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Hypothesis: few people actually *want* a full-blown community past about 25. They just think they do. It’s a lot of time and work to be involved in “community” in the sense of shared beyond-family communal daily life (meals etc) and weekly parties, seeing friends everyday etc.
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I think it's somewhere in between. I'm too introverted to live in a commune, but I end up at them once a week or so. More mainstream, a lot of East Coast / Midwest culture involves having a "crew" who you hang out with a lot, including with your kids, etc.
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How big a city are we talking when you say east coast/midwest? New York/DC/Boston/Philly? Newport? Scranton? People underestimate how much of the population lives in larger cities now. Small towns are kinda demographically exceptional now.
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I've seen it from my hometown to NYC. It's often the hometown locals, not the transients, that do it. I've heard that the latter actually find it hard to really break into the "crews" when they move there.
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I think that was true 20y ago. Now transients and transplants kinda outnumber locals in most places, and don't give a shit about breaking into local scenes. In Seattle the famous "Seattle freeze" is barely noticed by the Amazonians who now pass through working for a few years.
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As far as majorities, it's not cloud or community, but disconnected that predominates. From "Bowling Alone" to "Disconnected America", it seems like the communities blew up, some cloud people condensed to a stable position, the majority are still drifting... cc
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