Community is the answer

September 19th, 2022

How communities will make us feel part of something bigger than our daily endeavors

Modern society lacks communities

As Raghuram Rajan preached in The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State leave the Community behind, this past 20th century has been ruled by the strengthening of both markets and the state. These two — markets and the state — are also really intertwined. Parallelly, as markets started being borderless, resources and governance migrated up: from the community to the region, and, ultimately, to the state level (some would argue also to the international level). Meanwhile, cities have been growing, as most market opportunities migrated there, causing all communities that could occur elsewhere (in more compact and smaller places) to slowly disintegrate. Massified cities. No communities forging. No real efforts to encourage them. And, what is worse, people feel lonelier than ever.

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/time-with-others-lifetime

This sense of loneliness has also been afflicted by how technology has disrupted the way we interact. There is an utter feeling of aloneness despite being able to reach whoever, whenever. At first glance, the idea that digitalization has alienated us seems incoherent, as it is the perfect vehicle to unite us, but estrangement is now the norm and its root cause is unclear. Is it because we can reach far too many people? Should we stick to Dunbar’s number? Are we misusing available technologies and, in turn, losing social skills? Is it because of the bombardment of information and news? Is trying to keep up-to-date with everyone and everything too much for us? It could be all, some, or none of these reasons. However, we must make efforts to ensure communities forge. Especially for gen z, as they have grown in this fully developed and — dare me to say — socially dysfunctional society.

“Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary.”

- Sebastian Jung, Tribe

Each one of us is a piece of this puzzle we call modern society. It is a fascinating puzzle we are all trying to solve together. However, this puzzle has grown to be so large and convoluted, with rules we don’t comprehend, haven’t chosen, and sometimes disagree with, that we can no longer feel the need for our piece to be there, making us constantly feel a sort of existential anxiety. Even though the puzzle cannot be changed in the short run, we can change how we feel about it. It is not about finding the meaning of life but meaning in life. We are in desperate need of a network we can feel part of, one that makes us feel valued and, most importantly, needed: a community.

Understanding community

Communities used to be local, with the purpose to overcome adversities such as the search for food, the building of settlements, and the share of fears like climate conditions and death. In current days, we are way past that, and we cannot keep on romanticizing this idea of a community. Actually, this idealization enlarges the gap between current estrangement and the underlying value in communities. And that is what we are lacking, understanding this underlying value and why we need them. Communities as a gateway to feeling closer to people, connecting with them, caring about them and them caring about us, and sharing values and interests. Feeling you belong to a bigger entity than your own persona, and that you are a valuable member of it. That will give us meaning in life.

According to FeverBee, communities can be classified according to why they are brought together:

Interest — sharing the same interest or passion
Action — trying to bring about change
Place — geography
Practice — sharing the same profession or undertaking the same activities
Circumstance — a common situation or challenge not of their making

This classification enlightens us about how communities can be formed. Even though it portrays communities in a very righteous way, most of the examples given of each of these community types are online forums or associations like non-profit and research groups. Hence, most of the instanced communities and the communities we know of are formed by a small group of people and a large one that supports it, slightly changing what communities actually are. The involvement of the members of a community is what defines it — and paying a monthly subscription or following an account does not implicate you in a meaningful way.

The clearest depiction of what sometimes is considered a community nowadays is the Creator Communities. It is a network of not-so-engaged followers, collaborating accounts, and invested users who believe in a brand. This “community” is a group of creators that profit from the fact that there are people that enjoy their content. Needless to say, this is not to condemn creators, but to condemn the fact that we cannot consider a community a group of people who are scrolling on their phones and have never been in contact nor are involved in any active way with these creators.

For creators to build communities is a hazardous task. To switch from having a group of followers that act like henchmen to having group cohesion and interaction between these followers, that’s the difficulty. Majorly, the problem stems from how platforms enable interactions, i.e, only the creator being able to reach all the community, and followers only being able to like and comment on this content, not allowing them to interact with each other. If people want to engage with other followers, they need to migrate to platforms like Discord, leading to a loss of a lot of possible members. Finally, even if Discord allows the forging of communities, the forming still relies on all these other platforms like Instagram and Youtube, where no efforts to end with this individualistic nature are being made. Despite this difficulty, there are creators that have successfully overcome it and have built real communities. This is the case of, among others, YesTheory. Its followers organize meetups all around the globe without the creator’s involvement, making them a real community.

The community creation, over time, has moved from the hands of people to those of religion to then the state. As states have been worried about markets and power, this responsibility of forming communities has relied on various, among which institutions and social media. It is time to give it back to people, and the vehicle: Moments.

Reclaiming not just the need but the feel of communities

Some people are already reclaiming their power back, especially in communities of practice like those of open-source projects, web3 initiatives, and tools that give space to creators like Figma or Fermat. They are actively taking part and joining online communities, however, there is no unified platform for them nor for all those who still seek and want to explore new options. As a user-owned social network, Moments wants to empower users to seek finding, connecting, immersing, forging, and belonging in online communities. In order to ensure it, we propose:

From linear to circular: FINDING and CONNECTING

While agents are still connecting in a linear way, Alice follows Bob (A → B), their content sharing is not. Now, sharing is going to be circular, thanks to the moments feature. Consequently, accomplishing cycles in the users’ network graph will be a piece of cake. Circularity for people to connect, meet and discover in an unprecedented way.

From passive to active community subject:* IMMERSING*

So as to allow communities to be meaningful, in other words, that they have dynamic members, from Moments, we want to encourage the following types: interest, action, and practice.

Different types of moments will be launched — based on our users’ votes on their preferences — to allow them to have the space to thrive and develop and share with other members their curiosity, actions, and accomplishments.

From sensing to certifying your involvement:* FORGING and BELONGING*

Via tokenization of moments your commitment to a community can be certified and owned with granularity. Therefore, your involvement will have different levels in order to, on the one hand, incentivize you to keep on engaging with that moment and, on the other hand, to acknowledge your efforts and participation.