The Social Context
seeking connection after content-ification of social media
If you’ve ever lived in a thriving city and been socially active, you must have noticed these two types of places we often are trying to get to:
Places to bump into strangers — nightclubs, city center plaza (townsquare), fleamarkets, skater-parks, shopping malls.
Places to see familiar faces — parents’ house, neighborhood shops, office/workplace, neighborhood parks, friends’ houses, college dorms.
In my recent exploration of social-software, I have found one thing being the holy grail for user-experience: new meaningful conversations — with the people we care about — to reinforce the mutual social connection. For many, a sub-goal is to find more people to care about and then have new meaningful conversations with.
The Context before the Connection
My social experience in the 2020s is roughly this: cautiously hangout in public-spaces long enough and you will bump into someone who will take you to a trusted-private space where you can actually have — meaningful conversations and nurture meaningful connections. But something is broken in there. We can all sense it even if we can’t pinpoint articulately what it is.
What does it take for the emergence of a meaningful connection?
A shared meaningful experience: a meaningful conversation about life, an unpredictable road-trip, an all-nighter to meet a deadline, a creative DIY project.
The primary thing that makes an experience meaningful enough to seed meaningful connections is an engaging social context.
Something that gossipy teenagers in high-school have.
Something that the founding team in a disruptive startup has.
Social After Social-Media
If you open Instagram, Reddit, YouTube or Twitter in 2022, I think you will agree with me that the “media” in social-media has suffocated out the “social”. Now it’s less about chatting with my friend or sharing photos from my walk and more about broadcasting as a “creator” or watching Reels mindlessly like your parents watch TV. So I have been seeking out the real social elsewhere (no not on that new viral app BeReal, lol)
Physical — I have been doing random long-walks across the city I am living in to explore the social-spaces of the city. A photo-montage from my walks in the city.
Digital — I have been using this app called Slowly since 2020 and I think this direction is promising for meaningful friend-making beyond your city/town/village: a rate-limited, private letter-ing with people across the world, matched almost-randomly. No timeline. No broadcasting. Just 1:1 private letters which are delivered slowly in a few hours or even a couple of days. You can choose to get or not get letters from new people along with the demographic and interest filters. For example: see below a snapshot of my lettering history with a long-time pen pal there.
Also, I have a music recommendation for you, as always —
That’s it for now, friends. If this note sparks thoughts or emotions, I would love to hear from you. Write back or comment or whatever way you like to share your thoughts.
Cheers,
Vinay