# Most online communities feel impotent ### Hypotheses * No norms or expectations * No shared goals * I don’t understand how I’m supposed to interact * No way to create personal connection - it’s basically all a presentation on a stage * Quickly go beyond Dunbar’s number before there’s any culture transmission * The ‘introduction’ thread on slack feels like screaming into a void and there’s no way to connect someone to their * Feels like everybody is just trying to get attention and be an influencer * Fomo and/or overwhelm at all the things that happen when you’re not there * [[Fully open online discussions are low quality because of trust and context]] ### Examples of historical communities that seem to have worked * [[Ben Frankin’s Junto]] * [[Royal Society of the Arts]] (see [[Arts and Minds]]) * [[Tuxedo Park]] * Early [[Y Combinator]] * Open source communities ### Related * [[Mark McGranaghan conversation 19 Jun 2020]] * [[Do communities necessarily need not-busy people to curate them?]] * [[Third Places as community builder]] * [[Presenting to peers regularly encourages you to get shit together]] <!-- #stub --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Most+online+communities+feel+impotent) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Most+online+communities+feel+impotent)