alt Hacker News> Everybody might prefer, in the abstract, a world of dinner parties, neighborhood friendships, and spontaneous gatherings. But on any given Wednesday at 7:45pm., it is easier to look at a screen than to host a party; easier to listen to a podcast while doing yoga than to plan a gathering. This is not so much an individual failure as a coordination failure. Modernity has shifted leisure from activities that require coordination with other people toward activities that can be consumed without the permission or participation of others. Compared to TikTok, a dinner party is a terrible leisure technology.
This extra coordination “friction” is the killer. The lesson is, if you want more dinner parties you have to reduce the extra coordination “friction” to a minimum.
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I think we also need to increase the friction of social media. But yeah, I used to live in the same apartment building as two friends so “hosting a dinner party” was as complex and sending a DM at 4pm to arrange something after work.
I would do this multiple times a week because it was so easy and required minimal coordination.
You have to get comfortable with friction. Friction is part of a healthy human life, anything remotely challenging involves friction. Getting ten people together will always be more complicated than staring into a screen.
Adler made the profound observation that people don't suffer from anxiety, they invent and maintain it to avoid their life tasks. Same is true for blaming things on friction. "Oh I've only there wasn't that much friction, I wasn't so busy" etc. Accept the friction, do it anyway.