Of Pods, Squads, Crews & Gangs: Small Group Experiments In Radical Belonging

Today's squads are expressions of digital locality and the new squad era forces us to reconsider the individuated logic of early social networks.

Twitter subcultures are only a sliver of an expansive social deep web. Beneath this fuzzy graph is SQUAD SPACE, the network of inner-zones where digital microcultures are born: group DMs, Discords, Slacks, Keybases.

Small groups are crucial for tight coordination. A greater network may surround the squad, making it appear big and fuzzy from the outside. But for the core crew, an invisible circle binds and protects a space of group identity.

Group collaboration is now the strong default, putting squads at the center of social, cultural, and economic life. To paraphrase K-HOLE: today people are born as individuals, and have to find their squad.

Group identity. Shared space. Vibes. These not only enable the creation of social capital, but strengthen the squad's capacity to organize, minimizing transaction costs and leading to greater productive capacities and resilience; this is "the nature of the squad."

Squad culture is the antithesis of neoliberal individualism. Millennials are healing from decades of irony poisoning, rediscovering what it's like to have generative, exploratory relationships with one another.