In an era where people are developing full-on relationships with ChatGPT, forming teeny-tiny relationships with strangers in real life feels almost quaint. It might be quaint, but it's necessary for having a functional society.

Back in 2000, Robert D. Putnam's seminal book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community detailed the ways that Americans had gotten away from the mid-20th-century high point of social interactions, and were no longer building social capital by taking part in civic and recreational organizations such as bowling leagues. The book clarified how having small interactions within our community is a good thing.

In the decades since the book came out, we've seen a tsunami of social media and internet culture wash over society. Yet real life connections still matter most.

"In short, offline friends matter a lot for our happiness, while online friends appear to have no such effect," Putnam wrote in the afterward of the 20th anniversary edition of Bowling Alone.

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One place where strangers still strike up conversations, even friendships, is at music festivals such as Austin City Limits, which made its annual stand in Zilker Park this month. That's because people at the festival really have no choice. Despite one of the major festival sponsors being a cellphone carrier, lagging connectivity means doomscrolling during the fest is impossible. So you may as well put that device in airplane mode and get to know someone.

One conversation I joined was a group of women discussing how awful the Austin pedicabs have become since they transitioned away from fit young folks struggling to pedal passengers to astronomically expensive conveyances powered by e-bikes. We miss the buff drivers of old.

I had a different chat in another patch of festival shade with a few people talking about the difficulties of African travel. One couple was talking about having just come back from an African honeymoon. I chimed in about visiting Africa in the 1990s and riding buses with live chickens on board. That memory hasn't come up in a long time; another benefit of getting to know new people.

Fittingly, it was chatting with a stranger that led to me watching what I am told is the first Japanese artist to play the festival. It all started with a unicorn.

During the period between the two ACL weekends, there is a "Party for the Parks" fundraiser held on the festival site that benefits the Austin Parks Foundation. In between the taco buffet hour and a performance from the band Passion Pit, I headed over to the raffle tickets, where I spent so much time folding my tickets into hopefully winning shapes that I formed a connection with James the Unicorn Pirate, a local sailor volunteering at the party. He invited me to go sailing on Lake Travis the next evening.

That sail also included two Indian sisters who go by their Americanized names of Trinity and Sonya. They were planning on being at ACL the second weekend, because Japanese artist Fujii Kaze was playing.

On the Monday morning after ACL, I was in my front yard in my rattiest bathrobe with my paralyzed dog looking like I had just escaped from a three-day rave where combs had been outlawed. That's when my Japanese American neighbor and her dog stopped by to say hello. My neighbor explained her cough as having come from the festival dust. I commiserated, having also inhaled enough of Zilker Park to have my own case of park lung.

In an odd twist of fate, my neighbor's favorite band of the event was Fujii Kaze. We talked about that fab performance, which might be the most substantive conversation we've ever had about anything other than our exceedingly pampered large dogs.

So, from a raffle ticket conversation with a unicorn to a slightly improved relationship with my neighbor, ACL was a parade of tiny but powerful human conversations.

ChatGPT is never going to insist you join it to see a great new-to-you Japanese artist or invite you to go sailing while dressed as a unicorn. Real connections with real people are where it's at.

It's festival season in Texas right now: plenty of music fests, Oktoberfests, fun runs and renaissance fairs to visit. If having more experiences like this will get America to a less divided place politically, then maybe we should all get out there, enjoy some nice weather and chat up some magical creatures.

Anna Hanks is a writer from Austin.

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Festival season brings real-life connections