Are there still places with vibes anymore? Or did the internet kind of kill it?

I feel like digital spaces have vibes. Nostr has a vibe for sure, but everywhere I go (in America at least) feels flat, steril and homogenous now.

People like to pretend otherwise, romanticizing local charm and it’s fun to do so, but in reality there is no meaningful difference between New York, LA, Chicago, Austin, Miami etc…

The differences feel increasingly superficial. Miami with its neon pink and bad Latin art. New York with its identical minimalist cafes selling identical oat lattes. These aren’t cities anymore, they’re brands. “Keep Austin Weird” feels less like the rallying cry of a bohemian collective and more like a safe corporate brand slogan.

It wasn’t always like this. Cities used to incubate true subcultures that couldn’t thrive anywhere else. Seattle once had grunge music emerging organically from local clubs, distinct in sound and attitude. Detroit was a birthplace for techno and industrial grit that couldn’t have been manufactured. New Orleans had jazz clubs and vibrant local traditions that permeated every street corner authentically. Before the internet collapsed distances, you could sense deep authenticity upon arriving somewhere new. The vibe wasn’t something designed by marketing departments; it was organically woven into the streets, the people, the music, and local myths.

Now, vibes feel engineered and commoditized, reduced to Instagrammable moments and easily replicable aesthetics. I once watched from the balcony of my hotel in Nashville as 200 women waited in line to take the same stupid picture with the same stupid set of angel wings.

Digital spaces, ironically, have become refuges of uniqueness, fostering communities unburdened by geographical homogenization. Platforms like nostr host unique niche communities, from hyper-specific gaming bitcoin cultural milieu to obscure philosophical discussions, that retain genuinely distinctive vibes.

Perhaps we’re now entering a strange inversion, where real-world spaces chase digital popularity, adopting blandness to maximize broad appeal.

In this inversion, digital worlds might become the primary spaces where unique vibes survive, thrive, and multiply—leaving our physical world as little more than a flattened reflection of what used to be.

Nostr is where the vibes are at.

Washington DC, USA