The community

What is a community? We often define them based on lines of topics, identity, ideology, and interests. Sites such as Reddit base communities around a single keyword, the subreddit. Platforms such as Discord allow for groups based on any association of ideas or people.

Are these communities, though? If I were to visit r/geocaching to discuss Treasures, my thread would be downvoted and promptly closed by moderators. This isn't hypothetical, this is something that actually happened.

Where would this idea exist? The topic-based geocaching community? Discussions with my friends? This blog post?

I don't believe there is an exact answer to this quandary. The traditional framing of community reduces it to a question of which box I should go sit in. What is most important, then? The topic, the place, the people? I think none of these items qualify individually, and yet, they're supreme in their purpose of building the garden.

The garden

A garden is a friend you can visit any time.

Okakura Kakuzo

We seek not the static exchange of information, but rather the meaning that entire act of participation frames. Connection, understanding, purpose, and most importantly, fate.

When I was younger, my community was Gleasonator. A forum built by Alex Gleason in middle school, a place of wonder and chaos. Anime, video games, philosophy, "fun"posting; it was all on the table, a village shared by its 15-20 residents.

What was the draw? Not all of us were in the same location, nor had the same interests in everything. There were games, item shops, all sorts of crazy features that would make Ditto blush. If anything was the draw, though, it had to be the community.

What was the community, then? To me, it was the moment. A shared experience. A place in time where nothing short of luck, or fate, allowed us to interact in that shared place, that garden. I believe that a community is, as cliche as it may be, "the friends we made along the way". A bond that forms around unique, intangible moments of connection.

The Forest and Trees

Everything in the forest has its own purpose; we must learn to listen to it.

Treebeard

We, or rather those that use the nostr protocol, seem obsessed with bringing communities here. An infinite number of hours, labor, and pain have gone into bringing groups into this realm wholesale. Endless debate on UX, content, bootstrapping users, curating follows and feeds, and so on.

Even I have wondered what could be done to pique the interest of my decentralized hobby sites like Treasures and Surveil, but I believe this is ultimately a naive approach to the matter. There is unlikely to be a single windfall that will bring the "geocaching community" nor the "Magic: The Gathering community" here en masse. I have missed the forest for the trees.

However, looking upon these trees, I do see one thing. I have friends that enjoy both hobbies. And further, they use both sites and more.

They aren't representatives of a tribe, they're individuals. They're here, sharing this garden and enjoying the flowers I and others have planted. They hide treasures, post magic decks, share color moments, write letters, award badges, and comment on various things.

They are this shared experience and moment in time, a community.

The Flowers

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly our whole life would change.

Buddha

Although metaphors often serve as poor arguments, I hope this one illustrates the idea. A community is a group of individuals sharing a garden of experience, filled with various flora of possibility. Each flower represents something that may provide the common experience or moment for a bond to form between individuals. A community is the concentration of shared bonds within this garden.

So, how does the garden flourish, let alone exist? By planting seeds and flowers, of course.

Every microapp, content type, concept materialized via an event, every interaction, every act of creation - these are all flowers of possibility.

The garden of Reddit and Discord are akin to desert and tundra. Only certain experiences can survive there. Closed platforms, oligarchical moderators, and flat content sharing limit the effective space these places could occupy. Nostr, however, does not share these conditions. It is a field of rich soil, where any possibility may bloom. By its very nature, biodiversity is a natural outcome.

A garden of infinite potential.

The bloom

To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.

Audrey Hepburn

I believe we must focus less on what we can put in front of people to draw their interest, but rather, what experiences can we create that will take residency in one's heart forevermore?

There will not be a single content type or client that will achieve this. It will be the plethora of interconnected experiences that only an interoperable, decentralized protocol can provide. 

We must continue to plant seeds, creating these opportunities for shared experience through various areas of participation and interaction. Experiences that aren't dictated by the whims of a platform or centralized authority, but rather the immutable sentimentality of human connection.

Though we may not see it now, the seeds are already in the soil, sprouting.

The original Gleasonator forum is gone, it has been for some time now. However, the people I met there remain. Some of them are here now, hiding treasures and spreading whimsy in this garden we're building together now.

The flowers bloom where the people gather. They always shall.