Searching #community on Instagram yields literally everything: selfies, food, motorcycles, beaches and a stainless-steel beverage dispenser.
Angie Thurston is the co-author of How We Gather and Care of Souls, reports that look at how millennials build communities and at the ways people are fulfilling societal roles traditionally held by religious institutions. She says the current overuse of the word “community” feels similar to a surge of environmentalism in the United States in the 70s and 80s.
“Suddenly every product was green,” she says. “The phenomenon was called greenwashing, where a label or a sticker was put on a product to try to get you to buy it, but it didn't actually say anything about the integrity of the product.”
Advertisers have always tried to sell people what they desire. It used to be a tan, a fast car, or a big house, but now connection is the aspiration. This could be a sign of the public’s shifting priorities, but it might also be indicative of something else: our hunger for belonging.
Study after study shows that Americans are lonely. Loneliness spans all age groups, and while loneliness and social isolation are different, many lonely people say they lack meaningful connection. In 2017, the former U.S. surgeon general declared loneliness an epidemic, with extreme loneliness having health effects as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
A few months ago, a Vox article described how loneliness became a big business, as outfits started capitalizing on our want for connection. Companies like Tribe supply cohousing spaces in Brooklyn and San Francisco for young people who move away from friends and family and seek new networks for support. Then there’s the coworking spaces like WeWork, which their CEO says facilitates human connection. That’s not to mention the friend-finding apps popping up for every flavor of companionship including new moms, workout buddies and dog owners.
Other companies have far more tenuous claims to community. A Forbes article titled “Why Building Community Is Critical To Your Brand's Success” cites IKEA, TheSkimm, Glossier and Peloton as examples of brands successfully cultivating “community,” or a sense of connection between customers and the brands. Their methods include giving free swag and perks to brand ambassadors for referrals, creating Slack channels where customers can talk to each other and brand representatives, organizing in-person events, and making sure customers spend time with the products, like building an Ikea couch an entire afternoon. With these techniques companies can “increase brand awareness, understand customers, improve outcomes, and build brand loyalty.”
Defining Community
So we all want community—but what is community?
“I’m really protective of the term [community],” says Thurston. “A lot of what we experience in online spaces is something more akin to a network, which is loosely held connections with people that we may share an affinity with or a single experience with.”
“There are different levels of community,” says Killian Noe, who is experimenting with Thurston on new forms of community online. “It really is a word similar to love; you can say ‘I love vanilla ice cream.’ That might be true, but you can also say ‘I love my husband of 38 years.’ That has a different level of meaning… but my hope is that everyone would have an experience of community at the deepest level.” Noe is the founder of Seattle’s Recovery Cafe, which has grown into a network of support centers helping people recovering from homelessness, addiction and other mental health challenges.
While the term is defined on a spectrum, to Noe, “community” is about being known and loved.
In this vein, Thurston says one definition of community is bringing soup to your neighbor when they are sick. In his book Deepening Community, Paul Bourne writes that this act implies a great deal about the relationship: “It requires that you know your neighbor, it requires that you know they are not vegetarian and like soup. It requires that you know them well enough and communicate regularly enough to know they are sick. Once you know they are sick, you must feel compelled to want to help and to make this a priority among the many calls on your time and energy.”
And, he adds, “Your neighbor must know you well enough to feel comfortable in receiving your help.”
Deep Communities vs. Superficial Networks
While Noe says bringing soup to a neighbor is a good start, she hopes that people have access to much deeper community than that, where they can unpack their lives and be loved without judgement. “If we could take in the truth that we are loved just as we are before we change a single thing, that is transformative. That’s what makes change possible,” she says.
Noe says the experience of being known without being loved can be painful. At worst it can manifest as an abusive relationship where a person is deeply understood but manipulated. Conversely, being loved without being known can be ultimately dissatisfying.
Many celebrities and content creators nurture this superficial kind of connection. YouTubers imitate face-to-face interaction by talking directly into the camera and saying things like “Love you!” and “Talk to you soon!” They use nicknames and terms of endearment to cultivate their fans: Makeup artist James Charles calls his fans “sisters,” Gabriella Demartino calls hers “Demar Dolls,” and vlogger Logan Paul uses the term “Logang.”
Academics call this a para-social relationship: one person (the fan) feels intimate and strong bonds towards another person (the YouTuber) who doesn’t even know the first person exists.
People Want Connection. So What?
Thurston believes the desire for connection can have much more serious consequences than buying a few things or liking a celebrity.
“When we're hungry for deepening our connection to others, it can go in two directions,” she says.
The first option is creating a community based on fear, where bonds are based on a shared enemy—an idea or a group of people. Thurston says this plays out in warfare when we fight a common enemy, but it extends to “our polarized politics, gang violence, or the more extreme forms of sports fandom.”
Hate groups fall into this category. The Southern Poverty Law Center categorizes hate groups as having “beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.”
The second option is the kind of community we all hope to experience, in which you are deeply known and deeply loved. “It is a place where you can bring your gifts, where others can bring [their gifts] and where you can receive them,” Thurston summarizes.
This kind of community can take work. You’ve got to show up, listen, share, love and maybe help cook soup for a sick neighbor. But Thurston and Noe think it’s worth it. After all, this kind of community can't be bought with the purchase of a sparkly necklace.
