Gas costs money. The car costs money. You can only do the same hike that's an hour away so many times, before you're traveling to go to new places, and hotels cost money at that point. Pickleball courts cost money. The pickleball equipment costs money. People do go to the library, and then they go home and don't interact with other people.
Then go for a walk in the closest park instead of a hike an hour away.
Play volleyball on the free net at the local park instead of signing up for pickleball and buying great.
The people who want to avoid activities and socialization will always pick the more expensive activities so they can dismiss them. Yet go into the real world and people have no problem finding ways to socialize and have fun without spending much money.
That’s unfortunate. Generally the poles are metal and permanent. It’s common for people to bring their own net when they bring their own ball. A basic net is cheap
Gas is at worst 6 bucks a gallon, which gets you 30 miles on a bad car. That’s enough for like 5 hikes; if you can’t afford a single dollar split across all your friends for multiple hours of entertainment and exercise then I do concede that you are in a bad spot; but I think most of us are not quite so destitute. (Also, my friends and I do the same hikes all the time.)
Pickleball courts do not cost money, they are freely provided by the state. I go to free pickleball courts every week in SF, and I bike there for free. You can buy 4 paddles for $20 at sports basement and get literally hundreds if not thousands of hours of entertainment just on that.
I dunno, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for this perspective. Almost everything I do with friends isn’t particularly expensive - if you can’t find cheap things to do you just aren’t even looking.
The fact that many young people don't seem to think that "Hey, we'd just go over to someone's apartment/house to hang out and have a meal or drink" as a primary form of entertainment (vs. some "activity") makes me realize how much we have fucked over many young people as a society in general.
I did that as a kid and I loved it, but it made sense when everyone was in bicycling distance.
Then one by one, we got cars and the friend groups shuffled from "Who is in bicycling range" to "Who is in driving range", and driving range is so big that it's not practical to drive 4 miles to my closest friend, knock on her door, hope she isn't having sex with her husband, and ask if she wants to chill
> and driving range is so big that it's not practical to drive 4 miles to my closest friend, knock on her door, hope she isn't having sex with her husband, and ask if she wants to chill
Does she not have a phone? Calling someone up and saying "hey, let's hang out" and then driving over to hang out was literally how most of suburban social interactions happened in the 90s.
I don't think the issue is that they are naive or lack social skills, I think they just choose against it, and then lie about the motivation for their choice. It's all over this thread: "No time and no money!" But you know it's false. I think they know it's a lie too they just don't want to admit to themselves and others that they like TikTok more than people. Being a lame couch potato is socially acceptable if and only if you connect it to the big class-based social cause. They relished in the COVID lockdowns for similar reasons.
