Phone-free bars and restaurants on the rise across the U.S.
Comments
wolvoleo
jermaustin1
> 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.
wussboy
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
wolvoleo
Go for it but don't force it on me.
borski
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.
wolvoleo
Yeah there'll be others sure.
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.
borski
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.
wolvoleo
I am absolutely not disciplined and don't believe in a chain of command though. And I never will.
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.
borski
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)
wolvoleo
> 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!
borski
For sure; the container you set within which you choose to be submissive matters a lot, of course. Particularly, it matters because it lets you remain in control of how and when and what you submit to. :)
The issue of being in the military is precisely that you don't have that control, and choices are made for you. The benefit of this is learning discipline, hard work, resilience, and eventually getting to a point of being in control (whether of yourself or of others).
There are hundreds of ways this can go wrong, but it is all designed for one thing: swift action when necessary. Allowing people choice definitively makes things slower, and speed is of the essence in war. Strategy is too, of course, but decisive action matters.
And those who have no choice are nothing if not decisive when told what to do. :)
frollogaston
Should be forced
downut
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.
pimlottc
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"
downut
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.
smelendez
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.
ghaff
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?”
wolvoleo
Yes this is one of the few things that have actually improved over the last decade or so. I love this practice of asking first.
wolvoleo
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.
megous
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.
wolvoleo
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.
crazygringo
Yes, we need to.
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.
allturtles
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.
crazygringo
Have you tried online dating?
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.
j1elo
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.
frollogaston
I already get this experience cause one guy in the group has an Android
wolvoleo
What does it have to do with android?
frollogaston
Downgrades the group chat to RCS, then you gotta assume your messages aren't going through same-day or at all, like Byzantine generals.
One time someone said "day after tomorrow" instead of giving a date, that was a mistake.
grvdrm
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.
markus_zhang
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.
Yeah gonna be downvoted, but whatever.
627467
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.
anonymousiam
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"
Teever
I totally support the phone-free bar and restaurant experience and encouraging people to socialize verbally instead of online but the thing is that I like to eat breakfast alone.
It's a meditative process to me. There's nothing better than sitting in a greasy spoon looking out at a rainy day eating bacon and hashbrowns while sipping coffee and reading the newspaper. Just watching the world and gthe people go by while flipping and folding the pages of a large newspaper. That's bliss.
Now that newspapers aren't really a thing anymore I like to read the news on my phone, or a paper about a topic that interests me.
It's good to promote socializing as long as it doesn't come at the expensive at reflective processes.
heeton
> I totally support the phone-free bar and restaurant experience
If you then expect an exemption because your phone use is different then I challenge that you don’t actually support the experience.
If you want to read news in a phone-free environment: bring a newspaper, a kindle, etc.
bawolff
What experience are you expecting in a phone-free breakfast joint if you are there by yourself? Interupting other patrons meals to randomly talk to them? That sounds kind of like hell.
myself248
Boredom and being alone with your thoughts is not, as popularly believed, fatal.
bawolff
Of course not, but its also not an exclusive experience you can only get at resturants.
And quite frankly noisey busy resturants are a subpar place to have that sort of experience. Most people who want to do that sort of thing go to a park or somewhere quiet with nature.
jmye
Then don’t go. No idea what the issue is, here.
senko
> It's a meditative process to me. [...] I like to read the news on my phone.
I don't think reading news, especially on the phone, is meditative.
With paper you might pause & reflect while turning a page, with phone even that is lost.
> Just watching the world and the people go by while
Why not do that without looking at the phone?
Teever
I knew someone was going to pull on that little thread.
So let's use a dictionary definition: meditative -- of, involving, or absorbed in meditation or considered thought.
In that context I have for decades now enjoyed sipping coffee, reading the news, and watching peope go by, smiling at the waitress, and considering how it all fits together. The cream in my cup, the man crossing the street, the price of tea in China -- it's all connected. Sometimes do this without a phone or a newspaper or a book. Sometimes I don't.
This is just how I like to spend my Sunday breakfast. Alone. Not talking to people. Watching them and the world.
senko
Beautifully said, thank you.
I'm glad I pulled on that thread :)
Teever
Thank you for the kind words.
