast with my friends in train, l…

You still need people to talk and time slot to meet. Same scheduling issues. I used to live in downtown of my 600k city. Moved back to outskirts of the same city. Driving is the smallest issue to meet. Reading those discussions from afar, it feels like Americans are using urban sprawl as a scapegoat. While it's a problem everywhere else too. Even if you take away urban sprawl and driving, the problem will be there.

Well, idk, in my case it was really the transport. In the past I've lived in same area with my friends and we occasionally went to shop, walk together. In covid, I've moved in the opposite part of the city, with bus it'll take me 30 mins to arrive to them, with car, maybe 15-20, but taxi is expensive and I don't own a car+ the hassle to find parking. As result we met only on special occasions like bday or at some specific places in between but it's also not that frequent.

Re: Why don’t more people live close to friends?

#453

Post by thewebcount » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 4:11 PM UTC

datpiff wrote: post #272

thewebcount wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the last house we lived in, we were renting. We got a constant stream of real estate agents knocking on our door asking if we’d be willing to let them sell it. So when we got a knock one morning I opened the door and kind of yelled at the person, “WHAT DO YOU WANT?” It was a new neighbor that had moved in a few doors down bringing us a bottle of wine and to let us know they were new to the neighborhood. I apologiz…

> The entire act of bringing over a bottle of wine was just to try to get on our good side in case they ever wanted some favor from us. Weirdly cynical assumption. Sounds like you alienated your neighbors and then retroactively made them the villains.

That’s a fair point given what I’ve written above. However, there’s more to it that I didn’t get into. Suffice it to say that I’m not basing that solely on the two interactions described above.

Re: Why don’t more people live close to friends?

#454

Post by theshrike79 » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 4:11 PM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #281

theshrike79 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't walk to a corner store, you're not living in a "metro area" in my opinion.

In the UK you would barely even have neighbours if that were the case, it would be properly rural, US 'suburban sprawl' needs a different word IMO, it's a housing estate basically (though that implies social housing) but a spectacularly isolated/car-assuming one.

It's the idiotic American zoning laws. If an are is zoned for single family homes, you can't even put up a 7-11 in there. Even though it'd have booming business 24/7 just from people grabbing stuff ad-hoc that they forgot during their grocery run...

Instead people have to get into their 7-11 -sized trucks and drive to a store with a parking lot that's larger than many European neighbourhoods.

Re: Why don’t more people live close to friends?

#455

Post by kjkjadksj » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 4:14 PM UTC

dionidium wrote: post #433

> 5.) Many States Aren’t Safe — For So Many Reasons > I’m not talking about crime, don’t be ridiculous. I am talking about states that have criminalized or significantly curtailed gender-affirming care and body autonomy. This is an interesting question, but you're not going to get the answer from a terminally-online culture-war-addled substacker who thinks that gender-affirming care has a bigger impact on where "marg…

Crime is measured on the orders of magnitude of small tens to few hundreds per hundreds of thousands of people or so. On the otherhand, these laws affect these groups 100% of the time so long as they remain in these states where its clear their representatives don’t care about their concerns.

Re: Why don’t more people live close to friends?

#456

Post by MrOwnPut » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 4:18 PM UTC

ausbah wrote: post #425

MrOwnPut wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just live in a small town where all of your friends and needs are 5 minutes away. I see no point to overpopulated cities with remote work so prevalent nowadays. Cars aren't the problem, overpopulated cities are. I can walk my town end to end in 15 minutes, there's a coop, grocery store, hospital, entertainment, etc. You can drive to another town if you want, or drive and park anywhere without paying, or walk, or b…

Small towns are almost always in rural areas which at least in American means some amount of trouble if you're non religious, non white, or non heterosexual. Problem with cities isn't overpopulation, it's housing. People want to live there but there isn't enough accommodations, and there totally could be if zoning and infrastructure were properly prioritized.

> means some amount of trouble if you're non religious, non white, or non heterosexual.

