Sharing imperfect ideas with small communities
6/6/24When I’m in the process of making things, I want a small community of trusted people to share it with. But I’ve found that my two options are keeping it to myself, or sharing on the internet. Which feels like sharing it with 0 people, or sharing it with inf people.
It’s sort of like seeing ideas as little kids. You want to keep them protected and nurtured until they’re adolescents and ready, in which case you really want to push them out into the world so they get roughed up and grow from it. Without that contact with reality, they’ll just become coddled and won’t grow more.
But that’s only after they’re rooted in some sense of self. Sharing ideas too early feels like they’ll get blown around in the wind too easily. It’s too easy to lose faith, or to consider going in a different direction. Making ideas strong enough by themselves allows them to take root better. It’s as if they have more gravity.
It made me think about how, if I lived 10,000 years ago, I’d probably be the village tinkerer making new things. But it would probably be the same old stuff- tools, probably. And there would be an immediate feedback loop from my tribe. But today, the stuff can be as niche as I can google. And that tribe of people who can give sustained attention and feedback and help the ideas grow up probably isn’t directly around.
Social media supposedly fixes this, and then you keep adding people and followers and then it feels like you’re swimming in this anonymous ocean. And it’s not like it incentivises getting closer either, I don’t know anything about, nor am I going to try and find out more about, the guy from that one group project I added on IG 2 years ago.
This is all to say that I’d like a halfway point. Something that isn’t as public as sharing stuff online, or on a newsletter that everyone can still see, but what feels like a small trusted tribe online.
I don’t think this only pertains to making stuff. I think everyone’s aching for (and needs) a small crowd of their people sharing their attention with them. This feels like the driving force behind finstas and close friend’s stories, and apps like retro and bereal.
As humans, I think we want to feel like it’s okay that we take up the space we take up, warts and all. Like there’s a space where we can share the shitty, WIP, neurotic parts of ourselves, and have someone actually share their attention with us, and tell us that hey, you got this, keep going.
Sharing things on public social media is an option, but it doesn’t actually mean that we’ll get any sustained attention from people who care. I don’t want to shout every little update into the flood.
This is all to say that I think I’m going to make a close friends story on Instagram.