[5o1ecist]

Interesting. Not the content itself, but the intention behind it: Improvement of social cohesion.

Hmmmm.

People are compartmentalized into groups hating on each other. They're afraid of committing wrong-think and getting labelled, branded, attacked. They prioritize people who aren't there (online people, like you and myself) over those who are.

It's especially interesting from my perspective, because in Vienna we still have some sort of KaffeeHaus-Kultur. CoffeeHouse culture. You can sit there for hours, reading your book, with a coffee and it does not matter, unless the space is really needed.

It's very common to just chat with whoever runs the place at that moment, too. A sense of familiarity is part of the job. For regulars, like myself, the coffee house turns into a second living room:

We people there started talking to each other.

When I was a teenager, many years ago, I had a coffeehouse for table-soccer. It wasn't a club, or association. It was a coffeehouse with table soccer, with gatherings of players.

...

I guess my tangent meant to point at the need for both general, or specialized, "social hubs", where regularly appearing people silently agree to, eventually, getting talked to.

Not like a club. Clubs are too much commitment, causing resistance.

[mannycalavera42]

a table-soccer coffeehouse, now I know what I want to do in life :)

[johnnyanmac]

>I guess my tangent meant to point at the need for both general, or specialized, "social hubs", where regularly appearing people silently agree to, eventually, getting talked to.

Those are called "3rd places". Those have sadly been on the decline for the past 30 years.

It's easy to point to phones as the problem, but few can point to proper solutions. Because they don't exist in the same way the previous generations had it.

[XorNot]

You can't simplify it to "people want to hate each other".

The topical issues of today causing strife are not reconcilable when the division is "these are the people we're going to hate".