Saturday 23 March 2019

On the Uses and Abuses of 'Community'

For a long time, even before the "Zaklash", I was thinking about writing a post about the so-called "OSR Community" and my suspicions about that way of thinking about online groupings. But somebody has pre-empted me and so it seems like a good time to marshal my half-formed thoughts on the matter.

"Community" is a much-abused term in the English language. There are two nefarious ways in which it is used, both of them related.

The first is when somebody uses the word to speak about large groups of people in an abstract, monolithic way which does not remotely reflect the variety of viewpoints within them: thus you will hear people talking about "the Polish community", "communities in North Yorkshire", "the black community", the "trans community", "working-class communities", and so on and what those "communities" are purported to think. (The black community thinks [X], communities in North Yorkshire are opposed to [Y], working-class communities are worried about [Z], and so on: well, okay, which black people, which people in North Yorkshire, which working-class people, and are they all of the same mind?)

The second is when it is used by somebody who is setting him- or herself up as being an authoritative voice for speaking on behalf of a group that he or she belongs to - usually on the basis of nothing other than a trumped-up ego. Thus you will encounter people in the public sphere who like to say that they speak on behalf of the Polish community, the trans community, working-class communities, or whatever, without any sort of legitimate justification for doing so.

You saw both of the abuses of that poor benighted word during the "Zaklash" thing, I am sure. I don't think there's much to be gained from naming names, but if you were following the blogs, reddit and G+ during that time you will I am sure have noticed that the air was thick with hot air about what "our community thinks" (as though an amorphous grouping of tens of thousands of people can "think" any one thing) and also will have observed a large number of people coming out of the woodwork to set themselves up as community spokespeople ("Here I am to tell everybody what we all think").

This is all completely awful and stupid. Let's think about "community" seriously.

Where I live, there is a community. I know my neighbours in the eight or so houses that are within shouting distance. We're not great mates or anything, but we say "hello" to each other, take each other's bins out each Tuesday morning to be collected, and watch out for each other. Ian, an old gent who lives opposite, occasionally pops over to warn us that he's heard about a burglary in the next street over or whatever. Now and again we'll chat about politics - he used to be a local councilor. Another neighbour is a guitarist and sometimes we'll swap CDs (yes, some people still do this!). There's a frail old widow who we all keep an eye on and help with gardening and the like. It's nice: there is what I would call an appropriate, common-sense level of interaction - we know each other, we interact where it would be helpful, but none of use gives a fuck if we happen to share different views and nobody pries. What's even better is that we're all pretty different. There are old people, young families, and middle-aged unmarried couples, all with our varying perspectives on life, and that makes it actually interesting to chat to them. Life is more richly textured having them around.

What are the characteristics of this community? First, we're grouped together by accident. Nobody chose his or her neighbours. We're neighbours because we happen to live near each other. Second, we "commune" in the sense that we help one another when it is needed and are available to each other for those purposes. Third, we do not universally "think" anything or much care what each other thinks, certainly not when it comes to politics. And fourth, we didn't come together for a purpose - we are I suppose what Michael Oakeshott would have called a "civil association", meaning that we share a sense of loyalty to each other and to certain (unwritten) rules of conduct - like not spying on each other and not insulting each other and making sure to say "hello" - but have no specific goal or objective other than rubbing along.

One good thing about real communities like this is that we all actually know who each other is and can interact physically. What this means is that if somebody from outside (a local politician or policeman or whatever) did actually want to find out what we "think", we could get together and ask each other and come up with a consensus view. We're not reliant on bogus spokespersons claiming to know what we think and putting words in our mouths.

Another good thing about real communities like this is that you don't get anonymous outsiders coming and going and claiming to be part of "the community" one second before disappearing, or claiming to be part of "the community" and then trashing its social norms. The community is what it is. You can only join it or leave it with difficulty and with an act of serious commitment.

The other good thing about real communities like this is that you can engage in corrective behaviour to a certain extent. Got a noisy neighbour? You can have a chat with the neighbour on the other side, go and see the offender, and ask him to get back in line. If he does, no hard feelings. If he doesn't, he gets shunned until he does. You don't want to idealise this, of course. If a gang of crack dealers moved into a house nearby and started running all-night parties, an external force like the police would have to get involved. Similarly, one spouse might be physically abusing the other behind closed doors, unbeknownst to the rest of us. But to a significant extent the community is self-managing in a humane and forgiving way; somebody does something to push the tolerance of the rest of the group, and they get politely, gently brought back into compliance with the social norms.

