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.

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".

Did you ever meet up again afterwards?