I completely agree that “third places” have been all but eradicated in favor of revenue-generating spaces. This trend alone has lead to the death of a lot of things, including a sense of community and local engagement.

I think it also has a lot to do with how abstracted we are from reality. We’ve built all these systems to replace actual face-to-face communities, and people would rather surround themselves in that than to expose themselves to the unpredictability of real life - for better and worse.

It’s a hard sell to get people to reverse course because it’s so much more painless/numbing to engage with these systems. (Not to even mention AI promising to give every person their own personal Yes-Man.)