No it doesn't. Stop generalizing and stereotyping. From my experience people in small towns are nicer than people in cities, regardless of race or whatever. The small town I grew up in was 1/3rd hispanic, 1/3rd black, 1/3rd white and everyone got along. Don't believe what the media tries to racebait you with.

> Problem with cities isn't overpopulation, it's housing. People want to live there but there isn't enough accommodations, and there totally could be if zoning and infrastructure were properly prioritized.

Yes, zoning is somewhat the issue, in the fact that stores and restaurants should be more distributed. But many cities have plenty of apt buildings and short of squeezing people in smaller boxes, there's not much you can do. Also people shouldn't live in small boxes.

Re: Why don’t more people live close to friends?

#457

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 4:18 PM UTC

abrugsch wrote: post #407

throwaway22032 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With restricted access, at controlled hours, in a shared space subject to the whims of others. You're renting them. There are very few tools I can think of at least woodworking wise that I wouldn't "want" to afford myself. Particularly in the context that an urban home costs hundreds of thousands more than a suburban or rural one. Metalworking or something like that, maybe, I wouldn't know.

So I'll caveat this with "every makerspace is different" so it's definitely a YMMV situation, however hackspaces or makerspaces that have properly gone all in on the "movement" are typically not-for-profit organizations. (not all of them by any means, hence the caveat) but in my experience (as a UK'er with a typical UK family home) very few people can afford the dedicated space even a modest wood workshop requires. M…

[deleted]

Re: Why don’t more people live close to friends?

#458

Post by cortesoft » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 4:18 PM UTC

throwaway22032 wrote: post #358

pantalaimon wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see how having to buy all the tools yourself is any less commercial. In a hackspace you often get to access tools that you wouldn’t want to afford yourself.

With restricted access, at controlled hours, in a shared space subject to the whims of others. You're renting them. There are very few tools I can think of at least woodworking wise that I wouldn't "want" to afford myself. Particularly in the context that an urban home costs hundreds of thousands more than a suburban or rural one. Metalworking or something like that, maybe, I wouldn't know.

> With restricted access, at controlled hours, in a shared space subject to the whims of others. You're renting them

That isn't renting, that is sharing

Re: Why don’t more people live close to friends?

#459

Post by dougmwne » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 4:19 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #385

I have a behaviour that some people have said is weird. I rarely hold on to friends when I change locales. Once in university, I had none of my high school friends within a year. Once I graduated, I had almost none of my university friends within a year. I just make friends with whoever is nearby. People I work with. Neighbours. People from the Curling club. I don't really feel anything about it, positive or negative…

I think the way you frame this is probably weird, but the actual behavior is completely normal. Most people would say that they care about their friends from previous phases of their life, but most social research says that friends rarely survive the transition from one stage or location to the next. For friends, proximity is king.

I would frame this that I have much love for these people, but that we are on different paths for awhile. Several times our paths have come back together and I have cherished the renewed connection. Sometimes the paths never cross again.

I recently learned of two mentors and friends who were very important to me passing away. Our time together was 10 and 20 years ago respectively and we hadn’t kept in touch. I have regretful feelings about this, but also acceptance that our lives were only going to be parallel for a limited time.

Re: Why don’t more people live close to friends?

#460

Post by kjkjadksj » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 4:20 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #52

tifik wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its unclear if you are talking about yourself or making a general observation about people around you, but in case its the latter: I believe this to be very much subject to strong confirmation bias. You dont open up because you believe thats just not what people do. But I find that to be false 9/10 times I break through the fear and show genuine interest. Safe spaces would include anywhere people that share a common…

The issue with being friends is that it mostly works if it's actually present continuous, not present perfect. That is, to be friends means to be able to find time and interesting stuff for each other with some regularity, on a scale of weeks, not years. Adult life often leaves little time for that, especially now that various forms of easy-to-reach entertainment compete with friendships. Another obvious bottleneck i…

This is all true but at the end of the day its on you to make that time. If you try and make it happen, people will try and make themselves available or try and reschedule. Especially if they have kids, they are probably chomping at the bit for excuses to hang out with adults.