Online "communities" lack most of these features and shouldn't be mistaken for the real thing. In particular, they shouldn't be seen as a substitute for being part of a real-world physical community - the kind of thing that makes your life richer through exposure to people from different age groups, backgrounds and walks of life, and which gives you a sense of having something useful to contribute (even if it's just taking the old widow's dog for a walk).

Even more importantly, they shouldn't be seen as having the consensual characteristics of the relatively small, physical, closed community that exists in a street or village square or whatever. No one person or even group of people can speak for an online community because nobody knows who is in that "community" or what they all think, and there is no way to accurately find out. I can ask my neighbours what they think and represent the diversity of their views to an outsider if required to do so. I cannot do the same for readers of this blog and I most certainly cannot do so for the so-called "community" surrounding the OSR. And if I ever do appear to be trying to do this, you are well within your rights to tell me to go fuck myself, because nobody appointed me to do it.

30 comments:

  1. We have a tendency to neglect the wood for the trees. I always find it somehow sad to witness the investment placed in online spaces by the sensitive and the lonely... the half friendships, half victories, half crises... distractions from the very real participation which happens (and I think, ought to be encouraged) every day. I dunno.
    At any rate, succinctly put.

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    1. I agree with you entirely. A lot of life's problems go away when you have real social connections.

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  2. The web is more like a city than a community. It can be an exciting place where you can find whatever it might be you want, but you also have to be on your guard because you're among strangers, and you can't see anybody's real face. This is a thing I think people often forget as they sit cozy at their keyboards or devices. You are very much in a public space, with all the negatives that that carries with it. It's a big mistake to ascribe anything to it that you'd normally get from person to person interaction.

    Also, the web is media, and all media from cave paintings to online experiences is an illusion. It is not direct source information, it is *always* filtered through someone else's viewpoint and agenda. Even in the most benign cases, someone is deciding what to say and what not to say, and it can distort what is real. Add to that that throughout its history that media illusion is designed to *sell* something, be it a product or ideas. It always pays to be wary of that.

    You can see with your own eyes the old lady down the way is getting frail and can use some help in her garden. (And in my random internet stranger's opinion there is little that is nobler than going over and lending someone's grandmother a hand.) But despite what I just said I would be very wary of anyone claiming online to be a spokesperson for all old ladies everywhere and trying to tell me what I should do for them or think about them.

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    1. I completely agree. And don't get me wrong, I like going to cities. I wouldn't want to be without them entirely. But there's a reason why the middle of e.g. London is not a good place to raise kids.

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    2. So much of the sales pitch, whatever might be on sale and by whom, is based around trying to mimic that closeness and community. "You can trust me. I'm acting and sounding like someone you've known for a long time."

      We have a lot of ancient, band dwelling wiring that glib advertisers & demagogues know how to tug on. Not all of it is harmful or malevolent, but to quote Rush: "I can't pretend a stranger is a long awaited friend." Y'don't have to be paranoid, just alert.

      Yeah, cities are awesome, but it's a good idea not to get too comfortable there. Even when I was younger I usually felt kinda burned out and ready for a nap after I got home from a jaunt into town. It's work, even if you're doing something fun. You're out in the forest on the hunt, Og, not sitting back in the cave with the family around the campfire. Don't get 'em confused.

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  3. This only peripheral to your main point, but I find that a vaguely specified “we” is an indicator that my thinking is sloppy and that I should look more carefully at my assumptions.

    When I see it in a magazine article or blog post it definitely casts doubt on any conclusions drawn.

    This post is a great example. Compare the first ("Here I am to tell everybody what we all think") non-specific one with the next dozen “we” that refer to a group that could be pretty specifically enumerated: “my neighbours in the eight or so houses that are within shouting distance”.

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    1. I often think the same thing. One of my pet hates is the phrase "we as a society". Whenever I see that sort of thing I instantly start thinking...nah. This person doesn't get it.

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  4. I believe that true communities are necessarily limited in scale. For example, investigate a specific apartment block in Brooklyn and you can gather some insight into the community there, the web of relationships, gossip, etc. Now do the same with Manhattan. You can't. Information about the people in a group of that scale is beyond the personal/individual and has to be generalized. Manhattan is not a community, it has too large a scope.

    You need a certain level of familiarity with the majority of people in a group to build a real sense of community. The maximum number of people you can do that with is limited both by free time, proximity (less important online), and human mental capacity (Dunbar's number).

    Once any group gets big enough, it naturally tends to fracture into subgroups that are closer to that more intimate, ideal size. "Old school gaming" is no longer a humble village community, it's a city. Time to figure out which street you live on and get to know the people there.

