An Online Community is an Oxymoron

I’m in a lot of WhatsApp groups.

Family groups.
Work groups.
Groups for projects that finished three years ago.
Groups created to organise one dinner 3 years ago.
And several where I have absolutely no idea why I’m there.

One of them has 384 unread messages.

Somewhere along the way, we started calling groups of people connected through the internet “communities.”

Companies do it all the time.
"Join our community."
"Become part of our community."
"Connect with our community."

Usually what they mean is sign up to our marketing list.

We seem to have confused being connected, with actually belonging.

When was the last time a WhatsApp group (or LinkedIn or Facebook) made you feel that you genuinely belonged?

I mean properly connected.

I think the internet is brilliant at gathering people together. It might be one of the greatest audience-building machines we've ever invented.

But community?

I'm not so sure.

We Have More Connections, and Less Connection

This is the strange contradiction of modern life.

I can contact almost everyone I've ever known within about 30 seconds. My phone contains hundreds of people.

And yet the number of people I could call at 2am because something has gone badly wrong is considerably smaller.

And that's an important distinction.

We've spent the last 20 years solving the technical problem of connection while largely ignoring the human one.

Technology has made it unbelievably easy to stay 'loosely' connected to enormous numbers of people. We see their holidays. We know when they get promoted. We watch their children grow up. We send them a thumbs-up when they run a marathon.

It gives us the sense that we're still in each other's lives.

But knowing that someone spent last weekend in Mallorca isn't the same as knowing how they're doing.

Community requires more than information about each other.

It requires involvement.

Community Is Inconvenient

When I think about the communities that have actually mattered in my life, none of them were particularly efficient.

They involved turning up.

Repeatedly.

Going to the same places. Seeing the same people. Helping somebody when it wasn't especially convenient. Sitting through stories I'd heard before.

That's how friendship works too.

You don't build a close friendship through one extraordinary conversation. You build it through hundreds of completely ordinary ones.

A pint after work. A lift somewhere. Dinner. Standing on the side of a freezing football pitch. Calling someone because you know they've had a shit week. Staying for another hour when you'd quite like to go home.

I think the inconvenience might actually be the important bit. It says: you matter enough for me to make an effort.

And effort is strangely absent from most online relationships.

If someone becomes annoying on WhatsApp, mute them.
If a group gets boring, archive it.
If you don't want to answer a message, don't.

You can disappear from an online “community” for six months and return and no one will notice.

Try doing that with your local five-a-side team.

We've Mistaken Activity for Community

Instagram, LinkedIn and all the rest haven't helped.

They've spent years giving us numbers that make connection look measurable.

Followers. Subscribers. Members. Likes. Comments. Engagement.

All measurable.

200 people standing on the same railway platform aren't a community. But they're in the same place, doing the same thing at the same time. It's just that that happens to be waiting for the 08:17 to Waterloo.

So if 200 people subscribe to something, should we call it a community?

Community isn't created by putting people in the same place. It comes from what those people are willing to do for each other.

That's much harder to measure.

How many people would notice if you weren't there?
How many would call?
How many would help you out if you needed them?
How many would inconvenience themselves for you?

LinkedIn doesn't have a metric for that.

Perhaps it should?

Note: I hate LinkedIn with a passion. Perhaps enough for another newsletter. It's got so bad that I've actually launched an alternative competing platform. Originally called, as a bit of a joke: PissedOffWithLinkedIn. It's now live and been shortened to a snappier: pinkedin.co. No community building here. No fakery. No showing off. Feel free to check in out.

Then Along Came AI

So now we've added AI to the equation.

AI makes digital conversations effectively infinite. You can now talk to ChatGPT.

I can ask Chat a question at any time of day and it will answer immediately. It doesn't have somewhere else to be. It doesn't get bored. It doesn't start looking over my shoulder because someone more interesting has walked into the room.

And it's going to get much better.

AI remembers our conversations. It knows what we like. It knows what we're working on. It knows our habits, our preferences and probably even our moods.

It is already extremely good company.

Which sounds ridiculous until you realise how much time some people are already spending talking to chatbots.

But rather than be a negative, I think this might change the value of real human interaction.

When information was scarce, information was valuable.
The internet then made information abundant.

When content was scarce, content was valuable.
Social media then made content abundant.

Now AI is making conversation abundant too.
You will never again be alone, with no one to talk to.

Which means something else becomes scarce.

Presence.

Actual, physical, inconvenient human presence.

Presence Is Going to Become a Luxury

Presence is difficult to manufacture. It's hard to fake being there for someone, if you're not actually there.

AI can send you a thoughtful message.
It can probably write a better birthday card than your wife.
It can remember your birthday more reliably than your family.

But it can't actually come to your birthday.

It can't sit beside you in a pub when you've had terrible news. It can't give you a lift home. It can't put its arm around you. It can't notice from across the table that you're quieter than usual. It can't help you carry a sofa up three flights of stairs.

Those things require bodies.

They require time.

And they require effort.

The very things technology has spent decades trying to remove from our lives might turn out to be the ingredient that actually makes relationships valuable.

Oh the irony.

We've spent 20 years trying to make human connection frictionless.

But perhaps the friction was what made it matter in the first place?

The Internet Isn't the Enemy

I'm not suggesting we delete WhatsApp and return to sending letters. (Though I would recommend sending a letter...)

WhatsApp is brilliant. So is email. So are social networks, when they're used well.

The internet has solved a problem previous generations couldn't solve: finding your people.

If you're interested in how to solder an electronic circuit to make a kick drum, you can find thousands of people who share that interest (trust me, I've found them. I'm still shit at soldering though.)

If you feel like nobody around you understands you, you can find people who do. If you're building something, writing something or trying to start a movement, you can reach people almost anywhere.

That's extraordinary.

But perhaps we've misunderstood what should happen next.

We keep trying to build a community on the internet. Maybe the internet should simply help us find the community. Then we should leave.

Find the people online.
Talk to them.
Organise them.

And then get them into a room.

The Next Internet Might Lead Us Offline?

Imagine if the next generation of successful social technology wasn't judged by how many hours it kept us staring at a screen.

Imagine if its success was measured by how often it got us away from one.

An app that helps neighbours actually meet.

A network that turns shared interests into dinners, clubs, walks, projects and conversations.

A digital community whose ultimate objective is to make itself unnecessary.

That sounds completely backwards. Which is why I like it.

Because I don't think the next 20 years should be about dragging more of our lives online.

We've done that. It's rubbish.

The next 20 years should be about using the extraordinary connective power of the internet to get people back into the same room.

AI can help us find each other. Technology can organise us. WhatsApp can tell everyone where to meet.

And then we should put the fucking phones away, and get down the pub.

So What?

Have a look at your WhatsApp this week.

Ignore the family group. That's beyond saving.

Find one of the other groups you're in. The old friends. The work mates. The football group. The people who keep saying, “We really should get together soon.”

And do it.

Pick a date. Book a table. Invite them round. Go for a walk. Have a coffee.

Don't start another online community.

Start an offline one.

Because community isn't 147 unread messages.

It's noticing that someone hasn't turned up.

And asking if they're OK.

Until next time,

Jon "Admin Has Left The Group" Kaye

Choosing to live more deliberately

P.S.

If you're tempted to share this with your WhatsApp group, please do. I appreciate the irony.

But then organise a drink.

That's the important bit.