The Cure for Social Media Fever and AI Fatigue Can Be Found At Your Local Community Center
The community center as a place of healing is not a revolutionary idea. Scholars much more well-versed a well-credentialed than myself have already expounded on the importance of third spaces for health and well-being on a community level, but as a regular partaker of my own local community center’s offerings (AKA I get my ass kicked on a regular basis by elderly Asian ladies at drop-in fitness classes) I feel entitled to expound just a little.
First off, nothing will re-align your Instagram poisoned brain like taking a community center work out class. I can guarantee you that there be bodies of all ages, types, colours, and stripes in there. They’ll be old men, pregnant ladies, stay-at-home-soccer-mommies, gawky teenagers, and normal-looking human variations of all kinds – all just doing their thing. There will probably be people doing exercises the “easy” way, the “wrong” way, the “unaesthetic” way. There will be stretch marks, greasy hair, belly fat, un-sculpted calves and (in my experience anyway) very little judgement. Just a bunch of normal people with lives that involve doing things other than looking hot and skinny in a room that (also in my experience) probably painted an ugly colour doing their best to take care of themselves. Seriously, stop swiping on and facetuned fitfluencers or shirt-averse ultramarathon bros that make you feel like shit for having a normal human body and get thee to the community center gym.
Similarly, if you (like me) are deeply horrified by the ascendance of generative AI and entire world’s seeming rush to outsource their creativity to a soulless and thieving entity I recommend taking a community center art class. I recently did so (drawing for adult beginners because my typical artistic output leans in the direction of disproportionate stick people) and I was blown away by how much it restored my faith in the power of human creativity. Every week I find myself in a room with a bunch of other normal people taking the time and energy and money out of their (undoubtedly) busy lives to learn a creative skill that will, in all likelihood, not serve them financially in any way. It’s a beautiful thing.
Avail yourselves friends, and remember – if they tried to introduce public libraries and community centers today they’d call it evil socialism.