To think video may have killed the radio star but the internet killed the pub!

[SullivanCh]

What made me write this is my grandparents kept a town centre pub in the 40s and 50s. My dad grew up in the pub. My Dad said that his parents - who died before I was born - used to provide Xmas dinner every year for homeless men and cater for those at the margins of society. This has got me thinking lately.

It seems to me pubs at the time - the 40s/50s - then fulfilled one of functions that the internet now fills - helping marginalized people feel included and integrated.

i started drinking in pubs in 1990 - it’s been widely written about that pub attendance and culture have diminished since this time - I’ve seen it myself with pubs I grew up with in my local area closing etc etc .

People often suggest that pub culture declined a lot following the smoking ban - this may be right but personally I think the internet was more responsible for killing pub culture. Not just to help lonely or marginalised people like I mentioned above, but the internet helps people in general interact and connect from the comfort of their own homes - where drinks and snacks are cheaper, everything’s less hassle etc etc …,

So maybe you all disagree with me but I feel the internet has a lot to do with the demise of the pub - more than the smoking ban I think. Any thoughts?

@colta
No, you ought to feel bad for the tone of your post. This thread is filled with people who are, or know people who are struggling to make a living. You chose this as a backdrop to your virtue signalling about the effects of alcohol abuse, which no publican would ever want as a consequence of them running a community hub where people can get together and socialise.

I'm thrilled that you're insulated from these market forces, but please spare a thought for those who aren't. Bad form.

Are you the radio star?

l moved abroad many years ago but did my teen and 20s drinking in one of the places you mention and the pub culture was great! You wouldn’t have caught me dead in an estate pub, too scary, but The Borough and places like that (The Goat Major, Dempsey’s, The North Star, Pen and Wig) used to be very much my thing! I haven’t been there in many years so I’ve no idea what it’s like now.

Where I live now, the local government has actually just declared a budget deficit due to the massive reduction in alcohol taxes being collected by bars. When I talked to younger colleagues about this, most said they don’t drink at all, preferring gummies (legal here, but not for me!). I still have a glass of wine, a beer or a cocktail but probably once a month rather than once a week like I did in my 30s.

Bars, so I’m told by the born post 1992 crowd, are mostly for going, getting your insta pics with their various feature walls, unique landscaping etc then buggering off 20 minutes later!

Yes, that's definitely part of it. There's more options for entertainment in your own home now, as well as communicating with friends from the couch instead of having to actually go out and physically see them. Other stuff too though:

Smoking ban.

Cost of living.

Drink-driving laws.

Increase in prosperity and more comfortable homes. People used to go to the pub to escape slums. Now practically everyone has a home that's watertight and has central heating and a comfortable place to sit and a cooker and a TV and isn't insanely overcrowded, and being in it isn't actively unpleasant.

Men now expected to spend more time with their wife / kids instead of just going to work, considering that they've done their duty to the family and going out boozing.

Greater mobility, for most people. When cars didn't exist or they did exist but only the wealthy could afford them, working class people (certainly in rural areas) lived within walking distance of work and did their socialising likewise. Now more people live in one place, work in another, see family and friends in another, driving between them - the different aspects of life are kept a lot more separate. And people have a lot more options for how they spend their leisure time if they can drive to sporting events / arts events / whatever their personal idea of fun happens to be. I think it's not so much that the internet killed the pub as the car killed the community. It used to be that for a lot of people, the people they worked with were the same people who lived very close by and the same people you hung around with socially and you could walk into the pub without having actually arranged to meet anyone, and there would be people you knew. That's mostly gone now. Your family members and your neighbours and your colleagues and the friends you made in different places at different times of life have quite likely never met each other; everything's just more fragmented.

Internet dating must be a factor, too. Nobody goes to pubs looking to pull men / women any more, right?