Hmm I love phone free nightclubs (or rather camera free, they tape off the cameras). Like techno clubs.
Not so much of a fan of this in bars and restaurants, sometimes you need to stay in touch with friends who are still arriving etc. Or often they change their mind "this place is cool, why don't you come to us instead of us coming to you?". But ok plenty of places to choose from.
> sometimes you need to stay in touch with friends who are still arriving etc.
Do we need to? We are way too communicative now days. Back before everyone had cell phones, you said on Monday to friends and/or co-workers, "Let's get drinks on Friday at 7pm at BarClub" - Everyone put it in their diary, and on Friday at 6:55-7:30, people showed up where they were supposed to.
We now have this anxiety around not being in constant contact with people, when just a couple decades ago, we wouldn't talk to a person for days/weeks at a time, but still manage to get together without (m)any issues.
Humans used to get on ships and sail away, perhaps never to be heard from again. We can absolutely survive several minutes of confusion around eating arrangements. "Text me when you get there." Let's all just calm down and live with a little uncertainty
There will always be other places that don’t care.
But I think it’s okay to appreciate the world around you and spend time being present while waiting for someone. We used to do this all the time. People watching is fun.
There's another aspect: these days most people don't like being told what to do. When it infringes on other people's lives like making photos I understand but anything else nope.
I couldn't imagine working in an army either. I'd never let them get away with barking at me.
People have never liked being told what to do. Even in the military, it's rare that anyone likes being told what to do. The point is that you do it anyway, because you are disciplined and believe in the chain of command, provided you aren't being asked to do something illegal.
If you don't trust your chain of command, then there are issues. But militaries are decidedly not democracies, because the military often requires swift action, and democracies move slowly by design.
That's fine, I wasn't trying to convince you. :) I was just clarifying that there isn't a human alive who actually likes being told what to do. There is usually a reason they do it anyway, but it is rarely because they like it.
(I am exaggerating, and in the sense of pleasure there are obviously submissive people, etc., but you get my point, I think)
True and I'm one of them in fact. But it's different, I'm submissive only when I want to, to whom I choose to, within limits that I set. There's a lot of safety net. Whereas people who are forced to work in the military don't have any choice.
I think being so antiauthoritarian is what makes that interesting for me. Though I'm never authoritative myself, I could never manage people either.
In 1989 I wrote and posted a paper letter to a college friend of ours in Northern England, asking, hey, around [June date I forget] we will be in London, want to meetup? A while later I get a reply letter saying sure, how about we meet at Piccadilly Circus on this date at this time. I posted an affirmative reply and there was no further communication. We were in Arizona at the time.
On the agreed-to date and time we were there, and so was she.
If we were talk about paper maps, it would blow people's minds. If we were to get further in the weeds and describe how we traveled around communist Czechoslovakia w/o a map, only a phrasebook entitled "Travelers Czech", well...
Ah I forgot! We, without being specific about the date, knew that other college friends of ours, originally from Czechoslovakia, had told us they were going to be in their home town of Olomouc. We got the barest help in Prague with my wife's bad German on how to get there by train. Arrived, got a room, and called them up. For the next week they showed us around the country and visited family and friends.
Other than lousy waiters in Prague we had a terrific adventure. Different times.
But you sure had to able to demonstrate you had integrity in your agreements and were open to changes of plans.
What's amusing is that I've tried to do this nowadays, where I make plans with someone a few weeks in advance and then just show up. Only to have them not be there, and when I ask what happened, they said, "oh, I didn't think we were still doing that, you hadn't said anything about it in a while"
It’s kind of funny that business etiquette has moved much more to scheduled meetings even for short discussions, and social life has moved in the opposite direction.
At higher levels, I think impromptu calls/messages of a time-sensitive nature are probably more common. But, in general, phone calls out of the blue are less accepted than they were 10-20 years ago outside of a very close circle. And in business there would probably be a preceding message to the effect of “can we chat?”
The protocol we have always implicitly used in this case is 'no news is good news'. I.e., participants in the meetup understand that they only have to communicate 'I won't/can't be there.' The reason is optional. Could be lots of things.
But socially this has gotten inverted.
I have several very long relationships with people (>30 years) who are overwhelmed by this. Living their lives immersed in constantly buzzing irrelevant social noise.
It depends. My friends with kids have everything planned out months in advance. If they're to come out to something they have to have it all scheduled between judo classes and school birthday parties blah blah
The rest of us just wing it. Which I really prefer. I hate having plans. Especially in case I might not feel like it on the night in question.
Czechia has a very dense public transport network and if you want to walk a very nice network of marked tourist tracks. Not that different form 1989, except for marking an explicit cycling network since then.
