Yep I'm going to talk about the show Community here too. But first...
If our online social networking spaces disappeared tomorrow, where would we find our communities? Would we transition easily into irl spaces, or would we be set adrift in isolation until rehabilitated into society proper?
An uncomfortable, growing trend I've noticed is that when people refer to their "communities", what they largely mean is "people who follow me" or "people who share my niche interests". Even within circles I consider to be my longtime community, and especially within creative circles, those seeking social media alternatives to Meta are most anxious that their "communities" won't be there, generally meaning the followings and audiences they've built their livelihoods around.
I get it. The capitalist structures we're forced to navigate, plus the realities of our online age, have conditioned us to rely on transactional engagement. It was about a decade ago that corporations and brands began co-opting the word "community", and I hate to say it, but it feels like we let them change our fundamental understanding of the word. "Communities" now orbit around brands and personalities, to such a degree that we've developed "in-group/out-group" factions that foster distrust of those outside of our niche interest groups. "Oh my god they follow THAT? Ugh I can't with them".
Samuel Earle, writer for The Young Foundation's
Institute for Community Studies (which I wasn't aware of until I started searching this topic) aptly states that our current, common notion of community, "
with its promise of the sovereign individual – is indifferent to its consequences on any actual community."
How insidious is it that corporate messaging has so successfully twisted "community" into individualism. We've forgotten that healthy, dynamic communities are formed around shared physical space, not shared niche interests. In a real community, we practice nuanced thought and openness to grey shades constantly because we're surrounded by different experiences and backgrounds where biased thinking is challenged constantly. In a healthy community, we don't devolve into silos.
Last month my kids and I rewatched the TV series
Community—I hadn't watched it since it originally aired, and it struck me how impossible that show would be to make now. At the time it was made (2009-2014), we were right on the cusp of the next hyper-individualistic phase of social media (and the script sometimes reflected that evolution). In the first season, the main characters, all very different from each other, and all aware of the stigma of attending a community college, form a study group, and through their differences, they reluctantly but profoundly support each other into evolving towards better versions of themselves. That premise often gets lost in the TV & film-trope references and self-referential script the show is best known for, but ultimately, the show was quite literally about community. A diverse bunch of flawed and flailing humans, building a foundation of support together despite their differences, in order to benefit their collective greater good.
The comedy of the first three seasons was groundbreaking and grew one of the first and most rabidly devoted Twitter fandoms. When executive producers began criticizing creator Dan Harmon's brilliant comedic style as "inaccessible", the characters gleefully riffed on the tension, until Harmon was fired and season 4 churned out a series of soul-killing episodes that fans almost took up arms against. Seasons 5 and 6 have a very "post-disaster" feel to them, and while the original energy was back, the trauma of season 4 lingered and the show was never the same. In a lot of ways, the show reflected exactly what was happening to our communities with the onset of online corporate influence, "clout", 100k+ follower counts, and algorithmic manipulation.
I was coming into my comedy peak on Twitter at the same time, and the solidarity and closeness among the comedy community is still something I feel fortunate to have witnessed and participated in. It was around 2014 that the well became increasingly poisoned by "personal brands" which evolved into influencer culture and grift accounts. People became back-bitey, distrustful, jealous, and insular. I left in 2017, and I don't think those early years of genuine online community will ever be possible again. Social media has permanently traumatized our sense of online community. I honestly believe most X users suffer from legitimate PTSD. Larger accounts exist in tight cliques and regularly disparage common users for daring to reply or engage with their content. The experience is so opposite from the early days of social media, when we regularly delighted in connecting with new people.
Now, not only do we stay exclusively within circles of users with shared interests (and justifiably so, given most users have become brick walls of ideology—there's so little room for nuanced discourse thanks to bots and brain rot), but even when we do connect with others who seem great, there's an underlying fear of exploitation. We've been burned so many times, finding another clear, calm, kind mind feels like a small miracle. On the one hand, people seem to be retreating back into their own localities, which bodes well for irl communities, but overall, I wonder if social networking spaces, within their current models of individual-focused engagement/reward loops, will ever offer true community value again.
Reflecting on how many of us, myself included, now default to silos and experience disproportionate discomfort when confronted with nuance and grey shades, it's disturbing to think how far we've drifted away from real community. I don't have a clear solution, but for those of us who claim to participate in "community-building" I hope we can remember what that means, outside of what brands and corporations have conditioned us to believe.
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