Are you building a (real) community or an audience?
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Are you building a community or an audience?
For a long time, most of the things I wrote and published were in the third person or in the first person plural (a royal “we”).
If I spoke as myself, I thought “I” had to sound neutral, smart, and unprovocative. Even before the heyday of 'cancel culture,' I often felt afraid somehow of an audience of people who I felt were somewhere on the spectrum of judgemental to indifferent.
These days, as I write the words that go out to you, I try to share some of myself, to include myself. I don't worry whether what I'm saying is intellectually bulletproof or universally applicable (though sometimes I try to convey my own sense of excitement about an idea that has my brain bouncing around).
One effect of this could be that you feel like you know me a bit. I would like that to be true, to think that something about my essence could translate from my fingers on keys to your eyes and your body.
But I think we've been misled in general as to how much of me you can know this way. And I think that illusion is driving us to label things "communities" when they are at best, audiences.
WTF is a community?
The word community gets used all the time to mean very different kinds of things. I spent some time fruitlessly searching for the word that would distinguish what I think of as "real" community from the other senses in which the word is employed. We use the word to mean 'a group of people with something in common' quite frequently, whether it's the queer community, the local community, or the "people in this Slack" community.
What I mean by community, what I want to foster and develop for myself, is a group of people who know and care for one another, and who interact on a regular basis. These two components are the basic ingredients of belonging.
There's nothing wrong with a word having many meanings of course, but what can happen when we're not being specific is that we expect one kind of 'community' to have the benefits or effects of another. People following someone on a Facebook page, people joining a huge Discord server, people who happen to care about a cause and are in the same place to support it are still just a collection of individuals.
Holding space for connection
To create the dynamics of "real" community requires spaces that support it. I use 'spaces' somewhat loosely, though the most direct route to community remains being in the same physical space and interacting. But even that isn't enough to create community on its own.
Like with relationships among people one-to-one, we need to be intentional to create interconnection. We need to create containers that lead to comfort (and then, even discomfort) and to share values and goals.
I've noticed that people are generally instinctively skilled in connecting with one another in a small group, even when there are introverts involved, or neurodiversity, or very different backgrounds and identities. That's why most great communities start with strong-tie relationships among a small group of people, and why scaling a community works so much more effectively if you can continually create interactions among small groups of people.
Social media is a bad teacher
I think we're being misled by the training we get through social media about what makes us feel connected. In reality, immersive connection, like speaking to each other, seeing each other, and being able to touch other people, gives us a sense of other people that we just can't get with text, no matter how many emoji we include.
At the same time, the internet really does create the possibility of finding other people who can understand us when we have the sense that the people around us don't get it.
But social media and other kinds of post-based communication also create these asymmetrical dynamics where there are hundreds, thousands, even millions of people who get a sense of someone that is one-sided. When we create post and text-based 'communities', we are replicating this kind of dynamic.
Yes, people in the same workspace, server, or Facebook page can send messages back and forth, but for the most part, you get one or a few people who broadcast, a somewhat larger but still tiny percentage-wise group who "engage" by typing something back or 'liking' it, and then a lot of people, there but known by no-one else in any personal sense, who either observe or ignore these messages.
Audiences are great
There's nothing wrong with having an audience. While there are only a few people right now who are reading these very words, you are out there, caring enough to do so, and I am grateful. Those who cultivate audiences and engage them are often very generous and caring.
But each of us needs more than great content.
We need to feel seen and known, and we need to feel a reciprocal sense of caring with other people. This isn't an optional need, it's as real and important as healthy food or exercise.
Over the past 50 years or so, if not longer, we have seen the social fabric that provided for these needs deteriorating, and we've increasingly been buying into the idea that we're each individuals who can exist with only superficial or economic interdependency. I think we all know this is bogus. Nevertheless, every day I talk to someone who feels lonely and isolated, and many of them are community managers. We are ashamed to say, "I need other people to care about me," when we feel like maybe we're not loved and appreciated.
Start small and start a conversation
Luckily, we really can solve this problem by choosing a different approach. When we're willing to spend time with a small group of people, actually talking to each other, on an ongoing basis, things change.
When we create containers of acceptance and avoid dominance, we can often find ways to bridge with one another no matter who they are. We've done amazing things as a species largely because this kind of impulse to connect and collaborate is hard-wired.
Re-thinking the architecture
To me, we need more than a cosmetic renovation of the systems we have today. We need to build from the ground up, with a blueprint that meets our real human needs.
I think it's time to co-create the digital spaces where we connect. It means changing our assumptions, trying something new, but really, just being willing to do something we're out of practice with but isn't weird at all- talking to each other, offering our own experience, being kind.
When we give other people space to be themselves with us and we include ourselves, and when we stick with it, our whole life transforms. It doesn't solve all our problems but our problems feel different when there's someone who cares about us. Without that sense of connection, nihilism, apathy, dehumanization, and despair are kind of inevitable.
Let’s get real
It can feel uncomfortable to say this, to be a little bit of an evangelist, which is antithetical to some part of myself (or maybe that part is just a defense I've constructed). Polemics make me nervous. I don't have a lot of faith in certainty. We are all complex, containing multitudes, embodying contradictions.
But there are some things that I've learned from my and many others’ research.
No matter who you are, there are other people who can relate to you. No matter who you are, having someone who cares what is going on for you is a benefit. And no matter who you are, bringing people together with respect, empathy, and openness makes a difference.
Reads & Resources
What do we mean by “community”? by Brian Stout
Making sense of belonging by Dr. Kelly-Ann Allen