It is what it is. It's how things work now. Anyway I have great respect for places that tape off cameras because it makes others feel safe. Because they know they won't be photographed without consent.
But being on your mobile somewhere is more of a "you do you" thing for me. I'm not always on my phone, when I go out I don't go near it normally but getting a quick message is no problem IMO. For example when plans change. When others are on phones around me I don't find that very annoying, there's much more annoying behaviour.
Personally I hate planning and love chaos so I really like this thing where I see someone online at 2am and they're like "hey why don't you come out to this club". Which happens fairly often.
You described a want, not a need. How often does this actually come up? If your friends are frequently having "emergencies" that prevent them from meeting you, they may not be good friends.
And have you tried working a stressful job where emergencies come up all the time so you need to work till 8 pm instead of 5:30 pm, and have to cancel plans last-minute a quarter of the time? Or you have kids where all sorts of unknowns happen all the time?
For many people, it happens. Frequently.
Maybe you can be less judgmental and realize different people lead different lives, rather than think you know enough to start judging other people's friends. Talk about arrogance.
We don't need to be communicative at all times. But don't romanticize it either; we did what you say because we had to, whether we wanted or not. Not having any chance of correcting course or being more flexible is not a cool thing of the past, it's a limitation of how things were.
That you find confort on it, is a different thing than it being better or worse... it just was.
Your scenario sounds like a nightmare of sorts. Constant chatter of what or where to go and no commit to one place. I think you can overcome a lot of excuses by meeting at one place and then sorting it out.
It's just to create a brand to attract targeted customers. If you really hate phones in restaurants you are going to stick to them. Not an issue for me TBH, it's their free choice. It's kinda difficult to compete in food quality and such, but rather easy to just create a brand. You see this kind of things in politics a lot.
I bet if you study the rate of "mind changing" over time since phones got smarter we'll see it correlates. As does ability/willingness to commit to anything or anyone.
There's a breakfast spot that I visit sometimes, with a sign on the wall that reads; "We do not have 'WiFi' -- Talk to each other -- Pretend it's 1995"
When I think of places where phones aren't a problem, I think of bars and restaurants.
So why on earth would you even need to make them phone-free...?
People are socializing plenty. I've never walked into a bar or restaurant that's full of people where they're all on their phones. It doesn't even make sense.
I am so surprised at the negativity about this idea in this thread. It's a novelty, and it's pretty fun, if you don't like the idea you can just go to the 99% of other bars or restaurants that do allow phones.
I personally like going to these types of places. When you go with a group of people it does change the social dynamic, not being able to ask ChatGPT the answer to a question you don't know off the top of your head, or scroll through your messages as a crutch when there's a lull in the conversation. Everyone is more fully engaged.
It's just a fun novelty, an experience you can't get elsewhere.
Phone/device free venues have to become a thing. Social media has taken a strong hold of people but the ai chat bots are upping the game even more. If anything phone free areas will become an incentive to visit these establishments for me
The worst has been the post-covid assignment of seating and QR code driven ordering in bars. So few opportunities to mingle. I miss standing in bars, talking to bartenders, chatting with random patrons. This has recovered much better in large cities but I find that restaurants and bars in US suburban environments are deeply impersonal now. It’s no wonder singles are stuck meeting partners on apps with so little unstructured social opportunities left. Not to mention no one is going to bars anymore anyway.
You could enforce this by making a farday cage out of the building. I looked into this for an irrational (5G is government poison) family member. I wasn't going to debate how RF works, just buy some points by helping her indulge her fantasy. But actual RF blocking copper mesh material is very expensive. I wonder if this could be done via wallpaper and printing using a conductive ink printed on the same pattern?
How do you prevent people from having phones while inside?
Do you just get in trouble for whipping it out? Or do you have to drop it off with a phone valet at the entrance? If so, how do you prevent theft or mixups? Are all the staff comfortable confronting people who have taken their devices out, risking their tips and personal comfort levels? What if somebody gets cranky after being asked because they didn't know and it's halfway through dinner?
Great. It would be nice to normalize that as a feature. A cafe near me sort of has this by simply not offering WiFi and having a sign about it, and it works - there are people having conversations with their kids and with friends and with strangers there, while all other cafes seem to be mostly people on their phones and iPads (especially kids) and laptops. Also we need a total ban on meta glasses and other similar surveillance devices.
Well if they don't want businesses from phone-carrying people that's perfectly fine with me.
Restaurants are too expensive anyway. A random breakfast in a random diner now costs around 60 CAD (include tax and tip) for two persons nowadays in my city. It is difficult to justify eating out unless I'm financially free.
There are a couple of communities that have almost no phone presence. Certain kinds of music festivals are an example, and it's really quite nice not having to worry about being filmed.
