community and belonging
in-person–interpersonal
community and belonging
Your extreme local, embodied community is your only truly real one. Think of it this way: Whose bodies are closest to yours when you’re sleeping at night? Those are the ones who can keep you safe. You have to know these people, care about these people, or even just recognize these people.
When we know each other, our relationships transcend whatever... See more
When we know each other, our relationships transcend whatever... See more
Real action starts on the ground.
All this should seem obvious, which is most troubling: the lack of communal love — the indifference we have towards neighbors, strangers — is not only a recent phenomenon, but it’s not a natural one that’s baked into our evolutionary DNA. It’s a step backwards from our primate ancestry, back to our distant reptilian roots. Even now, AI skeptics who... See more
Mo_Diggs • What’s So Funny ‘Bout…
In our neoliberal, self-interested era…the tenuous social fabric that we once had doesn’t actually seem to exist at all. There is no concept of a social contract. We don’t believe we have any responsibility to each other. We do not work together. We have no shared identity. We have no common goals. Simply put, we do not live in a society.
Everyone’s posting about 2016, with a heavy dose of nostalgia.
In 2016, Instagram switched their default feed from purely reverse chronological feed to algorithmically-sorted. In retrospect, this marks the beginning of a shift towards a passive, spoon-fed internet.
Product design matters — people are hungry for digital tools that actually allow them... See more
In 2016, Instagram switched their default feed from purely reverse chronological feed to algorithmically-sorted. In retrospect, this marks the beginning of a shift towards a passive, spoon-fed internet.
Product design matters — people are hungry for digital tools that actually allow them... See more
New_ Public (@wearenewpublic)
the decline of third places means there are fewer places to just hang out and bump into each other. Other economic and social factors have surely contributed to this change, but I suspect that it’s largely due to the new third place—the one in the palm of our hands. We hang out online, which means we don’t hang out at all.
Nick Catucci • You can’t innovate away loneliness
Decades ago, friction was what made a subculture. You had to figure out what punk or goth was about, learn its codes, seek out compatriots, and then maybe go to Hot Topic or a hardcore show. Friction is lower online and visibility is higher. We are all constantly performing our preferences in public. “Subcultures,” in the sense of aesthetic niches,... See more
One Thing • 🟧 Does subculture still exist?
What we get instead is what Byung-Chul Hanmhas described as an "overheating of the ego." Pure individuality through momentary identification of yourself with an aesthetic, which exhausts us by depriving us of any real conflict or difference. What we consume online amounts to a cheaply reproducible set of vague designs. There is only an endless hall of shiny standees, of potential versions of yourself you can pop your face into as you go. Take the photo. And move on. The problem with this "aesthetic," as Silcoff so candidly shows, is that it is entirely a product of the internet’s selfie culture. Offline, these relations – the social construction of identity — were once mediated by something with a bit more give and a sense of reality.
When we are grieving record stores, mixtapes, old-school romance, and friends goofing around in ‘90s high schools, what are we actually grieving? Delayed gratification. Deeper connection. Play and fun. Risk and thrill. Life with less obsessive self-scrutiny. These are things we can reclaim—if we remember what they are worth and roll back the... See more
We would be far better off seeking out (or tacitly engineering) encounters in which we both have to struggle together to achieve a common goal. This might be something far out-of-the ordinary – rock-climbing, cliff-diving – or it might be something much more quotidian, like hunting down a hard-to-find ingredient for a meal, or even doing laundry.
We... See more
We... See more
Why is it so difficult to cultivate meaningful friendships?
Meaningful friendships develop when things are intense, and involve peril, beauty, jeopardy, drama and self-development
Why is it so difficult to cultivate meaningful friendships?
Our oldest and closest friends – those we might call meaningful – have seen us at close quarters. They know our flaws, our faults, our failures; all the things that might make us less than admirable. They don’t like us in spite of these, but because of them. In the end, friendship is an acknowledgement of our imperfect humanity; built not through... See more