✨ volume 1 -- an ode to internet communities
continuing to build communities, create content, and the internet's role in creating our voice
I’ve always believed that the urge within us to create, write, draw, sing — to exist in a medium greater than our immediate spheres — exists inside of all of us. We see it in its entirety when we’re young, uninhibited by any judgement or pressing self awareness. We doodle, draw on walls, talk gibberish, draw comics — anything, to try to connect with our parents, friends, and ourselves.
We lose this desire to connect as we grow up. Stray lines and messy penmanship are given guardrails and templates. We so want to fit in and be accepted. We can’t help but notice the kids who do subscribe to group think, who don’t deviate from the normative, are accepted, desirable. So, piece by piece, we shed the threads of our identity to be woven into the collective.
What we missed was this — at some point, between childhood and adulthood, we will start to find substance in our being, identity in our selves. Those who will help us discover these fragments won’t preach the views of a collective. Because not all fragments of our identity belong to a common framework. We’re comprised of subsets of interests, experiences, and identities in countless permutations that stretch far beyond defined stereotypes, colored by or immediate society’s broad strokes.
We might love discussing Marx as much we as we do beautiful anime. Trade wars as much as World of Warcraft. Personal development as much as Prada’s new sneakers. The threads to our algorithm are endless. And renouncing our faith to one sweeping definition for ourselves to pursue multiple dimensions and definitions relentlessly is to truly capture the human experience.
In our generation, (that is Millennial / Gen Z), we’re lucky to have grown up with technologies that allow us to begin to capture this human experience. We remember when life was limited to the cool girl in 2nd grade defining playground rules, but as just as much appreciate the unbounded mediums playground the internet brought forth. These defining experiences, powered by the early communities the internet created, have helped us in learning to express the muted fragments of our identities in our early teens. From Facebook Pages where we expressed to millions of anonymous Facebook users our “Like If You’re Reading This on Monday” pages, to Discord chats on weight loss, to the #FYP internet trends raging through TikTok. We’ve come a long way in streamlining our expression of the human experience, fragments of our identity, and building community around it.
The impact of these internet communities upon our generation is liberating and powerful, allowing us to act truthfully to ourselves and letting us know that in despite our quirks and oddities, we are not alone. We now live in a world where countless avenues exist for us to submerge, explore, and simultaneously feel connected to a community. Unlike our parents, and the generations of humanity before us, we are no longer trapped in the small ecosystem that was our immediate community, bound by similar socioeconomic levels and race.
We’re even more fortunate to be equipped with the knowledge that is understanding what the building blocks are to create better communities and networks. The democratization of technology has allowed us to make creation and innovation it accessible for all. We literally have all the tools at our fingertips to make the most of the human experience.
Data analytics have powered user design so much that it’s not just about click through rates but how long a user has been viewing a page, where their eyes track, and how to better evoke a strong attachment to a product. TikTok, Youtube, Netflix, Spotify, and Instagram already do this in their sorting algorithm, matching user’s viewing history with other recommended content but imagine this matching is done at a higher level - matching communities. In the future, the convergence of internet, data, and communities could be a space where given all the fingerprints our natural interest leave on the internet, we can find a platform where we can communicate, share, learn, and emote. In this future, we are can be so much closer to finding our people, our tribe, our selves.
This might be my optimism speaking, but I think the internet’s role in creating communities and shaping individual expression is evinced in the hyper-expression of Gen Z. More than ever, given the mediums like the aforementioned YT, TikTok, IG, etc. Gen Z is unabashedly sending its signal into the void, hoping it gains traction with someone who thinks similarly. Hate to say it but “back in my day”, only a few of us had the audacity to post Niga-higa-esque productions on Youtube. But now, in my younger brother’s generation (he’s 17), every other person has a TikTok with a few videos on their page.
Perhaps its vanity driving the the desire for virality. Maybe it is a vainer generation. But better to love hearing your own voice than to not know you have one.
MISC.
Some diagrams to show how deeply TikTok and this new method of social media has dominated the mindshare of Gen Z
1) 5th Consecutive AppStore download (as of Q2 2019)
2) Mostly driven by Gen Z males and females
3) Of which, ~HALF content create!