[wateralien]

One of the most amazing things happened during the day long power cut in 2025 in Spain and Portugal... eventually the cell towers went down and everyone just went to the parks and socialised. Connected with friends, strangers. Everyone was so in the moment because there was nowhere else to be, nothing else to distract them. People would pick up their phone and realise there was nothing there for them and put it back down and continue chatting. People were present in a way I've never seen in these places before. It was pretty magical.

[frank_nitti]

This also happened in the LA area back around 2015, lasting about 36-48 hours - no power and consequently no internet. Out in suburbia, it was the first time many neighbors even met each other, or the first time some neighbors had spoken in person in years.

Standing in our driveways chatting, lending tools or supplies to one another, what used to be very standard suburban life.

It was amazing that we had become so disconnected in only 5 years after smartphones became nearly ubiquitous in that part of the world

[arjie]

It's so funny how those things go. By contrast, to go full social media, this is our condo building WhatsApp group in SF's SOMA district: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/File:Screenshot_Montage_-_Pa...

I wonder what the difference is between your community there and our community here since all these interactions are mediated by smartphone.

[fullstop]

I'm going to start off by saying that I know all of my immediate neighbors. More importantly, I know pretty much all of the neighborhood dogs since I walk a lot, and dogs have to be walked. I don't have a dog, but I sometimes carry dog treats on me for when we cross paths.

There are plenty of people who never leave their house, and I have no idea what they do all day.

A few years ago a very small, yet very strong, thunderstorm clipped through and took out trees, mailboxes, and power. One large tree fell on a neighbor's grill, and another somehow took out mailboxes on both sides of the street.

There was so much damage, but it was amazing -- everyone was out there, together, cutting up the trees and clearing the debris from the road. I saw neighbors that I hadn't seen outside in _years_. I know that part of this was because of the chaos, but the biggest part was that nobody had power and the cell towers weren't working either. Unfortunately, it was brief.

Maybe I'm just getting old but the more I see our society the more I feel that smart phones, the internet, and social media were a mistake. I say this as I use them daily, of course, but there's some truth in the gen z phrase "touch grass".

[sergeym]

Same with kids, kids especially teenagers are always home and I only see them when they board the school bus, it is pretty sad actually.

[k4rnaj1k]

It's kinda crazy how much time people waste on social media without much benefit to them.

After an hour doom scroll session I don't really remember most of it.

[pixl97]

Dopamine is a helluva drug.

Makes ya blind to things far off on the horizon.

[AlecSchueler]

Did you ever meet up again afterwards?

[almogo]

This reminds me of the Jewish Sabbath. Here in Tel Aviv, Saturday means no shops, much fewer restaurants, less programming on TV, gyms/etc open late/close early.

The parks and beaches are full of people just existing.

[pocksuppet]

That sounds nice. Not sure I'd like to live in a war zone, but it sounds like it has its perks. But wait, isn't that just weekends?

[ViktorRay]

In the Miami area it is similar.

On Saturdays, in the town of Surfside, I would frequently see many Orthodox Jewish people at the beaches and cheerfully going for walks and so on. A pleasant and wonderful atmosphere.

[sdellis]

Reminds me of my friends in Gaza, where every day means no shops, no restaurants, no home, no medicine, no food, no water, no hope. The beaches are full of people just trying to exist.

[fugalfervor]

The person you are talking to did not personally commit genocide in Gaza. Just as I, an American citizen, did not declare war on Iran.

In fact, I think the war in Iran is a stupid and immoral thing to do. It's possible that the person you are responding to feels the same about the Israeli government's genocidal actions in Gaza.

However, you did not bother to find out. When you judge someone before knowing them, it is called "prejudice". Pre-judging.

[Moomoomoo309]

Did the comment you replied to actually accuse them of any of those things? I don't see them doing that. They juxtaposed the two situations, but they made no accusations nor casted any blame. There isn't even any prejudice I can see. Was the comment edited or something? I don't see how your comment makes sense as a reply to its parent.

[solumunus]

> I don't see how your comment makes sense as a reply to its parent.

But you can see why the Gaza response made sense? It was completely irrelevant to this discussion. I’m not sure how you’re missing the heavy sub text here.

[gamblor956]

Maybe next time Gaza won't break a ceasefire, invade, and kill and rape over a thousand people.

[bawis]

You need sources for this one, specifically the killing and raping claims.