I agree that a phone provides a suboptimal experience for this kind of thing.
I loved seeing the pile of newspapers that have already been rifled through by previous patrons who have finished their morning meal. Picking the exact paper or sections that I want, perhaps grabbing a finished section from an old man who has already sat down and made it half way through his morning breakfest ritual.
thumbing through the pages, holding the paper up to fold it over, putting it down on the table and pressing that edge of the with your thumb to make a sharp edge and then sipping your coffee.
There really is nothing like it.
grvdrm
But you can buy newspapers in lots of places and read them. And magazines!
crazygringo
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.
frollogaston
Some bars have nearly every customer on a phone. Not an issue in restaurants though.
Upvoter33
Really? I see this all the time. Maybe I'm going to all the wrong places. I see "couples" on their phones, I see groups of friends on their phones, etc., etc. Maybe different parts of the country / world?
crazygringo
I'm in New York City. I do not see this.
I see single people use their phone while they wait for their date/friends to arrive. Or while their date uses the restroom.
I see groups of friends where one person is temporarily texting because the babysitter reached out, or a friend is asking where they are, etc.
Going to restaurants and bars is expensive. People aren't going out to use their phones.
cguess
NYC here too, I'm not sure where you're going but go to any sports or Irish bar and >50% of the people there will be on their phone, especially when they're solo. I do wish I could read a book, but so many bars keep it so dark even in the daytime that it's impossible these days.
People go out by themselves all the time (I'm single, WFH and live by myself, if I didn't go out by myself I would literally leave the house only once or twice a week).
mikkupikku
I don't see the problem; when you're out drinking with buddies, sometimes you're talking and sometimes staring at the sportsball TV in contemplative silence. Or a phone instead of the TV, it serves the same role. It doesn't have to be talk all the time. Somebody who's not talking now might have been talking a minute ago, and will be again in a few minutes.
valleyer
If you're all staring at the TV, you can at least share your thoughts on the thing you're all watching together. If you're all staring at your phones, your minds are in different places. It doesn't serve the same role at all.
yalogin
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
28304283409234
If I had a bar I'd ban phones and call it The No Bars Bar. Alt: The Bar Without Bars
petcat
No need to ban phones, just coat the walls in magnetic paint and install faraday cages on the windows.
You will get "No bars". (and also maybe no customers and a safety code violation?)
drum55
Intentionally interfering with 911 would probably be a poor decision.
iamnothere
Passive interference like this isn’t illegal, although you might have a lawsuit if a customer gets injured and it takes a few extra seconds for someone to step outside and dial 911 (people will sue over anything). It’s active jamming that violates FCC regulations.
petcat
Oh yeah definitely. Also your own POS system probably wont even work unless it's hard-wired.
fragmede
Have staff/employee wifi for the PoS to use.
petcat
Wifi wont work at all (or at least be very packet-droppy) in this configuration
myself248
Hi, I have worked in numerous shielded environments, built one, and am in the process of building a second.
Wifi works perfectly fine inside a shielded enclosure, if both the AP and the client are inside the shield. It should not work across the shield, if the AP is inside and the client is outside, or vice versa. (If that worked, it wouldn't be a very good shield.)
It is entirely plausible, practical, and not even all that hard, to build precisely the environment described up-thread. "Magnetic" paint is not necessary, it just has to be conductive. Ecofoil® Ultra NT® is my favorite shielding material, it's good as a radiant energy barrier (say, to keep your hot roof from radiating heat down at your attic) and as a radiant signal shield. Which makes sense, when you consider that RF is just RF is just RF. Filtered power passthroughs aren't particularly hard (Start with the Delta 20DBAG5 and add some ferrite beads), and if you really want to be snazzy with your data passthrough, use fiber. There are all sorts of cheap-and-cheerful ethernet switches with SFP slots now.
