This week I’ve been thinking (not for the first time) about the communities we choose to join. I’ve just finished reading Amanda Montell’s Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism. No, I’m not always thinking about cults. Well, that’s a lie, part of my brain is always thinking about cults the way part of me is always thinking about people who die climbing Everest, but this book is specifically about the use of language: how high-demand groups redefine words to mean different things, in-group/out-group phrasing and so on.
When I wrote Everything Breaks at Scale, I spent a lot of time thinking about what draws people into conspiracy thinking and causes them to stay in those groups, even in the face of ostracisation from their friends and loved ones. So much of that is about our consistent longing for community, in the absence of traditional religious frameworks of the past. In her book, Montell references a 2015 report from some Harvard Divinity grad students called How We Gather.
Millennials are less religiously affiliated than ever before. Churches are just one of many institutional casualties of the internet age in which young people are both more globally connected and more locally isolated than ever before. Against this bleak backdrop, a hopeful landscape is emerging. Millennials are flocking to a host of new organizations that deepen community in ways that are powerful, surprising, and perhaps even religious.
Even though it’s a decade old now, it’s a fascinating read, surveying groups like Crossfit and Soulcycle, summer camps for adults, dining groups and so on. They draw six themes that people are looking for when they gather:
There’s something so clarifying about seeing it articulated in this way. And I think it gets at why we’re frustrated with the loss of community online. The early internet provided ways for us to meet so many of these needs, particularly relationships, creativity and purpose. And now that we’re dumped in these massive, impersonal online spaces, where rage and conflict are prioritised for “engagement”, it’s no wonder we want to abandon ship.
I was reminded of this recently when former One Directioner Liam Payne passed away. Luce wrote a great piece about grieving him at the time. But one of the amazing things that happened in the days afterward was that my old 1D community (literally called “1D for Olds”) creaked back to life. “Redownloaded slack on phone to come here”, “Had to search deep in my email to find this url to log back in”, “I am super glad to have this space to come straight back to in this weird, horrible moment”. We hadn’t gathered together online in years and years. But in the face of that awful news, there was exactly one community we all wanted to be with.
In the real world, cities are cold and impersonal and crowded and isolating. So we join bookclubs and boutique gyms, we do park runs and volunteer for the PTA, we sign up for knitting classes or bike buses. We find the local and the small and the friendly. That’s what makes cities survivable.
And that’s the exact ethos we now need online. The internet is one of the busiest, ugliest, unsafest cities around. So we need the opposite approach: community-focussed, custom, DIY. Not cultish, not exclusive. But full of vibrant local neighbourhoods that we make and that we want to be a part of.
like everyone, probably, I’m neck-deep in this season of Severance — even though I have literally no idea what is going on. Part of why I’m sticking with it, I think, is that it’s just so gorgeous to look at. So I loved this dive into how the Kier “woe meter” from s02e07 was made.
i finally got to see Six the Musical last week (thanks Rochelle!). Yes, I’m only like a decade late, but in my defence every time I went to get tix in London it was sold out. It’s a super-cute show and the songs are bangers, but my fave part is all the different people who are coming in cosplay each night — tiaras, colour-schemes, and full outfits!
meriko sent me this awesome story about the University of Nottingham developing LEGO kits to make quantum science more accessible and engaging. Photon Brick kits are fully-working interferometers — and demonstrate really complex science in an understandable, engaging way. I want one.
