A TikToker Asks, 'Can It Third Place?'

By Frank Filocomo

TikTok is a mostly brain-numbing app, typified by vapid Get Ready With Me (GRWM) videos, your typical celebrity gossip click-bait, and some confoundingly nonsensical political takes (recall when TikTok influencers were taking to the platform to praise Osama bin Laden for his repulsive Letter to the American People?) 

The app - again, mostly a toxic, digital wasteland - will turn you into a proper misanthrope. 

User @madisonraetogo, however, is one exception to the rule. 

Madison, in a TikTok-original series she calls "Can It Third Space?" travels around the U.S. to find venues that more or less fit Ray Oldenburg's definition of a "Third Place." 

In The Great Good Place, Oldenburg writes that a third place is...

a generic designation for a great variety of public places that host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work. 

Madison has her own variation of the Oldenburg criteria for a third space:

1. "It has to be free entry;

2. we have to meet someone;

3. vibes."

While these criteria for third places don't match up exactly with Oldenburg's (Oldenburg mentions low-barrier to entry, not necessarily free entry; he emphasizes the informality of these places and their conduciveness to conversation; the concept of social leveling is extremely important; etc...), it's close enough.

Madison takes us to Washington Square Park in NYC, and cafes and art museums throughout Florida. 

After spending some time in these places - and making some valiant effort to socialize with total strangers - she employs a 1-10 rating system. 

Her comments throughout these videos are thoughtful, witty, and perceptive. A much welcomed respite from the cacophony of nonsense on TikTok, for sure. 

Many people I speak to about this subject lament what they perceive to be the decline in America's social capital and civil society. I, too, share that same lament. The good news, though, is that people - young people, in particular - are yearning for community and social connection in a world of uprootedness and atomization. 

Robert Putnam must be taking solace in the fact that young people today no longer want to bowl alone. 

 

The Old 'Young Guns'

 

By Frank Filocomo

In March, Troy Olson and I had a conversation about the dying Neoliberal Order and communitarianism on the political Left and Right. Watch a clip below!

Whatcha Reading?

 

By Frank Filocomo

ICYMI: I wrote about Reading Rhythms, a NYC-based literary group, for Front Porch Republic, easily one of my favorite online publications. 

From the article:

Though some folks were understandably timid at first, a wave of loquacity hit the room during our conversation time; everyone wanted to discuss what they had been reading. I even saw some people exchanging phone numbers and inquiring about the next event.

To sum up my thesis: reading does not necessarily have to be a solitary act; it can, in fact, be surprisingly communal, if done in the right context. 

I also encourage you to read Nadya Williams' piece about a more communitarian kind of reading here.  

By the way, I'm curious: what are you reading right now? Tell me in Frank's Forum, here. 

I recently started Coming Apart by Charles Murray, and I can already tell why it's such an important book...

Have a great week!

The Thing About Artists

By Claire Cordonnier

You’ve probably had the satisfying experience of listening to a pop song and resonating with the lyrics. 

It’s comforting to know that you aren’t alone in your feelings. But what about for the artist? What's scary about sharing your art with people is that you are sharing with them something deeply personal. Good art is drawn from life and expresses something authentic and unique to you.

Good artists need to have “life” to draw from. They need to have had life experiences that have challenged and changed them emotionally.

What separates artists from other people? Do they have more interesting lives than the average person? Or do they feel emotions more strongly than other people in a way that compels them to express them?

In expressing their emotions, artists allow themselves to be vulnerable in a way that resonates with their audience.  I would argue that this kind of vulnerability doesn’t exist the same way in other fields in which the answer is more “objective.”

But what about the scientists and engineers that work in these "objective" fields? Don’t they feel the same need to express themselves? Perhaps their work allows them to cope with their emotions in a more indirect way.