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    1. >>I believe that true communities are necessarily limited in scale.<<

      To a certain extent, this also holds for online communities. I still fondly remember the days when the Paizo boards were pretty small (before the Pathfinder RPG exploded onto the scene). There was basically no need for any moderation except the rare intervention by a Paizo official because everyone played nice and also because after only a short time, you felt like you knew the other board members. Like you said there was a sense of community.
      That sense of community dissolved with the influx of a lot of new board members, all having strong opinions about how the then new system should look like and not everyone willing to present their opinion in a civil way. Well, the community there kinda shattered into pieces and while I'm in no way qualified to talk about the OSR movement, I can easily see how growth (even when slower) leads to quite the same problems with online communities there.

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    2. One of the big mistakes people make is thinking that they can get that level of familiarity with people they know online. I don't believe you can. I don't mean that online friendship is impossible - but online community of the type I know in my street is.

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    3. The lack of a face-to-face connection is huge, yeah. It's also probably in part because of how much extra effort it takes to drive down and spend time with people in a physical space vs. just clicking on a website; you're more invested. Internet communities are a lot more transient as a result. I've had people who I've been talking on forums with for months just disappear and I shrugged because whatever, it's the internet. I figured they probably either got bored or had more important obligations.

      If that happened with a friends in real life I would go knock on their door and make sure they weren't dead.

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    4. Most of the people who I'm closest to online are people I knew in person but no longer live close enough to. That, to me, is what this tech is for.

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    5. Yeah, the transience is something that really alienates me as time goes on.

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  5. This shit is making me feel so old.

    I remember way back when I first started on the internet back when "OMG, I'm talking to someone from another country" was amazing I was a part of a community a lot like your neighborhood. Even met a couple people on it later face to face. Don't really see that much happening anymore.

    Not sure what the big difference is. Maybe online "communities" are so big that people can't remember everyone anymore, maybe those giant 90's signature gifs helped up remember who is who better, or maybe the average person is just spread across different communities. But, for example I've got north of 5,000 posts on rpg.net, for example, and I don't think that much of anyone remembers who I am from post of post and I haven't made any online "friends" in I don't know how long.

    On the other hand the internet has gotten much much much better at finding people nearby. Pretty much all of my friends except some ex-colleagues were people I met by posting online, but often I barely talked to them before meeting them face to face.

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    1. I remember those days vaguely too. I do think it's scale partly, and also just more options - I remember when basically all there really was to do online was visit Yahoo geocities to look at Mr T vs Everything comics.

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    2. Probably partly also not as many people you know IRL being on the internet so you end up interacting more with strangers. I remember having a whole slew of people on ICQ who I talked to regularly who I had never met IRL but can't remember the last person I've swapped chatty PMs with who I only knew online. Even some people I worked on a worldbuilding project with for a long time I never added on social media or interacted with in any other way. Strange how much things shift in such a short time.

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    3. I blame social media supplanting niche fandom forums. Then again messageboards aren't exactly paradise as they invariable turn into a pisshole of abusive mods desperate to exercise the power they lack in real life.

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  6. I don't trust people who are so quick to declare a group of loosely affiliated people a 'community' as they are usually the first to try to enforce who gets to be part of it and how they engage. The idea, for example, that I'd share a 'community' with the likes of Zak or Pundit or Venger (to use the more infamous example) is ludicrous. What I share with them is a hobby and maybe a few overlapping interest (namely tabletop RPG, especially of the OSR).

    When they do something bad they are not my responsibility just because we happen to loosely like loosely similar things. To say we do is like saying I've got a 'community' with, say, every single metalhead I've never interacted with in my life because I like to blast some old metal when I'm bored. Other people are not my responsibility. I don't owe people an apology even when the offense is real anymore than I would need to apologize if a serial killer was found to be addicted to Oreo cookies (a weakness of mine!) or Beef Jerky or the fact we both listened to Sabaton or something.

    Ultimately we don't swear loyalty to every single other person sharing a similar hobby anymore than they swear loyalty to us. This ain't a political party its just a damn hobby of nerds and older nerds rolling funny shaped dice.

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  7. I understand being uneasy with self-appointed people that claim to speak for a group and the lack of nuance that can be given to a body of people. The word "community" though, in official contexts doesn't have the narrow definition given above. The one used above is just one of many you will find listed. Sometimes, it is even group with types of "communities" that are invalidated in the above blog post in the same entry in the list of definitions. I don't understand writing from a perspective that invalidates all the others.

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    1. Well, it's because obviously I think those other definitions are undesirable.