148 comments
Not so much of a fan of this in bars and restaurants, sometimes you need to stay in touch with friends who are still arriving etc. Or often they change their mind "this place is cool, why don't you come to us instead of us coming to you?". But ok plenty of places to choose from.
> sometimes you need to stay in touch with friends who are still arriving etc.
Do we need to? We are way too communicative now days. Back before everyone had cell phones, you said on Monday to friends and/or co-workers, "Let's get drinks on Friday at 7pm at BarClub" - Everyone put it in their diary, and on Friday at 6:55-7:30, people showed up where they were supposed to.
We now have this anxiety around not being in constant contact with people, when just a couple decades ago, we wouldn't talk to a person for days/weeks at a time, but still manage to get together without (m)any issues.
But I think it’s okay to appreciate the world around you and spend time being present while waiting for someone. We used to do this all the time. People watching is fun.
There's another aspect: these days most people don't like being told what to do. When it infringes on other people's lives like making photos I understand but anything else nope.
I couldn't imagine working in an army either. I'd never let them get away with barking at me.
If you don't trust your chain of command, then there are issues. But militaries are decidedly not democracies, because the military often requires swift action, and democracies move slowly by design.
There's talk of bringing military service back in my country but I would honestly prefer fighting my own country than the enemy.
I hope more people are going to be like that when they implement it.
(I am exaggerating, and in the sense of pleasure there are obviously submissive people, etc., but you get my point, I think)
> there are obviously submissive people, etc
True and I'm one of them in fact. But it's different, I'm submissive only when I want to, to whom I choose to, within limits that I set. There's a lot of safety net. Whereas people who are forced to work in the military don't have any choice.
I think being so antiauthoritarian is what makes that interesting for me. Though I'm never authoritative myself, I could never manage people either.
But I understand your point, thanks!
On the agreed-to date and time we were there, and so was she.
If we were talk about paper maps, it would blow people's minds. If we were to get further in the weeds and describe how we traveled around communist Czechoslovakia w/o a map, only a phrasebook entitled "Travelers Czech", well...
Ah I forgot! We, without being specific about the date, knew that other college friends of ours, originally from Czechoslovakia, had told us they were going to be in their home town of Olomouc. We got the barest help in Prague with my wife's bad German on how to get there by train. Arrived, got a room, and called them up. For the next week they showed us around the country and visited family and friends.
Other than lousy waiters in Prague we had a terrific adventure. Different times.
But you sure had to able to demonstrate you had integrity in your agreements and were open to changes of plans.
But socially this has gotten inverted.
I have several very long relationships with people (>30 years) who are overwhelmed by this. Living their lives immersed in constantly buzzing irrelevant social noise.
The rest of us just wing it. Which I really prefer. I hate having plans. Especially in case I might not feel like it on the night in question.
But being on your mobile somewhere is more of a "you do you" thing for me. I'm not always on my phone, when I go out I don't go near it normally but getting a quick message is no problem IMO. For example when plans change. When others are on phones around me I don't find that very annoying, there's much more annoying behaviour.
Personally I hate planning and love chaos so I really like this thing where I see someone online at 2am and they're like "hey why don't you come out to this club". Which happens fairly often.
If I'm meeting someone for drinks and then an emergency happens, I kind of want to know rather than waiting around for 45 minutes and then giving up.
It comes up. Frequently.
And have you tried working a stressful job where emergencies come up all the time so you need to work till 8 pm instead of 5:30 pm, and have to cancel plans last-minute a quarter of the time? Or you have kids where all sorts of unknowns happen all the time?
For many people, it happens. Frequently.
Maybe you can be less judgmental and realize different people lead different lives, rather than think you know enough to start judging other people's friends. Talk about arrogance.
Yeah gonna be downvoted, but whatever.
So why on earth would you even need to make them phone-free...?
People are socializing plenty. I've never walked into a bar or restaurant that's full of people where they're all on their phones. It doesn't even make sense.
I personally like going to these types of places. When you go with a group of people it does change the social dynamic, not being able to ask ChatGPT the answer to a question you don't know off the top of your head, or scroll through your messages as a crutch when there's a lull in the conversation. Everyone is more fully engaged.
It's just a fun novelty, an experience you can't get elsewhere.
Do you just get in trouble for whipping it out? Or do you have to drop it off with a phone valet at the entrance? If so, how do you prevent theft or mixups? Are all the staff comfortable confronting people who have taken their devices out, risking their tips and personal comfort levels? What if somebody gets cranky after being asked because they didn't know and it's halfway through dinner?
It's a tricky policy to enforce smoothly
Restaurants are too expensive anyway. A random breakfast in a random diner now costs around 60 CAD (include tax and tip) for two persons nowadays in my city. It is difficult to justify eating out unless I'm financially free.