Hearted Youtube comments on According to Nicole (@AccordingtoNicole) channel.
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Also, you really sell yourself short. You "might only have a high school diploma," but you are one of the smartest, down-to-earth, honest people I've ever come across!
I have an Associate's Degree (2 years), and I am now doing something related, but not my major, and I believe college is a scam for anything OTHER THAN Medicine, Law, Engineering, and Science degrees. Basically, if you're not going into a Law or STEM career, why are they trying to force college on people?
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The destruction of the third place is intentional and malicious.
The most dangerous thing for the ruling class is for the people to congregate and start talking to each other. coffee shops played a large role in fueling the French Revolution - people of different classes mixed, forming bonds of kinship, had an opportunity to see their similarities, complain about taxes, and eventually organize.
I went to a coffee shop every day for 12 years. It had been a gathering place for at least 40 years. Every day by 3 PM there would be a cloud of smoke and several groups of people that would intermingle, drifting from one table to another. It was a tempting place to stop for strangers walking out of the adjacent movie theater. They were open till 2 - perfect for people leaving the adjacent bar to sober up before going home.
Around 2012 that shopping center was bought by an out of state real estate company who raised the rent, built a chain coffee shop in the middle of the parking lot, and sneaked into city hall to pass a smoking ban that was only enforced at this shopping center. The tone changed over night and the vibe was dead; by 2014 there was no significant population of regulars. I spent the next couple years exploring public gathering places. As a home health nurse I spent A LOT of time working on my computer in random places so I had daily opportunities to loiter in public for hours (before covid).
Maybe there's some dive bars that survived the last decade, IDK, I don't drink, and couldn't afford to drink at bars if I did.
Maybe there's some active church communities that survived the last decade, IDK, I'm not religious.
But I know for a fact that in the south silicon valley, there are no secular, class heterogeneous third places to just loiter at and meet strangers.
I used to think this loss of third places was wholly a product of social anxiety's cure - social media. But as I become more politically educated I can't help but notice how devastatingly powerful this loss is for the ruling class. We may have been nudged towards isolation by the inevitability of technology, but public policy pushed to guarantee our isolation. I'm not claiming a huge organized conspiracy. Just a thousand little cuts - a real estate company here, a starbucks there, a news report about how unsafe we are, an anti-ergonomic bench placed by a city to move the homeless. Like Carlin says - there's no need for conspiracy when interests of the powerful converge. The opportunity to live a full human experience and connect to our community has been stolen in order to protect the status quo and keep people out of public unless they're rich enough to drop $100 minimum on a night out.
Because I promise you - if you are so poor that you need to consider the value of $100 for a couple of hours on the town, then your interests are 100% counter to those who make the decisions; you are dangerous and can not be allowed to congregate.
PS - one venue that seems to have survived is Vietnamese coffee shops. I didn't know this was a thing! The baristas wear bikinis and serve middle aged guys playing card/dominoes as they watch sports on TVs that cover every inch of the walls. If only they spoke English and played Magic: The Gathering I might still have a reason to leave the house :(
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