Connecting in Crisis
The last eight months have redefined the word “community” for all of us.
Spaces where we worked out, gathered with friends and family or practiced self care are no longer available to us. In their absence, many brands are using social media in an attempt to answer the call of people seeking out niche spaces in which they can find like-minded folks away from their public feeds.
Like many of us, my screen time has amplified this year and I’ve found myself overwhelmed by the images I saw online. I didn’t know how to communicate the stress of trying to maintain my sanity in a year where I’ve had to navigate a ridiculous hurricane season, a global pandemic, and an anxiety-inducing election, all from the reduced footprint of my home.
In a moment of doomscrolling on Instagram, I found an online healing circle invitation from Ethel’s Club—a Brooklyn based coworking space that has since pivoted to an online wellness clubhouse. Ethel’s Club is one of many new digital communities birthed during the pandemic that specifically centers people of color and the LGBTQ+ community. Founder Naj Austin not only managed to keep most of her members from her brick and mortar clubhouse, she was able to grow the club to over 1,000 new members across the U.S.
Since officially joining, I spend at least an hour of each day meeting people from around the world in the online clubhouse. Ethel’s club comes with access to a wealth of programming: I can join a morning wellness class before work, virtually cowork with other members throughout the day in group or private chats, and decompress during the evening sessions. Beyond the daily offerings, I’ve participated in the writing club, virtual dinner parties, fitness chats, met other people from Houston, and tuned in to awesome DJ sets.
As a Black woman, finding Ethel’s club has been a catalyst for healing, guiding me to a place of steadiness and radical joy when 2020 makes multiple attempts to steal it away.
Niche digital communities—new and old, have been key to maintaining connection this year and the trend is likely to continue. Before influencing was the goal, chatrooms of the 90s and early 2000s were full of people from across the world connecting over their love of various topics from boy bands to world history. The interfaces were extremely bare bones—customization was often limited to whatever username you could think of upon sign up (enter “datjdgurl” into the N*SYNC fan club chat room), but through hours of chats, people became just as close to their online “friends” as they were to those we hung out with in real life.
The platform of choice evolved as more social networks became available. We had the first iteration of Facebook launch for specifically college students in 2004, Reddit sprouted in 2005 and soon after, early adopter bloggers took to Xanga, Blogger and LiveJournal to share their thoughts with the world. Many millennials like myself learned HTML to take advantage of the customization feature on Myspace.
Tumblr served as the blueprint for many online community platforms. The site made it easy to “find your people” through curated topic pages, which pushed popular posts to the top of hashtag searches. Universities used Tumblr as a way to connect with their students, celebrities posted daily on their Tumblr pages to entice their fandoms. At its peak, Tumblr consisted of over 100 million blogs and reported over 75 million posts were created everyday.
Many niche communities have taken a note from the user engagement that thrived on Tumblr and moved them to more robust social platforms like Mighty Networks, a platform that allows brands, people and organizations and people to connect. Plant moms and new knitters have transformed their once-solo hobbies into thriving communities, nonprofits have created a hub for their supporters and “procrastination clubs”—which aim to keep people accountable for completing their ever growing to-do lists have grown their membership in the hundreds on Mighty Networks.
Hobbyists aren’t the only folks building intimate connections through shared interests this year. The appeal of specific, engaged communities is behind an uptick in niche newsletter subscriptions on paid platforms like Substack and Patreon. Politicians are forging new connections with their constituents through streaming platforms like Twitch. Rihanna used TikTok to connect one-on-one with her fans during the first ever “Fenty Social Club.” Popular platforms like Facebook are shifting their focus to enhance the user experience in groups while new platforms like Clubhouse are testing audio formats in private and public rooms based on niche topics.
During the pandemic, it seems the origins of social media—rooted in authentic connection and shared interests, have taken priority over carefully curated, highly branded content, at a time where many users like myself are revisiting their relationships with social media platforms and shifting their social media usage to nurture interests instead of hindering the ability to unburden ourselves.
It’s hard to think of extra screen time as restorative, but the joy I get from joining a playlist dance party, journaling with folks who are navigating the same uncertainties I am, and leveraging our collective power to support each other makes it easier to “live” online.