The door seals are the tricky part. Commercial shielded enclosures go all-out with complicated lever-actuated doors that wouldn't feel out-of-place on a bank vault, but I've found that simply sanding the paint off a commercial steel door and covering the bare steel with copper tape, then engaging it with beryllium-copper spring finger-stock around the doorjamb, is sufficient for about 60-80dB of isolation, which is plenty in many environments.
petcat
Good to know! I only knew about the magnetic paint because a company I worked for a long time ago wanted to put up big mural-like pictures throughout the office space and decided to mount them on magnets and cover the walls in magnetic paint so they would stick. But then some of our conference rooms couldn't get good wifi even though the AP was right next door... We only figured out later (after putting hard-wired APs in every room LOL) that it was because of the magnetic paint.
giantrobot
Inside of the cage it'll be fine. It just won't do great traversing the boundary. As long as there's a WAP/antenna inside the cage everything inside the cage will get a signal.
jmyeet
Jamming cell signals is illegal. There are good reasons for this such as people who are on call or people who need to call 911.
The only way around this is to build somewhere that happens to have no cell reception.
iamnothere
Passively blocking signals through absorptive materials is not jamming and is not illegal.
lemax
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.
raincole
To increase table turnover rate for the restaurant.
frollogaston
There are cafes that disallow laptops for this reason
hdbebdhdh
I don't get it. If you don't want to use a phone, simply don't use a phone O_o
Dig1t
If you all agree to not have phones, then the group social dynamic changes. You can't lean on your phone as a crutch when there's a lull in the conversation, you can't look up facts on the internet. So you're forced to think a little harder about things, to discuss a little more, be less distracted. It's fun for group outings.
fc417fc802
What group social dynamic? This is a restaurant or bar as a whole, not a personal friend group. If you prefer a certain dynamic then talk it over with the people you spend time with. Maybe they'll agree, maybe they won't, but either way that's entirely separate from the policy of a dining establishment.
Fargren
It's easier (or at least different) to say to your friends "let's go to a phone free bar" than it its to say "let's go to a bar, phone-free".
In the first case, a third party came up with the idea, and you are subjecting yourselves to their idea. In the second case, it's your idea, and your friends are subjecting themselves to your idea. Really if you are proposing, there's always a bit of "your idea" there, but the "blame" can be shared with someone else who's not in the group.
Dig1t
An example: I went to a phone-free drink lounge with a group of people. Before the event I texted the group saying "this place takes your phone at the door" and everyone said they were cool with that and that it sounded fun.
We all knew going in that this is what we were signing up for.
It's like going to a club with a specific dress code. You go there for the atmosphere and the unique experience. And yeah everyone agreeing to not have a phone in their pocket does change how people in a group interact with each other.
markus_zhang
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.
quchen
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.
fc417fc802
What are you doing that has you worried about strangers filming you? I'd be pretty offended and creeped out if a total stranger was following me around filming for no apparent reason but that isn't something that happens presumably because I'm not particularly interesting.
I opened this comment section because I was perplexed by the premise of the title and after scrolling a bit I remain entirely unable to comprehend the underlying motivations.
tayo42
Self conscious about dressing, signing badly, dancing. It's fun in the moment but I wouldn't want it recorded or show up in a promo video or something.
Dig1t
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.
bawolff
Phone free resturants if you're eating alone sounds kind of miserable. Sometimes i want to read something while i wait for my food to come out.
troymc
Maybe bring a (printed) book, brochure, flyer, or treatise on the nocturnal behaviours of silkworms?
hoherd
My company recently gave us a day off for wellbeing. My initial plan was to spend the day in the forest, but it was cold and rainy. So instead, I did as you described. I took an old warn paperback that I had long ago picked up at a Little Free Library and have been struggling to finish, went to a family owned diner, got some comfort food, and sat for an hour and read my book (and did not use my phone). It was wonderful.
bawolff
Do you commonly carry those around with you? I'm not mistaking a resturant for a library, i just want to kill time until my food comes out.
Is there a reason why someone sitting by themselves reading a book on the e-reader app on their phone is more offensive than someone sitting by themselves reading a dead tree book?
bluebarbet
>someone sitting by themselves reading a book on the e-reader app
I was this person. Eventually I gave it up because I didn't want to be mistaken for just another screen-addled zombie with no impulse control miserably scrolling Whatsapp and Instagram.
Perhaps I have too much self-awareness but I'd argue most people have too little.
bawolff
> Eventually I gave it up because I didn't want to be mistaken for just another screen-addled zombie with no impulse control miserably scrolling Whatsapp and Instagram.
