Memes and social movements
Gretchen McCulloch, Because Internet:
“Why do games like FarmVille and Pokémon Go periodically sweep social media? In a previous decade, games like gin rummy and pool, which are conducive to lively conversation, were characteristic of third places. Oldenburg also points out how third places have been essential to forming the kinds of large, loose-knit social groups that are the core of new social movements, such as the agora in ancient Greek democracy, taverns around the American Revolution, and coffeeshops during the Age of Enlightenment, which parallels how Twitter was used for the Arab Spring or the Black Lives Matter protests. You can’t fit enough dissenters in your living room to make a revolution out of close ties alone: you need the larger, looser network of a third place.