"You cant even enter some parks without paying an entrance fee and you’re not going to be able to get there without a car. A public beach in my state is going to start development into another private tourist hotel any day now and we won’t even be able to see the sunset without paying ridiculous amounts of money as parking fee.
I wish we just had somewhere to chill and meet people for free."
"Drive-In Movie Theater!!! With pajamas on as a kid and being able to play on the monkey bars there while mom got snacks at the snack bar!!!"
"“Why aren’t arcades a thing anymore?” I wonder as I pre-order another game on Steam. The door bell rings. Amazon delivery. “We used to have so much fun at malls. I wonder why they all closed down. Probably a conspiracy to remove all third places…”
The phrase is familiar, something I’ve been seeing a lot online, and I spend a lot of time online. After all that’s where all my friends are. Who would want to go outside and meet people? It’s 2024. I play my RPGs on Discord now."
"In my literature class we had a poem about front porches, and discussed their impact on the community as places to greet friends and neighbors, hang out and talked about how modern houses have pretty well eliminated this in many places.
Discussed so much evidence that society has shifted dramatically into a less face to face, friendly place. Much less community. I barely know my neighbors, and most of my classmates said the same."
"If you lived through the 80’s and 90’s, the mall was very much a public plaza for seeing your friends, group dates, or just stretching your legs.
First people stopped going outside to socialize. Then, they even stopped going inside to socialize."
"ESPECIALLY with children. I feel like when I grew up the world was much more friendly to me as a child.
Fast food places had play areas, we had cool places like FunScape, Disney Quest, Discovery Zone."
"I miss the bookstores that had a cafe. A place to explore and find new authors, relax and enjoy a coffee with other literary minded people. Talk with staff about what was new and exciting. All gone now."
"I worked at a Pizza Hut in 1990 – 91, and that restaurant still had a booming dine-in business. Fast forward 15 or 20 tears later, that branch closed and reopened as delivery-only operation about 2 blocks away.
Around 3 or 4 years ago my wife and I, feeling nostalgic, took our kids to a different area Pizza Hut that still had a dining area, and at around dinner time on a weekend (can’t recall if it was Friday or Saturday) it was a damn ghost town. Two other tables being used, maybe. And they still had the island for the salad bar, but it was all closed down"
"We wanted to go ice skating the other week. Every single rink has a website to register for public skating sessions. Every single person going with you needs their own account. You literally just can’t show up anymore during public sessions and go skating. It really s#cks."
"Music (the media, not instruments) stores, especially the ones that let you sample music!"
"I miss them so much. This may sound gross, but I miss the smell of the VHSs and DVDs. I miss going in either with a plan or without one and simply browsing to find a random movie to watch. I miss picking out candy and pulling out my Blockbuster card. It was a highlight of my week, especially each weekend."
"A lot more people were in clubs. Elks lodges, Masons, VFW, that sort of thing. Some had ties to other stuff like VFW, American Legion, Knights of Columbus… these still exist but not like they once did. Lots of people were in a club or two.
Fancier clubs too, of course like the NY Athletic club; these offered places where members could hang out, play games, drink, eat, get fit, and even sleep. But there was a lot of hanging out at these places (not to mention country clubs and that sort of place which haven’t gone away)."
"Dance halls, and dancing in general used to be massively popular. If you were in an American town of more than 1000 or so people you could count on at least one social dance a week, often more."
"My hometown closed its only remaining movie theater during the pandemic. at that point, the ***ONLY*** form of entertainment (Excluding bars and restaurants) is a concert venue and a theater venue. in a City with a population of 205,918.
This is the second biggest city in New England, after Boston. And they wonder why the only thing kids do is play videogames and do d***s."
"A teen center. When I was a teen we use to go there to socialize after school and play pool plus watch bands rehearse and talk to the community leaders that were there to manage everything."
"Even the trains are radicalized now."
"A few of the reasons people don’t go to third places as much is because 1. times are hard right now for a lot of people. 2. A lot of people are used to being homebodies after lockdowns. 3. A lot of them closed down during covid. 4. Streaming services have become so prevalent that people don’t even need theaters anymore."
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Today’s youth are masters at social media, but socially retarded in person.
It get harder and harder to repair any electronic device because they're all computer-controlled with glued on custom chips. You may fix the occasional blown out power supply, but for most problems; just order a new motherboard.