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2w ago

Path of least resistance

Desire Paths @sh.itjust.works

hydration9806 @lemmy.ml

2w ago

621 42

103 comments

Ah the ol' desire path strikes again!
- I enjoy the Desire Paths community here on Lemmy. It's so interesting to see what paths people take contrary to what paths are laid out for them.
  
  Instance-agnostic link: !desire_paths@sh.itjust.works
  
  I didn't know I needed this in my life but this strikes a chord in me
  
  I created a desire path by biking to school every day in high school. After I left a sidewalk popped up covering it inch for inch. Mission accomplished

I've heard a story about a college campus that didn't install any paths, waited for natural dirt paths to form in the grass, then installed paths there. Neat idea.
- I think that would be UC berkley
  
  https://sh.itjust.works/post/339749
- https://sh.itjust.works/post/339749
  
  Makes sense for a college campus where everyone has a different schedule. Just draw a line between every building and there's your pathways.
- I heard the same story, but for a Disneyland.
  
  I heard that's what they did for your mom's house.

In my junior high days (mid 80s) My friends and I found a machete in one of their dad’s stuff. We spent a weekend bushwhacking paths around some city-owned but undeveloped land near a lake. We ended up wearing them down pretty good into bike paths with some jumps and cool whoops. A few years later, the city turned it into a park and paved our paths.
- Thank you for your service 🫡
  (like unironically. that rules)
- Fuck yeah, awesome :)
- ~~desire~~ machete paths

I have a hobby of doing the opposite: making undesirepaths.
During large snowfalls, I often need to bring out the shovel and make a path, both from my house and in front of it towards the main road. I like to add turns and bends, just enough to confuse and lightly annoy, but not enough for people to consider stepping into deep snow or making their own path.

I like how the path curves behind the bench after the bench goes up like people are choosing not to walk in front of people sitting on the bench.
- Until the fuckers added another 2m/6ft to the walk by putting in the trashcan...

A full bench!? I miss benches that made sense instead of the hostile architecture ones popping up.
- So far where I live have pretty normal benches.

I heard Finnish municipalities do studies when it's newly snowed to check where the desired footpath goes by looking at tracks in the snow. It avoids that issue in the image
- That certainly speeds up the process so they can Finnish early.
  
  They don’t wanna be Russian around.

University of Maryland did this with their walkways for a while. They let the kids beat down paths for the year to make the sidewalks.
- Makes heaps of sense, when you can. Still need something for people in wheelchairs and stuff early on though.
  I've often thought painting lines across paths and then observing the paint wear off could tell you a lot about which paths could be removed, or where corners could be rounded off better.
  
  They had regular sidewalks that the campus planners made. But they took a year to see what the students walking paths looked like.

https://xkcd.com/85/

not the content we deserve, but the content we desire

My takeaway from this is that I can spawn park benches and greenery by walking on the grass.
- That's why there are all those "keep off the grass" signs. If people just walked all over the grass willy-nilly we'd soon be knee deep in benches and bins, and nobody wants that.
  
  we’d soon be knee deep in benches and bins
  
  The homeless do.
- If you lie on a sheltered concrete slab, they'll install 20cm spikes, too

Local discounter had something like this, they just installed a hedge AND a fence. Really disenchanting. Not going there anymore.
Well I moved. But they cheated.
- a bit of an extreme reaction to a hedge AND a fence, but I'll allow it.
  
  I'm playing the game on a bigger scale now
- a hedge AND a fence
  Cordless power tools are really good these days.
- Fences don't always work, I saw one go up and soon had a hole in it. Turns out deer are pretty persistent and willing to break them. Paths are not just used by people.

All I see here is people tricking the government into putting in a nice little micropark.

We were looking after someones dog for a week and we have a big yard for our dogs. This dog and one of ours got on so well they would chase each around the yard for hours, so much that after a week there was a desire path race track formed with noticeable banks around the corners and everything.
- Post a picture! Sounds awesome

These are called desire paths.
- Hence the cross post to !desire_paths@sh.itjust.works :)
  
  I saw that, hence where I got the very idea!
- Elephant paths in my country.
- Goat paths here

Least resistance or classic human defiance?

That hedge could actually be a gods windbreak behind the bench

There's been locations in the past where the decision was made to initially just build the minimum paths for handicap access and etc and then wait for the desire paths to form to decide where to put the rest of them. Great idea really. The apartment complex started plowing the one that goes from my building to the gas station.
- That's actually brilliant

Apparently when they were building the death star, they couldn't figure out where to put the vents, so they just turned off the gravity and threw a bunch of womp rats in the center and built out pipes along the vectors of where they died.

social trails
- Desire paths

This is great!

The last path doesn't match the prior paths.
- No, but that's the joke.
  Humans will always take the perceived shortcut, regardless of whatever proper path is available.
- The desire path curved towards the road crossing, they paved a straight path pointing away from the crossing, new curved desire path formed by people crossing the road

For the life of me, I can't figure out what changes between panel 10 and 11.
- Zoom in. The path is starting to show.
  
  Correct. Couldn't see it at first. Just thought it was a pause for dramatic effect. Felt fine as a clone.
- I figured that was just the pause before the punchline. Like, the city almost got it, but they still fucked it up a bit.
- Faint path from frame 12 if you push your nose to the screen glass.
  
  You can't really see it that way, it's better push it against your tongue and taste the difference
  
  How's your monitor smell?
- In the original post it is more clear: https://bsky.app/profile/chazhutton.bsky.social/post/3lfsi75inbc27
  Apart from the path that is added, the shadow on the trashcan gets darker and wider, the bushes are more "noisy" and the parts that were already drawn in panel 1 have shifted down by halve a pixel.

I especially like when people do this in the snow and make big holes that I can easily step into

it's almost like humans don't move like a rook (car)

This gives me huge canvas vibes because that was happening a lot there. Haha (It was called canvas, right? The event where you place a pixel every so often.)

Life is like this

No way there is no desire path Delta at the end of the main path where it officially meets the pavement.

This is the way TikToker shows how he keeps people from walking across his lawn
- So he's an asshole assaulting children for fun, which is also almost certainly illegal
  If told this I'm sure the cunt would say "muh propertay tho"

Those fuckers. Maybe instead of the bush fence, it should have been a wrought iron fence. With spikes on top.
- Electrified.
  
  With auto targeting tranquilizer dart firing turrets, of course.

If that's a popular place to cut through, that hedge would also get wrecked from kids trying to see if they can jump it.
Source: the hedge surrounding part of the property of my childhood home. (I could jump it!)

Image where the bush fence appears, there should be a faint path near the road, those who don't want to hop over/wreck the bush but it should be gone once the path through the bush is open.

103 comments