[gamblor956]

https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/12/middleeast/report-sexual-viol...

The report notes that both Hamas fighters and regular Gazan males participated in the rape and mutilation of Israeli hostages.

[bawis]

The report is done by an Israeli organization, find another neutral, credible source for these claims.

[solumunus]

A ridiculous response.

[PoignardAzur]

Friendly reminder that, for all that I despise Israeli politics, "existing in Tel-Aviv" isn't a crime or an aggression against Palestinians.

We can think ill of the Israeli state without jumping to "fuck you for living in Israel and having nice things" as soon as someone mentions their city name.

[mannanj]

The UN classified it a genocide. Is the latest to call that a marketing ploy or Russian disinformation and say it's not OK or hip or fashionable to question our allies? Evil productized?

[almogo]

Victimhood stopped being a valid excuse on the 7th.

I hope your friend over there is doing well, and hopes for peace as much as we all do over here. Maybe then we'll see an end to all this.

[twolegs]

Sometimes people talk about these types of experiences and I get the feeling that it's an idealized picture of what really happened. I went through this experience in Portugal and it was exactly as described. Everyone came to the same conclusions during the power cut (that it is great to just hang and talk), only to forget the lessons the next day.

[omerfarukkural]

yes :D

[jmilloy]

I had an experience with this during the Helene Hurricane in rural western North Carolina. We had no power or cell service for 18 days. In the first few days the roads were too damaged or block, so the only modes of travel a lot of places were by foot, bicycle, or ATV. Suddenly we were visiting with our neighbors by foot without prior plans, folks were grilling in their front yards, and of course, phones were not relevant. The first few days, you pick up your phone out of habit and "realise there was nothing there for them and put it back down". And then you stop even doing that. A lot of people suffered and there was a lot of damage. In other ways we were thriving.

[Shocka1]

I volunteered down there for a week when that happened. I think the only thing we used our phones for was a picture here and there. Otherwise, complete darkness. Despite the obvious of it being a disaster zone and homes destroyed everywhere, it was a positive experience.

When I first heard of Starlink and the possibility to have internet everywhere, I was a little sad inside. It is now impossible to escape in this world, even in the most remote mountains on earth. People always look at me sideways when I say this, but I truly think the power/internet needs shutoff for 6 months to a year every so often to give us a little bit of a reset.

[forinti]

I spent many holidays in Uruguay in the 80s and early 90s.

I loved cartoons, but TV was only on at 10am, so I had to go out and play. If we went to my grandparents' beach house, there was an old vacuum tube TV that took hours to heat up so mostly I didn't bother to use it. I watched Tyson's defeat to Buster Douglas on that TV and the next morning there was still a little point of light in the centre of the screen because it also took a long time to go completely blank.

So not having access to TV was liberating. I wouldn't mind having no Internet on weekends today.

[sailfast]

Easily configurable via router rules at home!

[lofaszvanitt]

People can't even keep up discussions. Most of the population is totally dumbened down, like on the levels of barely functioning monkeys.

[noiv]

This has a name in literature: post disaster utopia, google it :)

[sriacha]

'A Paradise Built in Hell' by Solnit is a good read about it

[jjav]

> One of the most amazing things happened during the day long power cut in 2025 in Spain and Portugal

After hurricane Maria in 2017 in Puerto Rico, most people had no electricity or internet for many weeks, some for many months. This kind of human (normal!) connection fluorished for all that time.

[xen_relay]

Lovely! I am all for an offline day in the year where everybody does what you described.

[fantasizr]

I forget where, but there was a restaurant who locked all phones in a box at your table and if you made it to the end without opening it the table got a free cookie.

[andai]

That should just be every restaurant, unless you're eating alone. It's just disrespectful otherwise.

(And even alone there's a pretty strong case to be made that you should pay attention to the actual food.)

[embedding-shape]

Plenty of these experiences can be found without disconnecting the electricity for multiple countries. Personally, I find musical events of all sorts are amazing for this, and completely AI free should you chose the right events :)

This weekend Liquicity came to Barcelona (for the first time?) and being with other strangers, dancing all night long, to other humans playing us music and singing and sometimes fucking up, is just an experience out of this world, and these sort of events are all around us, almost every week or at least every month. If not in your country, probably in your neighboring country, just a bus/train ride away.

