Name a place where you can organically meet people. Take 10 seconds to think about it.
Maybe you came up with a bar or a café? Now think one step further: what do all of these places have in common nowadays?
You have to spend money just to be in them.
Third places as they used to exist are dead in almost every major city. Sitting too long with a laptop or reading a book? Time to leave—there’s a line of paying customers waiting.
Cities created an environment where people don’t meet organically at all anymore—you are just passing a million faces without knowing anybody.
Even if you’re in luck and can stay while sipping your overpriced coffee, people in 9/10 cases don’t even want to be bothered, so going there increases your surface luck by practically zero. Why risk the friction of an awkward conversation with a stranger when a screen in your pocket guarantees a much better experience?
How are your antennas supposed to catch a signal when nobody is even sending, or vice versa?
You’re essentially staring into a social black hole, and paying 5 euros for a cappuccino only to leave 10 minutes later is really just a short-term lease agreement for a space subscription.
Outside of university, which ends quickly, and your work loop, your circle stays static. Move to a new city, and you find yourself completely stranded.
I stumbled upon a tweet from someone advising people in Europe to live on the rural outskirts of cities. Another user quickly replied: 'This is a sad existence. Why would you want to live in the farmland far from people, cafes, random encounters, girls—basically all the action?'
But here’s the real question: Is that 'action' even real, or is it just a heavily monetized illusion?
You’re living in London paying two thousand pounds for a shoebox, and yet you only live to coexist and consume things you didn’t produce yourself.
Stop trying to find an ecosystem.
be the garden