So you gave it up not because you are worried about being a "phone addicted zombie" but because you are worried about being precieved and judged as such?
Some would say changing your behaviour due to social insecurity is just another form of being a zombie.
bluebarbet
Not sure it would make me a "zombie" exactly but I agree it's an oddly incoherent position to judge the behavior of others while also being concerned about their gaze. Much introspection has not yet pierced this mystery.
fc417fc802
> ... I didn't want to be mistaken for ...
Who cares? They're strangers. If they want to make faulty assumptions and feel an unjustified smug sense of self superiority that's none of my business.
At this point I read ~all books on my phone as a simple matter of practicality. I'd prefer my phone had an epaper screen and grayscale page centric apps (instead of scrolling) but that's just not how things are.
bluebarbet
>on my phone as a simple matter of practicality
Yes, I came to the same conclusion. IIRC I read Great Expectations on the thing!
In my case scrollability was a bonus. Horses for courses.
Acrobatic_Road
It's not hard to bring a book with you. People did it before phones.
And I don't know what you're doing when you're transfixed by your phone and I'm not going to peer over your screen to find out.
bawolff
> And I don't know what you're doing when you're transfixed by your phone and I'm not going to peer over your screen to find out.
Nor should you, talk about injecting yourself into something that is none of your business.
Acrobatic_Road
Oh, it's everyone's business. Phones are eroding the social fabric.
fc417fc802
You dodged the question. You don't know what he's using his phone for. Fair enough. Is there a reason that privately looking at the screen is offensive while privately looking at a book is not?
Acrobatic_Road
It's a more social activity in a world that is increasingly isolated. A book is a nice conversation starter. I'm not going to come up to you and ask about what's on your little screen. Even if you're just reading an e-book the phone contributes to the perceived loneliness of those around you.
If you really want to read a book in peace, try a library.
vile_wretch
I don't think you're going to have many good conversations if you go around interrupting people trying to read in peace, regardless of where you do it. What a bizarre sentiment.
tenacious_tuna
> Even if you're just reading an e-book the phone contributes to the perceived loneliness of those around you.
This is a wild projection of your own experience onto someone else's actions.
> If you really want to read a book in peace, try a library.
I've quite enjoyed the times I've taken a book to a restaurant and read over a meal. I do not appreciate you, or people like you, dictating how I ought to act in public in a way that doesn't affect anyone else in the slightest.
I don't want to start conversations when I'm alone at a table with my book. The fact that you find it somehow less social for me to be on my phone instead of reading a book when I am minding my own business at my own table seems like a tremendous failure in your own boundaries and expectations of other people.
Acrobatic_Road
>This is a wild projection of your own experience onto someone else's actions.
I asked a friend who doesn't use a smartphone about how it feels walking into a room full of people with phones and he told me the same thing. I have a smartphone but I don't take it out reflexively. I don't even consider myself a very social person or an extrovert, yet it always has to be ME to start a conversation in a room full of people because they would rather stare at a screen that say a hello.
I'm going to talk to you whether you like it not. If you don't want to talk to people, then maybe don't put yourself in a social setting? Imagine entering a coffee shop and finding it dead silent. I would just go home and make some food. If you have a problem with me talking to you, go ahead tell me how much you don't appreciate it or whatever, I don't care.
bawolff
Maybe this is a cultural difference, but i would generally consider it incredibly rude for a random person to interupt someone trying to enjoy their meal. A resturant isn't a singles mixer.
Acrobatic_Road
Depends on the layout. If its a large, sit-down restaurant with wide gaps between the tables, then yes it would be weird for me to go up to you and say "Hi, Stranger!". But at a coffee shop you might be sitting right next to me. We might even be sitting at the same table waiting for our food. Am I not allowed to talk to the person sitting right next to me? I ordered some food the other day and realized there were no free tables, so I asked a stranger if I could sit at his table and had a conversation with him and his buddy.
fc417fc802
All of this is contextual and it doesn't take a screen or a book for someone to give off clear vibes of not wanting to chat. "Mind if I sit here" in a crowded shop is the expectation. Anything beyond that such as having a conversation with a total stranger depends on the subtle behavioral cues given off by the other party.
