As a professional community builder, I have learned to notice subtle ways culture trains us to interact with each other.

The WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (sort of)) culture I’m predominantly exposed to does very little to help us create the community we ultimately need.

And while I’ve observed this friction at large for the last decade, I have remained mostly hopeful as I invest my energy in a small corner of the internet where real belonging is being nurtured: online communities.

I remained hopeful because community seemed to be the one bullshit meter that profit-prioritizing businesses couldn’t hack.

But as extreme wealth concentrates into fewer hands and nearly every aspect of life becomes commodified (and then enshittified), it has now come for online communities.

In the community professionals “whisper down the lane,” I’ve heard it described as the middle rung disappearing. 

We are moving towards a landscape with only high-ticket communities for the upper ruling class or low-ticket community gruel for the commoners.

You don’t need to look far in your daily life to observe 3 core values of WEIRD cultures: comfort, convenience, and consumption.

True community, the kind that will fulfill our need for belonging and confront the loneliness epidemic in our world, confronts these values.

Community is not comfortable. It usually means coming into contact with people you don’t agree with or even particularly like and learning to coexist.

Community is not convenient. True belonging is created from helpfulness. It’s not usually convenient to be helpful.

Community is not consumption. Where consumption feeds off our attention, community requires participation.

When profits are prioritized over people, we’re left with a comfortable crowd consuming conveniently with connection in short supply.

With a connection deficit, we see [the same] companies moving to commodify the scarcity they created and sell it to you for an ongoing membership fee.

Quick aside: this is not a criticism of paid communities. 

I make a living of helping people create and grow paid membership communities.

To label “the problem” as “the payment” is a vast over simplification. This criticism does not help us get closer to a real solution, but instead leads us to diminish the efforts creating belonging.

The herculean task of building community online in late stage capitalism doesn’t start with making all communities free.

If the connection deficit is what led us to this desert, designing for connection is the only way out.

The solution is, of course, not the easy path, but it is simple:

Design for Connection over Consumption 

This is the theme (dare I say "mini series?") of the next several newsletters here from Ember.

A sneak peek: this series begins with examining the purpose of community, journeys through practical tips on community design, and ends with an invitation to a more thoughtful approach to AI.

But I'm curious, what does designing for connection over consumption mean to you? 

Have you already seen it in action?

Or have you noticed the opposite?

Hit reply and let me know, discussions like this will help shape the upcoming newsletters.