[travisjungroth]

Maybe a bit of an aside, but community is such a weird word these days. It can represent a group of people who mostly only interact with each other (a remote mountain community) or a group of people that just have one thing in common (a data tool forum, the investment banking community).

These things are different and I think it matters. You say “members of a community” and it’s easy to imagine people who live within a half-day walk of the same river. But it’s not that at all, anymore. You used to be a member of a community. Now you can be in as many as you want.

There’s a trade off for that. Are the people on the forums I frequent going to show up at my wedding, my funeral? Will I watch their kids while they take care of their sick parents? No, none of that.

We’ve sliced ourselves so thin. There are benefits and costs to that. Any niche interest I have, I can find 100 people to talk about it with. I don’t have to worry if my neighbor is into it. I don’t have to worry about him at all.

[wombatmobile]

Definitions from Oxford Languages

community /kəˈmjuːnɪti/

noun

1. a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. "Montreal's Italian community"

2. the condition of sharing or having certain attitudes and interests in common. "the sense of community that organized religion can provide"

[travisjungroth]

They're both valid definitions. My more earnest point is the trend of being less involved in more communities. And the corresponding shift in intensity from "all of your lives depend on each other and almost no one else" to "you all make money the same way".

And that shift is accelerating. Agriculture caused a big jump. The industrial revolution caused a big jump. The internet caused a big jump.

I don't think it's all bad. It's just different. My idea for the healthiest setup (covid aside) for modern work is remote in a friendly, local coworking space. That way if you change jobs, you only change half the people that you spent 9-5 with, not all of them. There's a resiliency from diversification.

[xwolfi]

I'm not sure it changed in a way that matters so much. You have 2 necessary groups you need to survive: the close mutual help group, people who will actually turn up at your funerals, wedding, help your kids if you die, shits like that. And you have the group of people you need to discuss things, change your opinion, teach you things, buy and sell to/from you.

So you want to talk "before", so let's say 1850 to go far enough.

For the first group, the affective partnership group, you had your family, often large and extended, and a few friends you met along the way.

For the second group, the social need group, you had you childhood friends still living around, your village, the other farmers around you, your clients and your trading partners (animal food providers, if you raised animals, stuff like that).

Your community, an American concept we don't have in French (in French it has a religious/isolated meaning like a monastery, I feel we would rather say "village"), I suppose would be the second one. People who depends loosely on you and on which you depend loosely (but you can switch, there's no personal feelings if you stop contact with part of it etc).

A forums on the internet, if you're an at home programmer, for instance, will be the same. You need some of them now, they're like a group of traders in your village you use to get stuff for your own farm. Now if you dislike their pricing or advice, you can change forum just like you could look for another group in the village before.

In short, I think your mistake is to expect community members in the past would go to your funerals (well there was a sense of duty in a village to do it because church, but it didn't mean people would cry at it or deeply miss you). A family and friends, a concept that has existed forever and still exists to this day, would and will.

And if you're not a programmer, the internet might be a lot less important, it may be to discuss guns for instance, and have fun comparing and sharing experience. But I guess calling that a community is more a PR move by people trying to sell you a social aspect to an experience, rather than a proper usage of the word to describe what the concept is. I'd call it an online forum, which is what these things are (the word has this underlying "discussion" meaning, in a multicast way)

[travisjungroth]

Thanks for your insight. I can see the similarities you're pointing out.

[kostarelo]

> Are the people on the forums I frequent going to show up at my wedding, my funeral?

Really this doesn't has anything to do with the "forums". Depends on the relationships you've build on those forums. It could be that strong that they will happily come at any important event of your life, and if they can't because of physical distance, they would still be happy/sad/whatever about it.

[tasogare]

> Are the people on the forums I frequent going to show up at my wedding, my funeral?

It can happens yes. The obvious example is a couple meeting in a game like WoW, marrying and inviting their in-game friends. Or that stories of a kid with rare genetic disease who could only socialize online and got people his parents didn’t know at his funerals.

[travisjungroth]

It definitely happens, it's just a matter of frequency. If your community is your village, you're almost certainly going to marry someone from your community or the greater community that includes your village next door (but maybe you travel instead!). Now those deep bonds being forged online happens, but it's not the default.

[corobo]

Genres of music are all different too but I'm not listening to rock when I put pop on just because both of those are genres.