You just need to take the steps and get out of your house, the human connections are out there and ready to be grabbed by the ones who dare and persist :)

[Tepix]

The problem with live concerts is that a substantial number of people are holding up their smartphones in front of them and experiencing it through the screen.

[HDBaseT]

TOOL concerts (minus ones at music festivals) typically restrict phone usage for this exact reason.

Maynard lets everyone record the last song and 99% of people respect the request for no phones. It's not even disrespectful for the band, or yourself, its rude to the person behind you.

[embedding-shape]

As long as you don't, what's the problem? Let them miss it, find a new location you see better, then enjoy :)

Great way of preventing this is going to smaller events, tend to be a lot better in most ways.

[sojournerc]

That might work at concerts, but it still sort of irks me. Museums, however, have become the worst for this. People stepping in front of me holding their phone in front of my face while I'm looking at the thing just so they can get a picture and wander off without ever really looking. If you want a picture of the art, go to the gift shop

[dyauspitr]

I remember going to Coachella every year from 2005-2010 and it was a great experience. I went in 2017(?) once after that and it seemed like literally everyone had their phones up filming during the sets. It was a night and day difference. Even the EDM tents were people just filming which also had a chilling effect on how crazy people were getting.

[embedding-shape]

Large electronic music events always been like that in my mind, attend the events with less than 1000 attendees and you'll find a completely different vibe. Also, Cochaella is American, maybe try something European next time, I've never been to any North American parties, but judging from what I could see in the past, and even today, they sure look a lot more commercialized than the same-sized events in Europe, and people seem to be interested in something else than dancing their ass off with strangers.

[regexorcist]

> they sure look a lot more commercialized

Same here. Just looking into going to Coachella or Burning Man seems like so much work. I'll take a summer festival in Spain, Germany or Netherlands instead.

[ThrowawayR2]

Finally, a use case for smart glasses!

(Very much /s in case it wasn't clear.)

[tardedmeme]

This is so true. It can even just be regular club nights at good clubs. Ever been to Berghain? (Me neither)

Some clubs around here sometimes run whole-weekend parties that attract thousands of people, those are fun.

[mindfulbun]

Why only day in a year? It can be offline Friday and even offline hours of the day, like 17-20 hours of the day are no screen hours

[mycall]

Let's do it today

[anhner]

one day a year? it should be every week :)

[ecshafer]

You just invented the Sabbath.

[fullstop]

Now we can spend the rest of our days arguing over whether it should be on Saturday or Sunday!

[timbaboon]

Let’s do both?

[gib444]

In comparison to other parts of Europe, my impression (as a visitor to both but mostly Spain) so that they're way ahead in maintaining social interactions, community, neighbourly relations etc. Is that the case?

[frank_nitti]

In my brief exposure of about 6 months here after ~40 years in Southern CA, it really seems to be the case. I’ve never seen so many people just interacting and enjoying one another’s company for hours on end.

For a decent portion of any given day, nearly every table at every establishment is occupied with people chatting, not browsing nor texting. The local parks are filled with people of all ages playing. Couldn’t help but laugh in disbelief initially

[alex_duf]

With AI we're about to have a trust crisis (I'll explain in a sec), so if we extrapolate it very far, we could see a world where nobody trusts anything displayed on a device, which is essentially what you describe but in a world with electricity still running.

The trust issue: we already see hacker news members accusing each other of being LLMs, we already see legitimate images being immediately put in the AI category, and AI images and videos being shared as if the truth. We already see signs of infosec changing forever, with flaws found in SSL libraries that makes you wonder how trusty that little padlock next to the URL will become, we already see operating systems having to patch faster than they can.

With all that you get to wonder how much you can trust the pixels you see on your device, and how much we'll collectively trust them in the future. That leads you to trust your neighbours way more than your social media feed, which frankly, may have a positive impact on society over the long run, despite a very painful transition.

That's under the hypothesis that AI leads us to experience a trust crisis, which isn't a given.

[Tepix]

It's the same with remote locations, we destroyed substantial parts of their magic by getting everyone online everywhere, all the time.

[par]

So what is stopping you from going to talk to your neighbor right now?

[squibonpig]

The phones

[the_gipsy]

We need to go back

[krige]

[flagged]

[gbgarbeb]

I can't charge my car without my phone. Oh, also, I can't charge my car without the grid.

[jjulius]

This feels like a disingenuous interpretation of the parent comment.

[jjulius]

People don't want to hear this hard truth, sadly.