How Group Chats Rule the World

So much of what we see out in public is the visible imprint of a group chat, which acts as both the connective tissue that holds it all together and the nervous system that animates it.

This isn’t about the Slack, Discord, Geneva or Circle groups you’re part of that start with a small version of a thing, but where the intention is to scale to hundreds or thousands of people that convene in a single public forum to discuss the topic du jour and get them to pay for the thing. This is about building the picks and shovels for intimate... See more

The group chat doesn’t have the same feeling of presence or provide an environment to interact with that in-person hangouts do.

Groups are hard to form in the first place. Think of how many random Discord communities you were invited into the past few years and how many are still active. “Organization for collective action takes a good deal of time to emerge” observes Olson.

People are increasingly fleeing to siloed, private group chats to talk to each other, leaving large absences in the digital public sphere.

But a healthy public sphere is essential to functioning democratic societies. It is a way for individuals and groups to interact with a variety of peoples, lived experiences, and ideas outside of our respective b... See more