It's not my intention to be rude but based on your responses on this topic I'm guessing you're fairly oblivious to the relevant social cues. There's nothing wrong with that per se but adopting an attitude of "not my problem" is probably just going to aggravate the people around you.
Acrobatic_Road
I understand social cues. I am just more than willing to push the envelope. And I have nothing to lose by possibly causing some mild discomfort to a stranger by "gasp" talking to them like a fellow human being.
tenacious_tuna
> I'm going to talk to you whether you like it not. If you don't want to talk to people, then maybe don't put yourself in a social setting?
You seem to have a strange definition of what's a social situation. Maybe I want to be around people without talking to them; if I wanted to strike up conversation with strangers, I'd sit at a bar.
You're obviously conscious of the fact that you may be doing something that people don't want, which makes it all the more confusing to me that you're upset about people possibly preferring their phones to books: if you're going to interrupt them either way and potentially invade their space, why do you care how they're signalling? (For the record, I don't think people inherently are signalling, but you seem to--it's the inconsistency in your own stated approach that's confusing me.)
Acrobatic_Road
I think your idea of a social situation is too limiting and contributes to the loneliness epidemic. I moved to a completely different state where I didn't know a single person so I can't leverage an existing social circle to make friends. So I'm not going to refrain from talking to you just because you might want to be left alone. If you don't want a conversation, just say so. It's not hard.
Sure, I might be doing something you don't want, but that's also true of asking a girl out (and I mean in real life, not on snapchat). She might say yes, she might say no. Either way, you I never get anywhere unless I ask.
Here are some places I think its perfectly acceptable to talk to strangers:
- A class (barring when the professor is speaking).
- On a bus or at the bus stop.
- A coffee shop
- Airplane ride
- DMV
- Waiting for a table at a restaurant
Maybe you disagree. I can't read minds.
As for what makes phones particularly bad, its because they discourage social interaction. Why talk to people when you have endless stream of dopamine in your pocket? In economic speak, phones dramatically raise the opportunity cost of actual social interactions. So everyone just stares at their phones, and this negatively affects even those who choose to opt-out of technology because we are deprived of human engagement because we are unable to compete with those little dopamine machines.
Oh, and unlike with books, everyone has a phone at all times, and when things get boring (even a little), then the phones come out and you're left talking with yourself.
bawolff
> it always has to be ME to start a conversation in a room full of people because they would rather stare at a screen that say a hello.
Perhaps these people just don't like you.
If you find a social interaction is entirely one sided, usually that is a sign you should take a moment to self reflect on what is going on.
Acrobatic_Road
Yes, possibly. But they also don't talk to each other. It's pretty unlikely that nobody in that room likes anyone else. It's more likely that they just don't know how to socialize. And when I start talking, people tend to open up and laugh at my jokes. So I wouldn't say anybody dislikes me.
fc417fc802
> A book is a nice conversation starter.
Do you make a habit of interrupting people who are reading? If so I can just about guarantee that you're "that guy" to the people you're doing that to.
Acrobatic_Road
Depends. In a library? No. In a social setting? That's fair game.
fc417fc802
I don't think most people view a table for one at a cafe as a social setting with regard to total strangers. It will depend of course and there will be associated social cues; reading anything be it a screen, a book, or something else is a strong cue against unsolicited social interaction in almost any context.
Acrobatic_Road
It depends, it depends. You need to look at other signals. Are they extremely absorbed? Is it somewhere extremely quiet (like a library), or somewhere louder (like a coffee shop)?
jmye
> Do you commonly carry those around with you?
I do when I’m going somewhere that doesn’t allow phones. How is this complicated or hard to understand?
Mistletoe
Or just do what we did before, sit and think. What they call "mindfulness" now and even meditation is what we used to call just being alive.
Aboutplants
Good news! If your alone there are other options!
bawolff
Can you be specific what you mean by that. Are you just saying if you are alone you should go to other resturants?
I mean, sure that is true, but that logic would also apply to a resturant that spits in your food.
Acrobatic_Road
Yes! Phones should be treated like smoking.
wussboy
I like this idea. You can use your phone but you have to go outside to do it.
