The Group Chat Could Be So Much More

As far as how humans connect to one another, what’s next appears to be group chats and private messaging and forums, returning back to a time when we mostly just talked to the people we know. Maybe that’s a better, less problematic way to live life. Maybe feed and algorithms and the “global town square” were a bad idea. But I find myself desperatel... See more

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.

In order to imagine where the future is headed, let’s first lay out the three main steps of connection building to examine how the physical and digital worlds fare at each:

• Discovery : you find someone you want to meet, or that person finds you 


• Connection : some initial contact is established


• Connection strengthening : further interactions st

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