Signal Flares
2025-11-17
"I never want to belong to any club that would have me as a member." ~Groucho
The Problem
Communities collapse into groupthink if tied to:
- Money/product: Financial incentives demand conformity.
- Personality: Disagreeing with the figurehead feels like betrayal.
In these cases, this is exactly what they want. Groupthink is the desired outcome.
This is why I avoid Discord servers that are essentially products or personalities operating as products. But I've had similar problems with various acronym movements where purism felt like fascism and stabbed the community like so many bioluminescent fungi.
And yet... I yearn for a group. My group... hold the groupthink.