The true social media. Walk up and stick a quarter on the cabinet. With the ever present sounds of bowling balls hitting pins at the Sports Center, you know exactly which one is yours out of the seven up there. Everybody hovering around, watching and kibitzing. Emotions bounce from stoic concentration to exuberant trash talk. Respect is briefly granted to the kid running the joystick for a half-hour until the hollers and applause when a frame perfect dragon punch knocks him out mid-kick, dethroning the current champ. Quarter laid up again, back in the line for the next dopamine hit shared with strangers.

We are more connected than ever, yet still so far apart.

We had an Asian store across from the middle school where I hung out and we played Street Fighter for hours after school. The second generation Hmong that came out of the Vietnam war would would hang out and play. We all loved it! I'd often play Ken and they'd play Ryu, haha, we love our avatars. Sometimes I gave them a run for their money, sometimes they taught me new techniques, like a new sequence of moves.

Some of the other kids on my street went to private schools and I think they missed out on some of the lessons/bonding I got from interacting with a variety of people in public school. It's good to get out into social setting and mix it up with folks.

Note that this wasn't a global phenomenon. We had SF2 in Spanish arcades, and I a lot of people wanting to play, but basically nobody played versus in the arcades I visited: The game was too expensive to make someone's investment last a single 3 round fight. So instead you'd see a line of people waiting to play single player, and helping each other out.

The multiplayer games that did well were all PvE, like Gauntlet or Knights of the Round. A very different culture.

I recall during the 90s spending a bunch of time on SF2 and Mortal Kombat in arcades: shopping malls, bowling alleys, even some restaurant/bars that had a small arcade. One of the fun experiences was one arcade that Saturday mornings they had a "Freeplay" time for a few hours where everyone paid like $5 and every game was in Freeplay mode. It always amazes me how we all learned the special moves and fatalities word of mouth and eventually they'd get published in gaming magazines. The whole winner stays, loser pays - folks setting their quarter on the arcade to reserve their next spot. Many years later a coworker and I bought a very well used (cigarette smell and burns) MK2 machine for the office break area that took me back. Comically we found at least $10 worth of quarters inside the enclosure. Good times.

It was somewhat anesthetized compared to running out into an empty lot to play football but yeah better than staring at a screen and calling it networking.

I'm not so sure... Where I grew up there was no arcade.

It's easy to say that we are more connected but far apart, but only if you ignore the democratization that has come with that connectivity.

Might be a stretch, but have you tried climbing or similar social sports?

Climbing is a bit more for young adults, but since the wall is a shared resource, you have a lot of these social interactions, and it's mostly strangers as well, you just walk up, pay for a couple of hours and start climbing.

I'm sure there's social sports more appropriate for adults and elderly as well.

You can still go out there and do things like join a running club. People are still going to arcades in Japan.

Comments like these are kind of ironic.