Third Places and Fake News

Good morning,

The November 12th Weekly Three:

• A pod of orcas sunk another yacht off the coast of Spain.

• Pro-choice abortion measures continue to win high levels of support in latest elections this week, even in deep-red states like Kentucky.

• The Government just quietly announced $16 billion in funding for the busiest public rail line in the Northeast Corridor (*ahem* trains > cars)

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The Concept of “Third Places”

I spent a cheerful three weeks in Europe this past year. From the dalmatian coastline of Croatia, to the Austrian Alps, to the center of the renaissance at Florence, I skipped cafe to cafe, town square to square, consuming a healthy volume of Aperol Spritz’s. Based on social media posts, I wasn’t the only one of you that did something similar.

There is something enchanting about the design of cities outside of America. If you strip away the older Baroque architecture or efficient public transportation, there is actually one very specific reason Americans find cities outside of our country attractive: it has everything to do with a sociological concept called “third places”.

A “third place” is a simple idea really. It refers to the social surroundings that are separate from our two usual social environments of home ("first place") and the workplace ("second place"). In essence, it’s a location we do a lot of actual living in that promotes social engagement and a real feeling of connectedness. Its where we are at our best. And many other countries, such as the ones I pranced through in Europe, are chock full of third places within walking distance of one another.

Every few blocks and around most street corners are cafes, churches, restaurants, libraries, and town squares full of people socializing outside of their work or home lives. Meanwhile, towns in America, especially the ones you drive past on the highway, all kinda look and are designed like this:

While the older cities and countries of the world were originally designed for social efficiency, American cities have always struck me for how focused the design is for cars, rather than the people who drive them.

Our cities, with some exceptions of course, are sprawled out and zoned in ways that don’t always promote the same social connectedness as cities elsewhere.

“Third places” is not just some simple observation, it is actually a deeply researched sociological idea that appears to have true benefits for communities.

Research conducted on students in California Universities found that third places “allow for customer and community self expression, support concentration, and allow for active participation in the space” which reinforces our sense of belonging within our communities; an unequivocally important sociological benefit for our health.

In short, third places are integral to strong and connected communities.

I’ll close with some advice: want to change the way your city is designed and built? Vote in your local elections. The layout of cities in many ways is influenced by the laws and policies set forth by city councils and other elected bodies. These groups are often the ones setting parameters that drive how communities are built for decades to come.

Fake News

Perhaps the one thing I will ever actually agree on with Donald Trump is that ‘fake news’ is a rampant problem. Now in his case he tends to criticize any coverage he deems negative of his image as fake news. However it is 100% entirely true that the way legacy print and broadcast media (especially political media) operate quite often toes the line of true journalism, and artificially created stories to get clicks.

Let’s take for example this recent story from the New York Times:

The poll this story is about was conducted by the Times in conjunction with Siena College, and would indicate as much as a five point swing in favor of Trump over Biden in six important swing states. The results of this poll were covered all over the country at just about every major legacy network and by many of the top political journalists in the US. The general consensus shared by these outlets? Democrats should be alarmed, as this poll indicates things are looking dicey heading into the 2024 election.

Except for the fact that Republican voters were heavily oversampled in this poll. In fact, if you look at the crosstabs for these polls, they show that 75% of the respondents identify as very conservative, somewhat conservative, or “moderate”. With that context, no sh*t the poll skewed towards Trump. But the question remains, why did this get so much coverage?

Up until the results of the 2024 election are announced, dozens of more headlines like this will appear, indicating wide swings in favor of Biden or Trump, like a pendulum.

Here’s another example: Back in August a poll highlighted just about half of all Republican voters supported Donald Trump for President. However how MSNBC framed this poll on a segment was one of fear and angst. “Look at how much support Trump still has!” they yelled in despair.

Except if you thought about it for one second, you’d realize that mathematically if only half of Republican voters supported him and showed up to vote, that it would be a landslide victory for Democrats. But again, that’s not what drives engagement and profit. Fear, angst, and uncertainty does.

Fox News runs a similar playbook to create angst, outrage, and engagement with their audience. Here’s the rough approach:

• On week 1 Fox News will run some crazy or alarmist story saying “there’s been a slight uptick in X event”. Something ridiculous and anecdotal like "Frogs in blue leaning districts appear to be turning gay”.

• Week 2 they’ll broadcast an update on that story, but will now have conducted a poll of Fox News watchers (likely the same people who watched the original segment a week prior): “We polled voters about who they think are to blame for turning the frogs gay, and over 68% of respondents believe Democrats are to blame”!

• Week 3 they’ll really dock this point in the harbor and perhaps even bring on a politician to share their thoughts on the topic, to which the politician will droll on: “yes Hannity, I can promise our voters we will be looking deeply into how and why Democrats are trying to turn all the frogs gay.”

And on and on this process goes until talking points or issues that were never true issues in the first place are forced into the national dialogue.

But if you take even a moment to look at how certain viewpoints, such as that Democrats need to drop Biden because of poor polling, are introduced into the mainstream dialogue, you would find the whole process to be hopelessly fabricated all in the pursuit of clicks and profit.

Case in point: state elections this week saw some of the highest levels of young voter turnout ever. College campuses, such as at Temple and Penn State reported between a 300% - 500% increase in young voter turnout compared to 2021. Gen Z is turning out in record numbers and voting blue in droves, massively swinging elections in favor of Democrats. Yet the headlines the media ran this week would have you think the youth are tuning out. It’s disingenuous.

It may be shocking to hear, but these large media companies are in fact businesses that exist primarily to make money. And profit in this industry is tied directly to how much content their audiences consume. So they are going to continue to spin up outrage through imbalanced polls or whatever else they have in their arsenal to keep readers engaged.

While Trump would like you to believe the “fake news media” is all part of some elaborate deep state conspiracy, the truth is much more boring and bureaucratic: the media wants to make money too. Because unfortunately the headline “entire country already made up their mind between candidate A and candidate B in 2020 so we're going on vacation” doesn’t exactly sell well now does it?

Want to know how combat fake news? Ignore the alarming political headlines. Just go out and vote.