the goal is resonance, not scale

Communities are not resources to be optimised and they're not user bases to be migrated. They're the accumulated residue of people choosing, over and over again, to remain in a relationship with each other under specific conditions that will never, ever recur in exactly the same way.

Treating them as fungible is idiotic, and we have been far too... See more

1. Embracing ‘Anti-Scale’

According to John their maximum audience is capped at 200,000.

“If we have 10 million subscribers we've pivoted. Something's gone wrong and we're not niche enough. The dopamine that comes from putting out a video that gets a bunch of views is very real, but we are not willing to let that guide the content. If we wanted to... See more

social media management ins and outs for 2026 https://t.co/R74QQQXY7w

For decades, technology has required standardized solutions to complex human problems. In order to scale software, you had to build for the average user, sanding away the edge cases. In many ways, this is why our digital world has come to resemble the sterile, deadening architecture that Alexander spent his career pushing back against.

Digital strategist Shelley Bernstein once said that one of the greatest challenges currently facing us is how to interact meaningfully with the people we serve. Interact meaningfully with the people we serve. Not eyeballs. Not users. But people.

In providing a precise experience, you are necessarily polarizing. There’s a certain tyranny of NPS or averages you have to decouple from – where averages blunt a nuanced understanding of a product or experience. There’s that funny truism that the most authentic Chinese restaurants have the most 1 star reviews.

Distinctive features are not... See more