Decline Of Third Spaces

      Today, I want to talk about the social effect of the internet.
      Though for those who have lived most of their lives with the internet it may go unnoticed, there is a particular aspect of society that is now missing because of the widespread use of the Internet: the general decline of community socialization.
      Most socializaton takes place now, online. In twitter communities and discord servers and subreddits, there are no community clubs, a sea of the dead and abandoned are strewn beside the local rotary and historical societies. Gone are the mooses and eagles and elks. This complex web of adult social clubs are all hollow because people simply dont socialize in such localizations anymore. Most people have fandoms and broad local communities like "Chicago Cyclists" or "Texas Fursuiters", and unless you live in a large urban area most communities are simply too small to sustain a real community around shared interests.
      People used to have dinners in church basements and go to happy hour at the bowling alley, and not just like your parents age but all adults. That sort of thing just doesnt really happen anymore. There arent any more dance halls, there is only discord.

      Now, I'm not nostalgically lamenting the death of the community pot-luck, I dont think I'd really like living in that time where this was the norm, where I would be socializing at the local Eagles - because that sounds awful. I like the status quo, even if I dont like discord or reddit, because the internet is flexible like that. I can just create my own space in the world and I'm not limited to a 50 mile radius audience. The internet is a wonderful creation that allows for so much more than what could ever be imagined in the old world. I just like going on big long rants where I describe a sort of status quo that is so radically different from mine (and probably yours), because I think its fun. I like reminding myself (and others) that the world used to be so much more different than now, and that a lot of change occured in however much intervening time between the two that its almost unfathomable to imagine that what we have now is somehow still an evolution of what we had then.
      So please dont take this to mean I miss having chicken dinners at the KC Hall, or going to a club softball tournament at the Eagles, because while those things are nice, and they do still happen, I wouldnt trade them for what we have now. I'm not somehow a trad about the fucking bowling alley, I just want to remind you that yes, people actually used to go to the bowling alley as if it were a discord chat. I like thinking about that stuff.
      That all being said though, you should get more involved in your community. Maybe not church if you have reservations against that, but clubs like these arent autochthonous, they didnt just spring forth from the soil fully developed. Make a new one if you dont want to join one so dominated by old boomers. Make the world you want to live in, society is not carved in stone but drawn in sand. Create the community you'd like to live in and participate in. Go found the Loyal Order of the Eel or something, make it a safe space for trans people and have soup night on wednesday and shoot pool and play horsehoes. The world is malleable.



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