Don't Like - Colloquial Meta Discourse

“America doesn’t have enough third places.” That’s either a headline you’ve probably read somewhere or a line you’ve heard in a TikTok over the last few years—and for good reason. It’s true. America has a lacking communal culture and not a lot of places for people to be together.¹ There are lots of theories for why this is: capitalism, the internet, car-centric cities, the rise of anti-social behavior, you name it. It’s a problem that needs to be addressed but I’m not sure that the broad spread awareness of the idea of “third spaces” is doing much to help. It feels as though people now just have a term for the problem instead of a solution. That’s because “a third space” is a useful conceptual heuristic but it isn’t a real thing in and of itself. In simpler terms, we don’t want more “third spaces” we want more theaters, cafes, town squares, bars, parks, libraries, etc… Those aren’t academic terms, they’re real things. And yet, it seems like people want to reach for heady terms instead of having concrete discussions. Just this week, I saw a comment online where someone thanked someone else for “opening a third space” when what they really opened was a restaurant you can play board games at. This place is definitionally a “third space” however I can’t possibly imagine that this person would have said thanks “for opening a third space” even a few years ago. They would’ve said something like, “Thanks for opening a cool fun place my family can hang out and play games at in the neighborhood.” I realize that might seem like a minor difference but I think it’s important to not lose ourselves to abstraction.

1. Admittedly, I’m slightly skeptical of this. Even if attendance is down, there seem to be an awful lot of places for people to go to and clubs for people to join in US cities. Maybe we are just getting bad at being social.