Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

candost.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 456 posts

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#61

Post by patcon »

arccy wrote: post #28
moooo99 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the important part is leaving your phone and other devices home. The annoying part is that this becomes increasingly difficult to impossible. For example, I can't use public transport without my phone anymore, because my ticket is bound to my phone and the provider does not issue paper tickets or smartcards anymore. Less severe but equally frustrating, many restaurants choose to use QR codes for menus rathe…

with a modicum of self control, you can turn off your phone when it's not needed.

easier for some brains than others, no? It's a sad loss of agency (for those whom it matters) to not be able to make such a simple choice to control the environmental conditions they are weak to

but i am genuinely glad for people who find that level of self-control readily accessible, that's just not me.

There's some interesting implications around the "default mode network" that's worth thinking about, and the sort of world we might be inadvertently bending toward [building] when everyone is constantly struggling to engage internal control mechanisms and depleting their ability to do other unconscious sorts of processing: https://archive.is/fYqtB

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#62

Post by acntr_employee »

VLM wrote: post #46
delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #9

I didn’t quite understand why sitting alone in a café makes you a weirdo (is it an American thing?), but the piece was very well written. We all should learn how to be without electronics for every now and then, accompanied only our thoughts. It is good for the soul. I think the important part is leaving your phone and other devices home. Be alone, without even a possibility of connecting (apart from the old-fashione…

Its a social class thing. Homeless people sit alone, especially the crazy ones. No brand new iphone or new macbook means poverty which is usually not cool. It blows peoples minds if you read a book. Not a college textbook but something for fun. Homeless people don't read so they get confused. Its like riding the bus. There's nothing wrong with public transit, its just that its somewhere warm for poor homeless people…

> Its like riding the bus. There's nothing wrong with public transit, its just that its somewhere warm for poor homeless people to sit all winter, so its not very cool.

Public transport often is the best and most efficient way to move within a city where I live, or in places like London, Stockholm, Berlin or quite a lot of other European cities.

> Its a social class thing. Homeless people sit alone

Really? Anyone sitting alone is a homeless one? Anyone without a shitty Apple product is poor?

> Homeless people don't read

WTF. This one made me laugh out loud. You must not have had much contact to homeless people. I have had quite a few acquaintances in my lifetime being homeless, worked with them, did social work on the side. And I got to know so many different people with different interests. Yes, a few were the stereotypical homeless person depicted in mass media. A few were highly functional members of society, had a day job 9to5 - and still lived on the street. Many had read way more books than myself - and I am an avid reader.

What is it with this stereotyping of people.

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#64

Post by tayo42 »

bdangubic wrote: post #57
tayo42 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for some weird circumstances like you have 2 friends or your part of a nomadic tribe, yeah that sounds like an issue. People should work out

people work out without paying $200+/month to go to the gym :)

There's all kind of gyms besides weights and treadmill gyms though.

And a gym like la fitness is 30/mo

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#65

Post by Aerbil313 »

moooo99 wrote: post #25
delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #9

I didn’t quite understand why sitting alone in a café makes you a weirdo (is it an American thing?), but the piece was very well written. We all should learn how to be without electronics for every now and then, accompanied only our thoughts. It is good for the soul. I think the important part is leaving your phone and other devices home. Be alone, without even a possibility of connecting (apart from the old-fashione…

> I think the important part is leaving your phone and other devices home. The annoying part is that this becomes increasingly difficult to impossible. For example, I can't use public transport without my phone anymore, because my ticket is bound to my phone and the provider does not issue paper tickets or smartcards anymore. Less severe but equally frustrating, many restaurants choose to use QR codes for menus rathe…

You don't have to leave your phone at home to be free of distractions. You can restrict your phone instead. I'm just a happy user, see techlockdown.com.

Their marketing is geared towards the p*rnography addiction crowd but from my own experience, it works equally well for those easily distracted by screens (I have ADHD).

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#66

Post by wcfrobert »

Trasmatta wrote: post #16

> It’s contradictory to sit alone in a café. It’s against the reason cafés exist. > They are designed as meeting spaces. There is no table with a single chair. I'm so confused by this, because every cafe I've ever been to is full of people there alone. It seems to almost be the default, honestly.

For me, cafes are essentially libraries; except cafes actually have reasonable opening hours. I can't get work done at home (too many distractions), so I switch up my environment to one where I am forced to work.

Go to any coffee shop in Palo Alto and Menlo Park, and you're bound to see students and tech workers sitting alone, typing away on their laptops. Even in LA, you'll see people editing videos and posting stuff on social media.

I think it's perhaps very American to go to cafes alone, especially if you are going there to get work done. Anecdotally, I had a French tennis partner back in 2022. One time, after our match, we went to a neighborhood cafe to chat and talk about life. He remarked to me how strange and foreign it is that Americans work so hard. He finds it stupid, even off-putting, that people work in cafes, which to him is a place to relax and socialize. He used slightly stronger language than stupid, so I didn't have the heart to tell him I plan to work in a cafe later that day. Maybe it's just a cultural thing.

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#67

Post by acntr_employee »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #41
sdoering wrote: post #35

[flagged]

You can think that, and not post snarky comments. Just go read something else, for instance. In fact, that's the policy here.

Shouldn't you have just flagged it, then?

> Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead.

Not OP, just wondering if the unwritten conventions changed since I was here the last time.

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#69

Post by cm2012 »

unsungNovelty wrote: post #50

Too many negative comments here. This is just someone discovering something new and sharing it very excitedly. Almost 6-7 years ago, I read about a 30min challenge to sit upright without doing anything in a chair challenge. That changed how I think about distractions. If I had written about it, there surely will be people who would just like here say... What is so crazy about it? I do that all the time... To me, this…

Trying to sit still for 30 min without any stimulation at all (no talking, watching, reading) sounds like torture to me.

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#70

Post by sdoering »

me_smith wrote: post #32

Sitting in a coffee shop alone with a pen and journal is restorative time for me. No laptop, no headphones, no phone. Another thing to try is to go to a diner alone. Same deal.

> Another thing to try is to go to a diner alone. Same deal.

Oh yeah. This is one of the things I enjoy most when traveling for work (more often than not means traveling alone). I can go to dinner alone, watch people interact, feel the city, the people, the staff.

Discovering dinner alone to me was an interesting experience. And a lovely one at that.

Post reply on HN