I used to rock climb around lunch time, do yoga at 3 and go for a cycle with some people in my neighborhood during my last remote setting. Was more social than any office setting.

And here I'm stuck in so many zoom calls to the point where I need to shut off my webcam and take my laptop in the bathroom with me just to relieve myself.

What about if all of society did this, and you all had a great webcam, and for lunch you went out locally with your local friends, then when you knock off at 5pm you have all agreed to play soccer down the local park at 5:10pm ?

We can have a nice local life that flourishes, once the utterly stupid situation of having everyone converge at the same time on a fixed point is forever slain.

It's much harder to make friends as an adult. Work colleagues end up being much easier friendships to make.

90% of my current friends were made through work.

> It's much harder to make friends as an adult.

I think work and commuting adds to this. Like in the bay, imagine if people stopped commuting going from sf to oakland wouldn't be a nightmare. Now you can visit people.

Or if you have flexible lunch time and free time from commuting you can do local things, take classes, visit stuff, do social things. Instead we're stuck waking up early to get ready, commuting, eating lunch at work, commuting back, prepping dinner. The day is almost shot except for an hour or two in the evening.

Commuting is a choice for most tech workers in the bay area. It's easy to get your commute down to 30 minutes or less if you want. I've got mine down to 20 most days.

I do what you say: take classes, do social things. And yet my most lasting friendships have come from work.

Maybe I'm the minority, or maybe it's the constant excuse to be around together that forms more lasting relationships.

A 30 minute commute doesn't really tell the whole story though. Theres still the hour of getting ready, waking up, alarm clocks. Ive used an alarm clock maybe once or twice and thats because someone scheduled a meeting at 9am. now i make breakfast while doing things like check email in the morning.

I'm not sure how that has to do with WFH. I still have to get ready, wake up, set an alarm clock. Except now I have to cook breakfast, clean the resulting dishes, and brew my coffee. Even more work before the day starts.

Are you saying that your company cares more about if you're in your seat at a certain time during normal days? Because that's a completely separate issue than WFH or not.

I think it just depends on your personality type. my closest friends are mostly people that I just happened to spend a lot of time with and realized later that I really enjoyed their company. I find that if I do some activity with the explicit goal of making friends, I end up making shallow connections at best.

The actual demographics matter. A mid 20s software engineer in SF would probably not be interested in hanging out with his suburban neighbors in midwest in their mid 40s as much as they would with young professionals living in a city.

So they would live in a neighbourhood full of young people.

That is once we stop making buying a home the most significant financial decision of everyone's life, also, as real estate collapses after centralisation is removed as a key ingredient.

>So they would live in a neighbourhood full of young people.

Do you know many young people who would love to live in a quiet suburbia over a busy city with lots of things to do? They, of course, exist, but they aren't the majority. I doubt that remote work will suddenly make every young person appreciate the quiet suburban lifestyle, and lead to suburban towns being heavily populated by young people.

Not every place outside a large urban area has to be white picket fences. It can be what we reimagine.

Sure, and we can technically build another Silicon Valley somewhere in the midwest as well.

The thing is, do young people want to spend their youth and efforts "reimagining" this (the effects of which they won't even see, even in the most optimistic scenario, until they are well past their youth)? I know that I, personally, don't. And it seems unlikely that a lot of young people would be willing to latch onto this kind of "opportunity" either.

It isn't even about "white picket fences", it is about the number of opportunities around, which you only get with high population density. Which is the antithesis of the suburban style of living.

If you think young people don't want to completely change the system you are out of touch. Sanders was hugely popular with under 30s. People want change.

they want political change, not physical change. I can't imagine many young people want to give up a bustling city with lots of culture, dating opportunities and things to do for a place thats cheaper with a slightly lower risk of contracting a virus from pandemics that only come around once or twice in a lifetime

Yes but not the change you are describing. Young people reinvigorating small towns was not one of Bernie's platforms so I don't know how it's relevant.

Young people want change. But they still want to move to cities with things to do while enacting change. Just look at the demographics.

My god, this has to be the most depressing forum on the interwebs.

A downvote to zero for the suggestion of living locally and playing soccer ten minutes after work.

You are right. Why would you guys have friends?

> You are right. Why would you guys have friends?

This is hilarious