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Unknowns comments on Open Thread, Apr. 13 - Apr. 19, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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This should belong to the stupid questions thread but anyway... why don't bars, inns, taverns, pubs, whatevers work in reality the same way they do in fiction, or, better question, under what conditions, when and where do or would they work like that?
You travel to another city on a business trip, say, to visit a trade show the next day. Same country or different doesn't matter but let's assume you speak the language. You check in your hotel. You have a free evening and go exploring. You go to the hotels bar or another bars, inns, taverns, pubs. What will happen? Exactly nothing. You will probably a have a drink or three alone, or if you don't drink alcohol it will be even more boring, have some dinner, perhaps sight-see as long as it is not dark then retire to your room early because you are bored. The point is, nobody will socialize with you, nor give you the signs that you are welcome to socialize with them. You will get to know exactly zero locals. You will not participate in their lives. You will be an outsider, it will feel like staring at an aquarium. You sit in a bar in a corner, nursing a beer, while you watch the locals come and go, greet each other, chat with each other, while they ignore your existence. A pretty sad thing actually. They seem to have zero interest in getting to know a non-local. You may even get suspicious glances, as they are used to knowing all the faces in their bar, or because simply you radiate those I-don't-belong-here signals. A pretty sad thing overall.
In fiction this is so different... not only the lively taverns in Tolkienesque fiction where travellers immediate come together and entertain each other with stories, but even in modern, James Bondesque fiction there are things happening in hotel bars after the elegant secret agent checks in, friends and enemies made, pick-ups attempted and so on. There is a social life going on.
Why is it so, or what conditions would make it different? I have exactly one experience when it was not so. We were in a classic outback, behind the beyond farmer town, and we were 10 people canooing down the river. Apparently people in more boring, small-town places are more interested about outsiders, and larger groups mix easier than one lone traveller with a whole bar. If I remember right, we were largely discussing amongst each other and basically the locals overheard us and pitched in. Perhaps such conversation-starter signals are necessary.
As of now it feels like the precondition for getting to know people is to be with people I already know. This also means sticking to cities where acquaintances live in. This sounds too limiting.
If you are an attractive female and go into the bar, the men there will indeed try to socialize with you if you let them.
I think even this is only true in specific pick-up bars, with music and suchlike, disco balls and colored lights and DJs, during the night. Pretty sure nobody tries to hit on an attractive woman in a hotel bar at 16:00 at least I never tried to, as it would be a breach of social etiquette, since these are not hunting grounds and these are not hunting times, if she wants to pair off she will got to a music bar at 22:00 and everybody respects that. Or at the very least, it can happen in fashionable bars in gentrified areas, but the average common (European) bar with retired working class types nursing their alcoholism, attractive women won't even go there, usually. Disclaimer: my experience is limited to Europe, and I think the whole phenomenon that median ages go well into the forties and not to put a too fine point on it but for white non-immigrant folks easily into the fifties colors the picture a lot. It seems almost like people young enough to be attractive basically make their own special subcultures and average typical places are old people places.
I spent about two weeks sight seeing with such a woman and she was being approached constantly. On the other hand she is significantly more attractive than average.
I don't think Europe is a uniform place in that regard. Different European countries have quite different norms.
In my experience the amount of conversations I have with strangers in daily life depends almost entirely on how open I am to be approached be other people. It seems to be hard to fake signal I give out via body language. Unfortunately it comes and goes for periods of a time and it's not easily changeable.
That's probably says more about what you consider a typical place then about how young people want to spend their time.
That said in the age of meetup.com you can simply pick a relevant meetup where people with whom you share an interest congregate.
My experience ranges from Scotland to Ukraine, Denmark to Italy and frankly haven't seen a huge difference. You see, modern culture became incredibly uniform. Global trends from TV made sure pretty much everywhere people are drinking the same drinks, listening to the same music, wearing the same clothes. I actually find it boring and no longer travel to cities when I am travelling for pleasure, not business, because today the only real difference between say Amsterdam and Rome is pretty old buildings. But otherwise people became "global people" everywhere.
The most interesting part is that I think we (EU) have evolved our own dialect of English, a non-native yet distinct dialect, which has its own words/terms like "wellness hotel" which don't exist in the native dialects (or were borrowed back recently). It differs even in pronounciation, "th" in words like think or three tends so sound like "s" in the EUnglish dialect, while in most native ones it is actually closer to "t".