Belonging as a Service

I was not a very popular person when I was young. For a variety of reasons, I did not fit in with my peers, mostly due to my own awkwardness and antisocial tendencies. In my late teens I discovered BBSes. These seemed like an oasis to me. A handful of other minds, around my age, with other ideas, other perspectives and ways of being. Absolute strangers I could find from my apartment at night on Telix, socialize with, and start to appreciate the idea of what remote communities could give. I felt the same about the internet as it was being created around me. I remember dialing into BBSes to access the ARPANET. I remember the first time a band I knew had a webpage, it was Underworld, all text. It was strange to me but it kept kindling this idea that this internet would allow information and ideas to move so much faster. That I could meet people with similar ideas, to help grow my own, to critique, to refine. And it did that, for quite some time. Due to the internet, my search for people grew from my neighborhood, to my city, to my country, and to the world. I was able to join a tribe of many.

Eventually though, that stopped. Instead, people have learned that if no one will agree with them, they can just widen their search until they find someone that does. Instead of growing their idea, they reaffirm it. Set it in stone. Slowly I watched empathy and understanding dissolve online. We suddenly discovered how to use language to shape the people around us. Circumstances for our allies, character for our enemies. The wider the internet got, the more it exceeded a person's ability to be part of it as a whole, and instead they started diving into new groups without geographic borders. It created a strange reality. One where you could now grow your group into a shape until it fits a scope you need. Wide enough for agreement, narrow enough to not hear otherwise. This no longer required you to be kind, or understand people. It also now gave people the ability to go out and attack others, wholly unrelated to them.

Now the rails that once provided a shape for the nerdy D&D kid have been structurally grown to carry every person with a grievance, connecting entire tribes. I know I can get caught up in mental ladder pulls as if people with these ideas don't deserve to also find communities. The machine did for them, what it did for me, and it didn't care for the reason why, only that it matched. People now unable to see the difference between a support group and an outrage engine. I feel this change is what has pushed me off platforms like Facebook for quite some time. I had a specific instance where I was talking to a person, and he said, "Do you find Dreams from My Father and Mein Kampf to be weirdly similar", to which I replied I had not, and I was curious how he found them so, and he said "I haven't read them, it's just something to think about." Performativism, and/or narcissism everywhere. Worse, you can still see people slinking around the edges of these groups. Trying to navigate, find an inroad to be a part of something likeminded, and barring that, trying to grow a tribe of their own, the next influencer, seeking validation through a following. We jumped the shark here by the way, ASU now offers a degree in being an influencer. We're about to give people degrees in how to act for the masses and how to attract a tribe.

It's been a little depressing at times, and AI isn't doing much to fix this. The upcoming generation is in trouble. ~72% of US teens were recently reported as having used AI companions. Pretty soon they won't need to find a tribe at all. Alone, surrounded by agents that elevate and validate them. I know you wouldn't fall for that, dear reader, you know it's a database, and a cute word association query. The thing is though, some people just want to hear the words. Some people are so far outside society that any confirmation that lets them feel valid is going to be enough. AI is about to make Facebook look as exciting as a parking lot. A billion tribes of one.

A growing circle of influence.