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    2. Other definitions of the word "community" I mean. I actually think it is bad to talk about "working-class communities" as though that actually means something. Nuance matters.

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    3. Isn't it useful to have a term to describe some of those sorts of groups though? I.e., collections of people who share one or more interests or values.

      I understand the objection to using the word "community" on the ground that it tends to conflate those arbitrarily defined groups with more traditional face-to-face communities.

      But if the collection of OSR folks is not a "community" what is it? If the worldwide collection of Catholics is not a "community" what is it?

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    4. I would say the OSR thing is better understood as a "scene" - a large undefined group with a shared interest, which is open and fluid in its membership and with a few influential voices.

      Catholics I would call a religion. ;) A single parish church might be more in the way of a community.

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  8. I think online friendships are entirely possible: Somewhat different in form, certainly, but possible nonetheless. Community, though? I'd agree that this one is a good amount more difficult. I've been involved in enough stuff online to agree with the sentiment that wider "communities" of people are lacking.

    On the other hand, I'm not sure if an online community can't happen at all. I can think of one - a chat group I've been with for about twelve years - that strikes me as closer to the ideal you describe: effectively self-moderating; different politics; different ages (presently, if I'm not mistaken: from 14 to 28); and different reasons for being there. The chat had a purpose, twelve years ago. It hasn't for some time, besides a place to discuss. I'd never call it a replacement for dealing with people in meatspace, since I think the two are effectively different: I don't, however, know if I would consider it inherently inferior.

    Instead, I think it's more a matter of different purpose. In physical space, it can be difficult to confide certain things to normal people. Few are the neighbors who would appreciate a drunk man showing up at 1am to vent on their front lawn. On the other hand, a online group gives a degree of anonymity - the amount set to a person's taste - which makes that sort of thing possible. There's also the reverse side to your point of not choosing your community: Some people grow up in places where the surrounding community is actively hostile, and their ability to connect with people elsewhere is a godsend. Being lonely together is still loneliness, but it's a better sort than having nobody.

    I will agree fully that - on the point of 'choose your own anonymity' - any social media platform, or other online group built around people's full identity, can never be a true community. It is, at best, the hollow reflection of something in the real world. The same goes for any online group that permits the rise of internal celebrities, or any where a form of 'like' function or 'sort by popularity' exists.

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    1. I take your point that some people grow up where there is no community at all (I would put it that way rather than saying there is a hostile community) or for some other reason can't partake in community and loneliness together is better than pure loneliness. That's natural but I don't think it is remotely ideal.

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  9. Community, tribe, nation, whatever...it's a trick. You evolved social instincts to relate to the Dunbar's Number of people in your hunter-gatherer band--which is just code for extended family. But there is always someone preying on those emotions to get you to invest in a bunch of strangers. Usually because they are going to profit from it at your expense. Don't fall for it. Treat strangers politely and save emotional investment for the people you actually know.

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    1. I agree.

      The "community" word is very hazily defined, its modern connotations subject to a lot of torsion and abusive usage when someone is on the hoodwink.

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  10. I see that it's nice that smaller communities don't require spokespeople. I don't think spokespeople are always bogus, but there's definitely always a risk. But in any case, I don't see why this non-susceptibility should be made the hallmark of community. I think the main argument for your definition of community is actually that life is made richer only by IRL relations.

    But let's take the case we're actually talking about. Suppose I interact regularly on social media with someone in a group of people who share some interests and overlap, perhaps forming clusters with lots of criss-crossing connections. Suppose I run and play in online games with this person, and a whole bunch of other people. Suppose I regularly share in his thoughts, discuss his ideas, etc. Suppose I even collaborate on something with him. There is a way in which I share much more with him than I share with my lovely next door neighbor, Vera. Suppose though that I have never met him IRL.

    Now suppose that there are a definite number of other people that stand on some spectrum of relations like that both with one another and with me. Why wouldn't that be a community? In some ways it makes my life richer than my relationship to Vera, as much as I like having that relation. After all, we play games together, share information, collaborate, and so on, and those are all enriching things.

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    1. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying it is impossible to have online friendships or friendship groups. I think maybe you are conflating a friendship group with what I would call a community. To me the point of a community is that the people in it are not close enough to be friends. They're not a community because they like each other or have interests in common (though they may do) but because they share social proximity and certain unspoken norms which they generally adhere to. It is hard to replicate that online because it comes from living in one place alongside certain people for an extended period of time.

      In other words community is more about geographic location than about friendship or shared interests (although obviously it's not *just* about location).

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