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‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ knew the cure for loneliness
31–40 of 109 posts
Re: ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ knew the cure for loneliness
#32> We can see this shift everywhere. The characters of the biggest shows of the '90s — "Friends," "Seinfeld," "Cheers" — spent the overwhelming majority of their time hanging out at the café, diner, and bar, and work was either an afterthought or a running joke. These were television shows, not reality. Even in the 80s and 90s you couldn't spend all of your time in a Manhattan coffee shop or a bar (unless you were a d…
You don't need to spend all your time somewhere for it to become a decent third space. You just need to go regularly, at a similar enough time that you start building rapport with the people who also go at the same time. If you go to the gym or bar for an hour or two after work every weekday, for example, you'll quickly notice that the same people are there with you. Interact with them enough, and these people form t…
Nailed it.
Re: ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ knew the cure for loneliness
#33I don't know if you need a third place. Home will do fine, just invite people to hang out to watch sports games, movies, BBQ, whatever. I lived separately, but I had a few friends living together and it was an open door policy like Seinfeld and Friends... just walk in. Another point is a lot of my friends, who have trouble meeting other friends, don't have hobbies. During the summer, I say "I'm going hiking every wee…
I think it's good if you have a home where people can meet and gather, but many times, that is not ideal, especially for anyone who is in a lower socio-economic class, or has significant family members or roommates there. Having people come over is a whole thing of "playing host" or "entertaining guests" which means that you might need to clean up some, you're going to offer food and beverages, you may need to determine a program of entertainment, whether it's movies or cards or conversation. That's a burden, and it can drain the host's resources.
Someone's home is also non-neutral territory. It's guests coming into someone's owned living space. That creates a unique dynamic.
The reason third spaces are popular is because none of those burdens apply. The restaurant, or coffeehouse plays host to us, so the cleanup is on them, the menu is theirs, and we know the bounds of activities that can be done. Third spaces are neutral spaces; none of us live there, and we are all essentially "guests" on the same footing, so it's comfortable, especially if a man and woman are alone together, the third space is a public meeting place where things are much less likely to get weird.
For decades, especially while I was homeless and living on the streets, I enjoyed third spaces with my friends. We were safe and climate-controlled in the coffeehouse, and we had hours of diversion while we played card games. Street urchins and our church friends would come and go as they pleased. We could tank up on beverages or a little pastry. There was a convenient bathroom, and oh, the people-watching potential! We were downtown in a college town, and the nightlife never stopped!
My circle of friends was down to a tight-knit three people, and I was the youngest among them, and we played card and board games right up until the pandemic hit. At that point, our third spaces were all decimated. Our favorite teahouse closed forever. We scattered to the four winds. One of us is just too old to keep going out, and the other lady seems rather paranoid of COVID-19 that she won't do social outings. We really don't have a third space to go, either. Well, there's a little place across the street, with an extraordinarily surly owner and two weird dogs.
Recurring, reliable activities are great. You would always know when to meet us downtown for cards. We would go to evening Mass and then proceed to the coffeehouse, like clockwork. That's important. We could count on getting mostly the same baristas on shift and seeing the same people each time. I thought about advertising on meetup.com or something, you know, just to get some visibility beyond our local circle. But COVID-19 has changed the landscape.
Re: ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ knew the cure for loneliness
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get out of NYC plenty! I’m not saying mid-sized towns have no amenities. I’m saying the sheer density of NYC provides many more opportunities. If you’re claiming that even mid sized towns have dozens of museums accessible by public transit… they do not. But to provide more context to my original comment about serendipitous connections: the default path for many people living in NYC is not to move to a mid-sized tow…
Well you talked about having ice cream and going to parks, so I'd say yes pretty much everywhere in the US has that. Other places are also much more walkable than Brooklyn, tons of smaller cities have started focusing on revitalizing their downtowns and providing walkable communities.
The hard part is not finding an ice cream shop, it’s bumping into people you know, or being able to walk over to their home easily
Re: ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ knew the cure for loneliness
#35Happy to see I'm not alone and someone else is complaining about our sad parks, "What we call parks look like parking lots with some grass on them, perhaps a baseball diamond. That's not the kind of park that draws people in," Tayana Panova, a researcher who studies the built environment's effects on mental health, told me. "We need parks that have amenities and assets that make it desirable for people to go there."…
>It also includes pools, benches, art, fountains, playgrounds, and food stands — things people gather at. Can't have those, the homeless might use them to avoid suffering for a few minutes and be visible, and that makes people angry.
