Communities that have strong connections among their residents are more resilient and resistant to destructive rumors. In those communities, it is harder for rumors and misinformation to spread because people know and trust each other. And that resistance is strongest when the connections span groups across the community.
A recent article in Vox described the rise in “neighborism” as people have developed a greater appreciation for more local connections to help with things like child care or emergencies. As the article states, “For many Americans, the difference between stability and crisis comes down to whether someone nearby can help.”1 And those neighborly connections can result in actions beyond watering plants or feeding cats, such as when the people in Minneapolis came together to protest the Federal law enforcement actions that led to the deaths of two U.S. citizens.2
Strong Connectors Build Strong Communities
To get some insights into how connections are grown and strengthened in a community, I sat down with Mike, someone who helps build community connections in a variety of ways. Mike has a counseling background and now focuses on student financial aid, but outside of his regular work, he is very engaged with promoting stronger community connections.
One way Mike fosters community connections is by running the local dart league. Once a week during the winter months, the league brings together 60 people to play darts and socialize.3 And non-league people have the opportunity to play in games after the league’s matches. Those pickup games expand the community-building aspect of the league, and they’re also a way to recruit new players to fill the handful of openings that occur every year.
As Mike put it, “The goal [of the dart league] is to build more community connections.” As he likes to say, “The strength of the league is the collective weakness of the talent,” which is a funny way to say that the league’s focus is socializing (and fun) rather than fierce competition. But Mike still recognizes that “establishing traditions and symbols of involvement with things like trophies” helps promote a sense of belonging and connections for all the league’s players (and fans).
Another feature of the league that contributes to its success in building a stronger community is that its members span many age, gender, professional, and socio-economic groups so that it connects people who might not have otherwise met or socialized.
Mike is also the bartender at the local movie house’s “lounge,” which is open several evenings a week. It is not as robust nor as large as the Cheers bar from the TV show, but it does have a similar vibe, even in a small town where many people greet each other by name as they walk down the street.
“The lounge is a place for people to come together and interact and connect, particularly on karaoke nights, since with that it is harder for people to stay in their own groups.” Other happenings at the lounge include monthly artist TED-type talks, drawing and singing groups, and book events, as well as Saturday morning cartoons during school holidays. The lounge also shows late-night band and horror films on weekends. Each type of event fosters its own mini-community, and for people who may have a harder time connecting, the lounge can be a comfort zone for meeting people and joining.
Third Places Are Welcoming Spaces That Build Connections and Community
“A good healthy community happens organically, but it occurs in welcoming spaces,” is how Mike characterizes the importance and value of both the dart league and the lounge. The same is true for other community fostering spaces like the coffee shop and pizza pub, where the captivating bartender seems to know everyone. Such community spaces are sometimes called “third places,” a term coined by Christensen and Oldenburg in their 1989 book, The Great Good Place, which is being updated by Christensen in a new version titled The Great Good Place II: Havens and Hangouts at the Heart of Community.4
The importance of such third places is seen clearly when one of them closes. That recently happened in Mike’s town, when one of the few full bar/restaurants suddenly closed in the fall of 2025 and has yet to reopen. It had been a recognized meeting place where locals of all types and tourists would gather at the bar, at closely spaced tables, and on the patio. (This place was more like TV’s Cheers than the movie theater’s lounge is, in that it was larger and more of a drop-in-and-get-a-drink-and-dinner type of place, plus it was adorned with lots of sports memorabilia, etc.).
And lastly, this is not all anecdotal or conceptual: Research has shown that use of community third places has been declining5 in parallel with the increasing rates of loneliness.6
Summary and Conclusions
The importance of community building with third-place types of locations has been declining, and contributing to the epidemic of loneliness in the U.S.7 This adds a new set of parameters to assessing the value of different organizations and businesses in cities and towns. While the traditional metrics of success, particularly for for-profit companies, focus on the financial bottom line, Mike’s closing wisdom is very insightful: “Community is more than revenue for a nonprofit. Community is the ROI for a nonprofit or any organization or person seeking to build connections.”
Consistent with that philosophy/insight, given the need for third places of various types to foster stronger communities, it would seem that for-profit companies could financially benefit by providing more welcoming spaces and locations that would build immunity against economically oppressive rumors and misinformation, and thus promote better-educated residents, local economic resilience, and growth. Those capabilities are becoming even more important as AI-generated videos are becoming more common and very difficult to recognize as fake and misleading.8
