Ask Lemmy

Capitalism is a root cause. Let's get rid of that, or if that's too extreme that severely regulate it.

Jail all of Facebook's decision makers. Seize it (investors get nothing), and either shut it down or revert it to a simple message board. Require moderators. Ban the trash (eg: sovereign citizens groups). Remember that time they tried to see if they could make people sad by changing the algorithm? Find those people and ruin them.

Pay labor more. Work them less. I'd just do basic income, personally.

Make more walkable spaces. Fuck car culture. You don't meet anyone when you drive. Everywhere could have local spots where you see regulars.

More free public events. Brooklyn does "movies under the stars". There's also like yoga classes, bird watching, concerts. More of that.

Offer free education for anyone who applies in good faith. Offer classes on a range of subjects, but honestly I think a lot of people would benefit from lessons and practice on "how to talk to people" and public speaking.

Kind of a ramble. But I think if you leave capitalism in place, you're going to have problems. "Everything has to make the owners as much money as possible, immediately" isn't a formula for a good life.

Double the minimum wage and standardize a four day work week. People need more free time and resources in order to socialize effectively.

More public transit and more public spaces. Transit that you don’t have to think about taking (because it’s safe, frequent, and cheap or free) takes you to new places or to familiar places more often, and lets you meet more people more often. And going outside and doing shit is just good for you, I’m sorry to report.

Walkable neighborhoods with affordable places to hang out.

Step 1

• Demolish all housing - everyone is homeless now

Step 2

• Mandate that everyone design their own silly costume - this is all you're allowed to wear

Step 3

• Legalize and subsidize all the fun drugs - everyone gets a weekly allowance of shrooms, ecstasy, etc

Step 4

• Loneliness is officially replaced with several other problems

Legitimately stop treating phones like a necessity. Leave them at home more. Treat apps more like accessories and less like doorways.

Opt more for going in person to places to do things. By bike or transit whenever you can. Go to public events at your local parks and venues. Attendance is its own form of support, too. Anything we can do to purposely put ourselves in front of other people who share different perspectives than ourselves is good for us.

I think a lot of people don’t realize that there is a sense of responsibility when it comes to putting ourselves out into the world. If you think you’re capable of helping others, simply being a positive person in a public place, even just to have some fun meeting with friends, is a step in the right direction to building a better world. Nature will eventually setup a situation for you to be called upon. But this never happens from in your house or apartment.

Multi dwelling houses: a house with a central living area and apartments of different sizes linking in to it.

The central area has a big kitchen, dining, play area, halls link it to a 1-bed, 2-bed and 3-bed apartments each with a little kitchen as well.

You can be on your own in your apartment or go use the big kitchen, join trivia night, etc

For a lot of people in suburbia, the entire concept of indoor "third spaces" is mostly "pay to play" at the end of a drive. A big exception to this is/were shopping malls, but those aren't always close by. To get to more a functional social fabric, we have to provide more convenient ways of interfacing with our neighbors that don't always require money to change hands.

Perhaps this is a predictably orange-pill response, but we need to change zoning in a big way. Each suburban development has the street plan and infrastructure to support small businesses and common spaces, walking-distance from everyone's front door. All it takes is to allow small-scale commercial development in corners of these collections of tract-homes and, just like that, you can have something like a functional village. Beyond that, encouraging more development of community recreation space, both indoor and outdoor, would go a long way to provide a place for people to mingle.

Edit: strip-malls don't count. They're often at the very edge of residential areas, and are tied up with way more capital than what I'm talking about. That's why they're made up of franchises, require ridiculous amounts of parking, and contribute to "stroads" and all the knock-on effects and hostile architecture that requires.

no more social media

Parks full of cats?

For starters, Ubi, and then expansive and free public transit for all and accessible for all including disabled people, more free places to just go and exist, no facism and more community. That's just for the beginning though

Structured way of spending a lot of time in the same environment with other people with similar goals. "Go out on your own and make friends" doesn't work for many of us, additional free time will not help.
There's a good reason most people make long-term friendships in school and university, we need a similar space where we are surrounded by the same people every day (even though we may not like all of them). I have no idea what could it be since our society frowns upon such ideas.

Before Covid the office kinda took this role, however it was a gamble and not voluntary.

Just have a war. Nothing brings people together like necessity and shared trauma.

Be comfortable being alone.

We turn the Internet off at the weekends

Fighting fascism, together.

Nationalizing dating sites.

These sites work great to match people when corpos aren't allowed to fuck with the algorithms

One night a week of mandatory, free, tabletop RPGs hosted in libraries, council buildings, etc. D&D (or even a good roleplaying game) for everyone! Player groups are mixed up every two months to ensure multiple opportunities for bonding with new people.

My shitpost response is that I personally plan to be sluttier.

My serious response is that social media needs to be more social.
I hate Facebook because it’s just an advertising platform, but I don’t know what is going on if I avoid it. I wish there was a way to just share social calendars with all my friends. Like - I want a group tracker that one-click adds stuff that I find interesting. I want to only see stuff certain folks have added to their tracker, and have the ability to share with folks what stuff I’m sharing to share, vs what I’m sharing because I’m actually going to attend something. Make it easy to connect with folks, not advertisers.

Make friends in meat space. Have activities you do with other people regularly

I began offering weekly board game gatherings and dinners for the public, and, aside from the rocky start (no one at the first 2 events), every gathering has always gotten a minimum of 3-8 people here in West Allis, WI!

I've been using this website in conjunction with a Facebook group: https://gamenight.host/@wa_bgn

Spend less time online, do less digital activities.

I do more IRL, in-person, activities. Any kind of activity most of us somehow forget we used to do well before Internet and digital was a thing can still be done without the Internet and without a computer of any kind.

In-persons is intimidating but it also helps keep away the armies of online trolls and haters that online thrive to hurt other people. Provided one behaves like a decent human being, it's very rare people IRL will hate on anyone for goofing up or for not agreeing with them. It's ok.

I also do as much as I can the analog way, without anything digital. It helps. Be it to write or sketch, or do stuff with my hands. Heck, even me using a paper agenda instead my phone will regularly trigger surprised/interested questions from people that otherwise would probably never have talked with me to begin with ;)

Talk to old people. They have time to listen. Delete all social media.

Keep people in adjacent cages on a big rectangle of concrete next to a swamp so they get all the social time they need. Kid Rock plays to keep up morale every Friday night.

Lets cap the population of cities to 10 000 and make everyone live in a small town.

Is it too harsh to say to outside and interact with people?

Increase taxes on places that sell take home alcohol and decrease tax on alcohol sold from licenced venues.

It should be cheap to go out.

The reason there were mountain men in the old days is that they appreciated nature and they didn't feel alone though they often were. It's not that hard to rekindle that feeling you only have to work at it a little. I was taking walks in the woods back when I was in grade school and I seldom feel alone though it's harder to feel like that in a city.