Comment by wateralien
5 hours ago
One of the most amazing things happened during the day long power cut in 2025 in Spain and Portugal... eventually the cell towers went down and everyone just went to the parks and socialised. Connected with friends, strangers. Everyone was so in the moment because there was nowhere else to be, nothing else to distract them. People would pick up their phone and realise there was nothing there for them and put it back down and continue chatting. People were present in a way I've never seen in these places before. It was pretty magical.
This also happened in the LA area back around 2015, lasting about 36-48 hours - no power and consequently no internet. Out in suburbia, it was the first time many neighbors even met each other, or the first time some neighbors had spoken in person in years.
Standing in our driveways chatting, lending tools or supplies to one another, what used to be very standard suburban life.
It was amazing that we had become so disconnected in only 5 years after smartphones became nearly ubiquitous in that part of the world
It's so funny how those things go. By contrast, to go full social media, this is our condo building WhatsApp group in SF's SOMA district: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/File:Screenshot_Montage_-_Pa...
I wonder what the difference is between your community there and our community here since all these interactions are mediated by smartphone.
I'm going to start off by saying that I know all of my immediate neighbors. More importantly, I know pretty much all of the neighborhood dogs since I walk a lot, and dogs have to be walked. I don't have a dog, but I sometimes carry dog treats on me for when we cross paths.
There are plenty of people who never leave their house, and I have no idea what they do all day.
A few years ago a very small, yet very strong, thunderstorm clipped through and took out trees, mailboxes, and power. One large tree fell on a neighbor's grill, and another somehow took out mailboxes on both sides of the street.
There was so much damage, but it was amazing -- everyone was out there, together, cutting up the trees and clearing the debris from the road. I saw neighbors that I hadn't seen outside in _years_. I know that part of this was because of the chaos, but the biggest part was that nobody had power and the cell towers weren't working either. Unfortunately, it was brief.
Maybe I'm just getting old but the more I see our society the more I feel that smart phones, the internet, and social media were a mistake. I say this as I use them daily, of course, but there's some truth in the gen z phrase "touch grass".
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I had an experience with this during the Helene Hurricane in rural western North Carolina. We had no power or cell service for 18 days. In the first few days the roads were too damaged or block, so the only modes of travel a lot of places were by foot, bicycle, or ATV. Suddenly we were visiting with our neighbors by foot without prior plans, folks were grilling in their front yards, and of course, phones were not relevant. The first few days, you pick up your phone out of habit and "realise there was nothing there for them and put it back down". And then you stop even doing that. A lot of people suffered and there was a lot of damage. In other ways we were thriving.
This reminds me of the Jewish Sabbath. Here in Tel Aviv, Saturday means no shops, much fewer restaurants, less programming on TV, gyms/etc open late/close early.
The parks and beaches are full of people just existing.
Reminds me of my friends in Gaza, where every day means no shops, no restaurants, no home, no medicine, no food, no water, no hope. The beaches are full of people just trying to exist.
That sounds nice. Not sure I'd like to live in a war zone, but it sounds like it has its perks.
Sometimes people talk about these types of experiences and I get the feeling that it's an idealized picture of what really happened. I went through this experience in Portugal and it was exactly as described. Everyone came to the same conclusions during the power cut (that it is great to just hang and talk), only to forget the lessons the next day.
I spent many holidays in Uruguay in the 80s and early 90s.
I loved cartoons, but TV was only on at 10am, so I had to go out and play. If we went to my grandparents' beach house, there was an old vacuum tube TV that took hours to heat up so mostly I didn't bother to use it. I watched Tyson's defeat to Buster Douglas on that TV and the next morning there was still a little point of light in the centre of the screen because it also took a long time to go completely blank.
So not having access to TV was liberating. I wouldn't mind having no Internet on weekends today.
Easily configurable via router rules at home!
This has a name in literature: post disaster utopia, google it :)
'A Paradise Built in Hell' by Solnit is a good read about it
It's the same with remote locations, we destroyed substantial parts of their magic by getting everyone online everywhere, all the time.
Lovely! I am all for an offline day in the year where everybody does what you described.
I forget where, but there was a restaurant who locked all phones in a box at your table and if you made it to the end without opening it the table got a free cookie.
That should just be every restaurant, unless you're eating alone. It's just disrespectful otherwise.
(And even alone there's a pretty strong case to be made that you should pay attention to the actual food.)
Plenty of these experiences can be found without disconnecting the electricity for multiple countries. Personally, I find musical events of all sorts are amazing for this, and completely AI free should you chose the right events :)
This weekend Liquicity came to Barcelona (for the first time?) and being with other strangers, dancing all night long, to other humans playing us music and singing and sometimes fucking up, is just an experience out of this world, and these sort of events are all around us, almost every week or at least every month. If not in your country, probably in your neighboring country, just a bus/train ride away.
You just need to take the steps and get out of your house, the human connections are out there and ready to be grabbed by the ones who dare and persist :)
The problem with live concerts is that a substantial number of people are holding up their smartphones in front of them and experiencing it through the screen.
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This is so true. It can even just be regular club nights at good clubs. Ever been to Berghain? (Me neither)
Some clubs around here sometimes run whole-weekend parties that attract thousands of people, those are fun.
I remember going to Coachella every year from 2005-2010 and it was a great experience. I went in 2017(?) once after that and it seemed like literally everyone had their phones up filming during the sets. It was a night and day difference. Even the EDM tents were people just filming which also had a chilling effect on how crazy people were getting.
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Let's do it today
one day a year? it should be every week :)
You just invented the Sabbath.
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People can't even keep up discussions. Most of the population is totally dumbened down, like on the levels of barely functioning monkeys.
We need to go back
Yeah totally. Now cut the power for a week and see how long the socialization lasts.
This feels like a disingenuous interpretation of the parent comment.
People don't want to hear this hard truth, sadly.
In comparison to other parts of Europe, my impression (as a visitor to both but mostly Spain) so that they're way ahead in maintaining social interactions, community, neighbourly relations etc. Is that the case?
In my brief exposure of about 6 months here after ~40 years in Southern CA, it really seems to be the case. I’ve never seen so many people just interacting and enjoying one another’s company for hours on end.
For a decent portion of any given day, nearly every table at every establishment is occupied with people chatting, not browsing nor texting. The local parks are filled with people of all ages playing. Couldn’t help but laugh in disbelief initially