Around these parts it's more like a few hours to a few days but it is still a fair point. One answer would be to build and support more places, enough for everyone to enjoy.
Re: ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ knew the cure for loneliness
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well you talked about having ice cream and going to parks, so I'd say yes pretty much everywhere in the US has that. Other places are also much more walkable than Brooklyn, tons of smaller cities have started focusing on revitalizing their downtowns and providing walkable communities.
The hard part is not finding an ice cream shop, it’s bumping into people you know, or being able to walk over to their home easily
Bumping into people you know is more likely in a small city than a large one.
> being able to walk over to their home easily
Unless your friend (or you) lives on the G or some other impossible to get to place in NY.
Re: ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ knew the cure for loneliness
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am talking from a US perspective. There are few cities in the US that offer this, though NYC is by no means the only one.
You should really get out of NYC sometime. Pretty much every city and even mid-sized town in the US has what you're describing. A lot of it is far easier to navigate than Brooklyn as well.
No, no they don’t. That commenter explicitly called out museums etc. You are not going to find that level of museum in a mid sized town.
Re: ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ knew the cure for loneliness
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should really get out of NYC sometime. Pretty much every city and even mid-sized town in the US has what you're describing. A lot of it is far easier to navigate than Brooklyn as well.
No, no they don’t. That commenter explicitly called out museums etc. You are not going to find that level of museum in a mid sized town.
I think they're mixing two different things. Yes, you can go to a lot of museums in NY. No, living in NY doesn't provide an easier and more serendipitous social environment for families than the average US city.
Re: ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ knew the cure for loneliness
#39I go to the gym every day and what I can say is that if it used to be a third place, now it has become more of a non-place[0]. Nobody talks to anyone anymore. People don't look at what's around them and are glued to their smartphones all the time while they rest. If you approach someone to ask something, and if they are also wearing headphones, make sure you repeat what you want to say, because inexplicably these cheap knockoff headphones have perfect sound isolation.
When we talk about the increase in loneliness, I can't help but associate it with the launch of the iPhone and the social apps. I wonder if the benefits brought by this device really outweigh its cons.
Furthermore, every month I organize a meetup with people who want to practice English (I live in Brazil) and usually 10 to 15 people attend. I think people want to connect with other people, but technology isn't helping them find those opportunities. I use meetup.com, but the person has to download the app or go to the website. I think most of my potential audience don't even know it exists because it's a very US thing.
Re: ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ knew the cure for loneliness
#40This is one of the reasons that, despite the immense cost, we're trying to stay in NYC as long as we can. Two small children in an apartment definitely has its tough moments. But we live by a giant park packed with playgrounds, when we go we frequently bump into friends from school, meet friends of friends, etc. Everyone can go get an ice cream, head home happy. We have dozens of museums an easy subway ride away. etc…
This seems nuts to me. I grew up in Colorado and have also lived in several other states where people are more comfortable and likely to bump into each other in public spaces than NYC. In NYC, people are nearly all strangers and in a big hurry. Even living in Mountain View was better. In terms of serendipity, I'd put a college town far ahead of a large city.
> In terms of serendipity, I'd put a college town far ahead of a large city
My family moved from a suburb to downtown Boston just before our child entered kindergarten. We ran into people we knew literally every day. It became a running joke because we made it almost 80 straight days in the summer of randomly running into someone. The best moment came while attending a work event with a visiting coworker. I mentioned this phenomenon and we actualky ran into two people I knew on the trip between office and restaurant.
We've since moved back to the suburbs. I see my actual neighbors less frequently than I ran into someone I knew in the city.
It seems like a paradox, but major factors that (IMHO) contributed to this were:
a) Everyone lived in a small physical area b) Most travel in the area is on foot c) The high concentration of "staple" stores like hardware and grocery, combined with the relatively small size made it easier to run into people
It sounds weird, but running into friends and acquaintances is one of the things I miss the most about living in the city.