Folk Festivals of the Free-Agents
Synchrony Bonding, Custom Maps, Social Support System
Hello from the Himalayas!
In 2021, a lot of us are doing our socialization mostly virtually and it doesn’t feel like just more of what we were doing pre-pandemic. The masses on one hand are recently hitting the saturation walls of social media and are withering to find calmer and more empathetic alternative social spaces(see: cozy web — including emerging private social networks like Column)
On the other hand, online-first people like me and a lot of my friends/acquaintances in the free-agent world are reckoning with a deeper (but new) challenge: how to create a meaningful social system with a participant-list that spans the globe and is online-first. If one had to design a folk-festival for the free-agents of the internet-age, what would it look like?
I gave this question a good amount of thought and found this to be an interesting and useful avenue to explore. From my understanding of what free-agents of the webverse need from and offer to their global peers, I have included some observations that could be helpful in creating a social-system for the online-first free-agents.
A free-agent social system would includes these central characteristics.
Trust (the kind that helps you avoid bureaucracy)—
connecting to the grapevine of non-public specific knowledge within organizations and across organizations.
lifestyle support - travel advice, coliving, emotional support, logistical help
intellectual peers - hanging out in virtual cafes - free-exchange of disparate & half-baked concepts
Uncertainty (tolerating it and thinking in bets)—
low legibility navigation of career trajectory — often free-agents explore a dark forest with just a flash light and have to create their own map. It’s useful to borrow and lend custom maps(heuristics, trade tricks, directory of real decision-makers, etc.) from your fellow free-agents.
cosmopolitan-career unlocks interdisciplinary opportunities - a positive flip side of being a free-agent and being involved in disparate disciplines is the ability to combine learnings gained in different contexts — ideal for attacking complex problems that require multidisciplinary solutions.
exposed to brutal network-effects of the free-market without a social safety net — a free-agent has little to fall-back on except his own self-built ‘crash-pad’. Connecting with fellow free-agents allow all to collectively thwart potential crashes.
Synchrony/Asynchrony Management—
The Dilemma — group synchrony(seashanties on tiktok) feels good and is sought after for creating social bonding. In the lack of physical proximity, this becomes critical to avoid rupture of existing bonds and form new ones.
On the other hand, synchronous attention is scarce(psychological coordination tax) and hence can’t be scaled easily for tasks(a mundane job, for example) that produce only money and no meaning. Asynchronous coordination tools need to be prioritized for work-like group activities.
Signaling Online
cheap-signaling — book shelves in the Zoom backgrounds and Instagrammification of social profiles are cheap signals
authenticity — costly signals(e.g: give-first attitude, existing body of work, previous collaborations) help with positive-gatekeeping in a free-agent community
searching friends/partners online — free-agents are a small minority in their immediate physical environment and hence, need to proactively search for new friends/partners online.
A Free-Agent Festival
An online folk festival for the free-agents could:
create group synchrony needed to initiate new social-bonds via synchronous activities.
encourage exchange of ‘custom maps’ (as a valuable expertise-accessory) relevant to the current landscape.
create cross-disciplinary project ideas and self-assembled interdisciplinary teams.
propose better remote-work mechanisms and networked organizational structures.
create win-win lifestyle partnerships among free-agents.
create folk-art for free-agents to enable collective meaning-making around a free-agent lifestyle.
——-
Thanks for reading. If you’re a free-agent, I’d be happy to hear your thoughts on this.
Until Next Time,
Vinay