I was talking with some new followers today about whether new social media platforms, based in discourse, will devolve into tribalism in the same way all the others have.
I've joined both Locals and Thinkspot with some trepidation. Since, in my historical fiction novels, I explore average people (teenagers, who are coming into their own agency) living at historical hinge-points, I find our own time...unsurprising. Once I learned, for example, the history of anti-Semitism and how it emerges cyclically, like clockwork, every 70-100 years and especially in times of societal decline, I knew exactly what we were dealing with, even as it emerged on a whole new level in real time as I was writing What the Night Sings.
What I'm thinking through right now is whether our circles of acquaintance are far too large. Humans' natural state is tribal. Call it evolution, call it finite attention span, we're simply not meant to interact on this scale. Even a multi-generational household in a traditional culture, for example, will split off into units when it starts to crack under its own numerical weight, right?
So I've been diving into this exploration of the concept of "community", a word which, for the last 20 years or so, has been fragmenting into ever more specialized facets, let's say. The Black Community. The LGBTQ+etc. Community. The Illustration Community. The Jewish or Christian or Hindu Community.
But I think that's not the right word. The word we should be using is "NETWORK."
A "network" is an interest group. We choose networks based on commonality, and they can be as fine-tuned as we want. A "community" is not something that's chosen. A community denotes a finite and knowable sphere that can be influenced by the individual. A family. A neighborhood. A church.
"Community" also denotes difference. Your neighborhood might be made up of a mixture of demographics—socio-economically, ethnically, vocationally, religiously. Families operate that way, too.
Platforms like Twitter (and to a lesser extent, Facebook) are neither of these. They have no controls; it's like allowing the whole population of a large city into your living room. You don't have enough personal resource to go around. You don't know the motives of those coming in. There's no way to corral those people into either networks or communities—a bit more control exists on a Facebook, say, but not at all on Twitter—that's why it's doomed to fail, if it doesn't destroy everyone first. And I've seen it destroy MANY. We all have.
So as we think about Thinkspot, Locals, or social media in general, should we think in terms of network? True community is really only going to be found in small numbers, as you get to know peoples' difference in person, in real time, around your dinner table, or on the sofa with some guitars and candles.
What do you think?