Startupy Issue #9: a laid back newsletter about very serious ideas

🥸  MOOD

🪐  HOT LINKS IN OUR UNIVERSE

“Disregard the Words” by Josh Miller

🕺  Curated in Notion, Storytelling & Worldbuilding 

Designing Token Economies by Packy McCormick

🕺  Curated in Tokenomics, Protocols, Incentive Design, Crypto Tokens, & Community Design

How to do Nothing by Jenny Odell (book)

🕺  Curated in Tech and Society, Productivity & The Attention Economy

Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon (book)

🕺  Curated in The Creator Economy & Creativity

Every clear directive you issue is a gift because it relieves your staff of the stress of having to divine your goals. A clear directive is an indication of trust: your way of saying "I have taken the time and effort to figure out our goal. I now acknowledge that you have the knowledge and resources to figure out the process. 

51 connections → 15 content, 30 companies, 6 related topics

28 connections → 14 content, 3 companies, 11 related topics

69 connections → 48 content, 15 companies, 6 related topics

Tagged in → Tokenized Communities, Member Communities & Decentralized Brands

Top Author → Crypto & Consumer Social

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🌱  COMMUNITY HEALTH

Welcoming Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Susie Conley, Omid Ghiam, and Krishaan Khubchand to our curator community this week and virtual high-fiving Prashanth Narayan, Johanna Einsiedler, Camilo Serna, Sarah Drinkwater, Kassen Qian, and Vyara Ndejuru for their contributions.

✨  CURATOR SPOTLIGHT

 

 

Why are online niche communities interesting? 

In my role as a Cultural Futurist, I’m infatuated with the changing tides of behavior — what’s driving them, and what kind of impact they have on our lives as individuals and societies. And this is the tide I’ve found myself most obsessed with over the last 6-12 months: call it ‘the nichification of everything.’ 
 

Whether we’re simply fatigued by them or questioning their societal harm more broadly, mass megaphone social networks are waning in popularity and engagement in favor of smaller, more focused venues of connection and community that organize themselves around shared interests, values, and passions down to just about any and every specific niche. 
 

At the same time, fluidity and flexibility of identity is at an all-time high, with gen Z driving the desire to try on different versions or sides of themselves without asserting any single space as a fixed badge. And we’re all catching the freedom bug as a result of this cultural center of gravity — embracing the niche, letting our weirdness shine, and finding likeminded compatriots in each nook and cranny, no matter how specific. 

So it’s a bit of a chicken or the egg conversation — but it’s a fascinating one that’s bound to have serious consequences for the future in terms of how, where, and why we gather (URL or IRL) and what it means to connect with (and act as) community in meaningful and impactful ways.

 

Everything’s kind of cult-y these days (which is deeply connected to the conversation above). It’s not necessarily a bad thing, except when it is…which is why each installment of this interesting-meets-hilarious podcast ends with a question: Is this subculture a “Live Your Life” cult, a “Watch Your Back” cult, or a “Get the F*ck Out” cult?

 

Shannon, like me, considers herself a generalist. And I love how — among many other utterly fascinating topics — she talks about the magic (but also the difficulty) of finding and forging community as an interdisciplinary thinker. (And while we’re on the topic of the brilliant Ms. Mattern, please also give this a read.) 

 

Sc3nius by Packy McCormick and Of Pods, Squads, Crews, and Gangs by Joe Lightfoot

Two thoughtful essays, at two very different scales, both unpacking what’s so special about particular types of community and the distinctly human, creative potential that results from their formation.

 

Communities Aren’t Buckets — They’re Clouds by Joey Debruin

I hadn’t considered what the nicheification of community & identity meant for the future of (knowledge) work…that is, until I read this.

 

Post-Social Media by co—matter and The Only Good Thing Left About Facebook by Mansee Khurana

According to this brilliant report from fellow curator Severin Matusek, the post-social media era is going to look a lot more like the only good thing left about Facebook, and a lot less like, well, the rest of it. 

 

Deep Internet Bubbles by Kieran Press-Reynolds and Fashion Is Just TikTok Now by Rebecca Jennings

As Rex Woodbury put it so eloquently, “rather [than a mainstream], we have 4.5 billion individual universes of culture, colliding and intersecting and building on one another to redefine how we collectively think and live.” And music and fashion, as explored in the links above, are two of the best realms to watch it play out.

 

Metalabel.xyz 

The idea of creativity in multiplayer mode is ripe for the moment. And the way Yancey and team are thinking about it is well-worth watching. (🔉also: the Near Future Lab podcast recapping a General Seminar sense-making session on the idea of Metalabels)

Somewhere Good

‘Slow Social’ is an intriguing notion, and one they’re playing with over at Somewhere Good. Intentional conversations and genuine connections, thoughtfully built to encourage intimate community among those with marginalized identities. When innovations are built for the few, they generally improve things for the many — so I’m keeping my eye on this one.