KellyCriterion
++1
tayo42
Smoking and non smoking sections, separated by a small plastic window?
gosub100
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?
nahkoots
Linus Tech Tips made a Faraday cage out of an employee's house using graphite-based EMF-blocking paint. MMS messages with images couldn't be sent from within the house, although text messages and phone calls went through. They didn't do anything to treat the windows, though, so maybe if you combine the paint with some sort of fine wire mesh over the windows you'd get a more comprehensive blocking effect.
At $200/gallon, the cost of the paint would also be a major consideration.
dredmorbius
For those near the SF Bay Area, the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, with its copper-cladded exterior, is an excellent instance of this.
I suspect that the effect was unintentional, but (at least until internal WiFi access was provided) the consequences were delightful.
Any metallic grid should attenuate signals effectively. Old-school lathe-and-plaster construction (which often incorporates a wire mesh) is well-known WiFi / cellular poison:
<https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-get-a-wifi-signal-...>
silisili
You really don't need a full on faraday cage. Signals in the phone frequency range are pretty poor at penetration, especially brick or concrete. I once lived in a house with lath and plaster walls, and I had to leave the office door open to even get wifi in there.
Perhaps some well placed metallic material on or near the windows would suffice?
gruez
>I wonder if this could be done via wallpaper and printing using a conductive ink printed on the same pattern?
AFAIK they have to be grounded so it'll be a massive pain to install, even if you can get it printed.
kibwen
Last I checked there was no consensus on whether or not a Faraday cage needed to be grounded to function properly, which seemed surprising.
iamnothere
A large cage probably doesn’t need to be grounded to prevent a relatively weak signal from escaping, as attenuation would be high due to the amount of material involved. Smaller cages may radiate the signal after some attenuation.
Edit: reading some more about it, cages that are close to the radiating element may experience capacitive coupling, and this is what can cause an ungrounded cage to serve as an antenna. A larger cage, with the radiating element farther away from the cage, is less likely to experience this. In either case grounding should reduce this risk.
avidiax
Well, what does it mean to be "grounded". There isn't something special about the voltage potential of Earth.
If a Faraday cage blocks interstellar signals only if one part of it is stuck in a ball of mud and rock... well, I have some questions.
There is the possibility of the ground being a return path to the transmitter, but if that were effective, radio infrastructure would interfere world-wide, and you could transmit through the earth's core. And even that argument would suggest that the Faraday cage should be floating, not grounded.
frollogaston
Just a typical metal mesh building material can do it. My friend has a house with an accidental Faraday cage like that. 0 bars unless you're near a window, 90% packet loss if you're near a window but not sticking the phone outside. Wifi only works if you're LOS to the access point.
madaxe_again
Just run a jammer - much easier and just as illegal - although if you use a busted microwave from the 80s it gives you good plausible deniability.
wikibob
Faraday cages are passive and not illegal. Jamming is.
gruez
>although if you use a busted microwave from the 80s it gives you good plausible deniability.
Not every radio runs off 2.4G, the frequency that microwaves would affect. Even for wifi there's 5ghz and 6ghz bands. For cellphones there are far more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_NR_frequency_bands
gosub100
"just"
cyanydeez
SImilar, except their belief is part of a illness that's some kind of dementia. It went further into all kinds of radiations, including things that are meaningless, like the 911 frequency.
It degraded slowly over a decade. It's "stabilized" but just a bunch of word salad.
gosub100
I'm so frustrated with her. she believes any health conditions are either a result of RF emanation or "the jab. Her brain is completely unaccountable for illnesses incurred by those before RF or vaccines. It's infuriating, but telling her she's wrong won't help. It reminds me of the advice to never tell a paranoid schizophrenic they are delusional. It just makes you part of their opposition.
gentleman11
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?
It's a tricky policy to enforce smoothly
pajamasam
The article mentions some of the places use Yondr phone pouches.
frollogaston
They don't take your phone. People just follow the rule.
SilverElfin
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.
le-mark
I don’t see kids glued to devices in public as much as I used to. Now its around 50/50. I feel like there’s a growing social stigma about it now. And rightfully so imo.
fc417fc802
The former (traditional personal devices) and the latter (wearable surveillance platforms) are not even remotely the same thing.
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.