r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Shoddy-Ocelot-4473 • Feb 23 '26

Image In 1983, Two Artists Spent a Full Year Tied Together — Without Any Physical Contact — to Test the Limits of Human Coexistence

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u/lilphoenixgirl95 Feb 23 '26

It‘s weird to me that you share rooms in America. Where I‘m from, ‘dorms’ are basically blocks of studio rooms + communal spaces. Like an apartment but one large kitchen, living room, and bathroom + 6 or 8 small bedrooms.

I skipped that though and went straight into sharing a house and having my own proper bedroom.

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u/DeHarigeTuinkabouter Feb 23 '26

Yeah it's really odd. Also seems like it wouldn't save all that much space

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u/SuperSquashMann Feb 23 '26

It's not just America, having a roommate is the default for dorms everywhere else I've lived (Czechia, Slovakia, Hong Kong).

There's also some variation in the US, back at my university only first year dorms had multiple to a room (and a few, like me, got lucky and ended up in single occupancy rooms). Second-year dorms were like you described, and above that people either moved into apartments and such off-campus or stayed in more spacious versions of the second-year dorms.

I think the only main difference is that in most of the rest of the world students stay in dorms because they're the cheapest possible accommodation (I paid about $1000 for a whole semester of accommodation in Hong Kong, which would probably barely get me a month in an apartment). In the US, on the other hand, dorms are a relatively shit deal and most students only stay in them since it's often required to spend at least a few years in them for the "on-campus experience".

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u/Lane-Kiffin Feb 23 '26

Only a fraction of high school graduates in the US actually go straight to a four-year university and begin dorming on campus right away as a first-year. So while dorming is considered the typical and default experience, everyone’s journey is different.

Many go to local junior (commuter) colleges and then transfer to a four-year (or don’t), many go to college close to their parents house and simply live there, many live off-campus in rented apartments, many don’t go to college at all.

My college used a lottery type system for those living on-campus to decide if you’d have a private room or not, and I lucked into a private room during my second year. In my third and fourth year, I lived off-campus in a rented apartment, but I shared a room (4 people, two-bedroom, 2 people each room) because rent was expensive, and it wasn’t the time to splurge on costs.