Is the Internet Really a Third Space?

The Third Place, a concept coined by Ray Oldenburg, is described as “a familiar public spot where you regularly connect with others known and unknown, over a shared interest or activity”. Essentially, a social setting that exists separately from your home and your work, usually a place for relaxation or leisure. Ever since the advent of the internet, the barriers between work and home have slowly eroded, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, where working from home became increasingly common across almost all industries. With work and home life encroaching dangerously upon each others spheres, the metaphorical Third Place is more important than ever. Unfortunately, cultural changes in the last twenty years have seen Third Places declining in volume and popularity. Public amenities like parks and libraries are underfunded, busy work schedules leave people with less time to go out and socialise, and of course, the internet’s power of instantaneous communication has seen online spaces replace in-person interaction for many people. The question is, can a digital environment truly be a Third Place?

While most of the original writings on Third Places were concerned with physical locations like bars and coffee shops, the intangible qualities that they are looking for can still be applied for the most part to digital forums. As a framework, we can use Ray Oldenburg’s eight defining characteristics of a Third Place, which we can approach one at a time to see how they may or may not apply to online platforms.

Firstly, a Third Place must be Neutral Ground. This basically means that people are free to come and go as they please in these spaces, which I would say is mostly true online. Even more than physical locations, you can come and go from an online forum without even having to leave your house. There’s also the fact that the internet doesn’t have opening hours, so the only limitation on your socialising is whether or not anyone else you know is awake.

Similarly, a Third Place must be a Leveler, a place where rank or status don’t matter and there are no expectations, duties or proof of membership required. This has become less and less true of digital forums as time passes. For example, many social media websites now offer paid memberships that grant you a privileged position over other users, creating a social imbalance. There’s also the example of online video games, where there very much are duties expected of guild members, and often the barrier to entry of having to buy the game in the first place.

Oldenburg also states that Conversation Must Be the Main Activity. Looking again at video games, this is actually a fair point. While you may think that the main activity of gaming would be the game itself, there are many online games with dedicated chat features, or even no features other than conversation. Even then, many games are treated by their userbase as a social forum first with the gameplay being simply a medium by which to interact, especially since COVID.

Accessibility and Access are another major trait for Third Places, and for anyone with an internet-capable device, online spaces couldn’t be any more accessible. Being accommodating to users is another story, as the behaviour of bad actors in these spaces can be much more difficult to regulate than it would be in a physical setting, and poorly-moderated forums can be ruined for well-intentioned users.

The idea of Regulars is an interesting one in online spaces. While many people have made life-long friends in digital spaces, and will often interact with the same small circle of users, I also find the idea of the “Niche Internet Micro-Celebrity” interesting in this context. Basically, these are popular users you may not ever properly interact with, but whose regular presence on a site becomes a part of it’s mood and appeal to you. For example, Twitter user “dril”, the anonymous comedian, is perhaps the first user I think of when considering the platform, and if he was no longer posting, the site would lose some appeal for me.

Having a Low Profile is an unusual qualifier that I don’t think quite applies to online Third Places. After all, most of them are designed to sell themselves to a user and keep you coming back, and are in direct competition with other platforms.

Having a Playful Mood is certainly a feature of online communities. Be it memes that spring up around online video games or playful exchanges on social media platforms, comedy is definitely a shared language in online spaces. This can even be detrimental in some cases, such as on Letterboxd, where the pressure to be funny and build connections that way has led to app’s other intended purpose, as a genuine platform for criticism, being left by the wayside.

Finally, there’s the idea of the Third Place as a Home Away From Home. This is the biggest point against online platforms as Third Places, because when you really look at it, they aren’t somewhere distinct from your home. You access them at home, and your home thus also becomes the site of your social life, especially if you socialise online more than outside the home. Combine this with the rise of working from home, and what we have is an epidemic of people with only one place, work and socialisation crammed into the home with no clear barriers or delineation. While articles are regularly written about keeping a work-life balance in the digital world, figuring out how to balance this with the digital Third Place is the next big challenge for the internet age.