One of the biggest bummers about living in a capitalist hell-pit is that everything, and I do mean everything, is expected to be monetized. Our hobbies, our housing, our friendships, our gardens: all of these have a market value, and if we wanted, we could line our wallets with their spoils.
I've talked before about Dr. Devon Price's statement on community—that is, what we think of as community "are actually friend groups or fandoms or brand identities." Friends, when I say that blew my mind when I first encountered it, I would be understating the moment. That was such a major a-ha for me. At the time, I was thinking about how the narrowness of "friend group" actually dilutes the meaning of "community"—because the project of friendship is to, you know, like each other, while the project of community is less interested in personal relationships but rather in a shared goal or vision or experience—and how we have come to use them as synonyms for each other despite that. But it also brings in those other dimensions, the fandoms and the brand identities, and asks us (okay, me—look, I'm doing an academia!) to examine how our so-called communities are complicated by those elements as well.
A case study: I recently started following an Instagram account called Deep House Yoga. I was interested in the basic idea (silent discos with yoga, it's sort of right there in the title), but the actual events turned out to have fairly narrow presentation. Almost universally, the attendees are thin, young white women in dusty-rose yoga shorts. It does not look like anyone over 40 or 130 pounds attends these events, and the darkest skin tone is, like, cafe-au-lait.
I'm not going to lie: this bums me out. Not least because, while I am
white, I am also old and fat and my yoga clothes are baggy and worn out. I suppose I'll have to do yoga to Rufus Du Sol alone, thank you very much. And yet, this account talks constantly about the power of their community, and how their community shows up for them. It's clear, however, that this community is not one that is, say, engaging in collective childminding or showing up at a sick member's house with a casserole. This community is fandom and brand identity, pure and simple.
A deeper dive shows that the two besties who run these events are not just friends but also business partners, and the business partnership is framed as the two of them helping each other manifest their financial destinies. Now, obviously, this is some woo-woo pseudospirituality. But there is a certain type of person whose work requires friend buy-in; that is, if you are friends with them, there is an (often explicitly stated) expectation that you will be purchasing their merch, working the door at their parties, posting about their events on your social media. It's the eco-system, the quid-pro-quo of how capitalist friendships are structured now: how can we make money being ourselves? Is our friendship something we can use to sell to others? Are we the product?
From what I can see, this structure usually has a few different components: a charismatic leader, or better yet, a duo modelling a fulfilling and fun-looking relationship; the idea that, by buying whatever they're selling, you will also gain access to the fun person at the centre of the hub; and that this access will make you more interesting, fitter, more attractive, or more popular. For women, it's the central spine of the modern MLM, the allure of the best bartenders, the shop owners with the savviest marketing. I'm sure men have this with certain podcast hosts or comedians. There's an illusion that you, too, can become a member of this community...if you can pay the entry fee.
Good lord, I am sick of this. A friend of mine called it a grift, and it is. It's an illusion. Communities, by their nature, are challenging and generative and diverse and weird. By contrast, brand identities smooth the edges, giving convenient shorthand to communicate values ("I buy American," etc.). And fandoms orient, again, towards consumption; while the best fandoms are challenging and generative in their own ways, often beautifully so (see: my recent dive into Dramione fanfic, and no, I'm not taking any questions) their shared project is not shaping the world, but rather responding to media. A worthy cause, but narrower in scope than is what is useful in the hell-pit.
It's been interesting to see how many of these types of grift-communities are out there. Once I started seeing them, I couldn't stop. The tragedy is, some of it is survival: I don't fault the cool shop owners for inserting themselves or their personal lives into their marketing, because for most small shop owners, there is no real divide between who you are and what you're selling, no off-the-clock that can be guarded and kept private. And that is exhausting—these folks tend to post a lot about burnout. And for some, the tragedy is that it is sometimes revealed that there is no "fun person" at the centre of the hub: their project isn't community, but sales. As long as everybody's buying something, they're having fun, but the second that stops, things get frantic.
I know that, in the modern world, our lives are the product: our data, what we search and where we go, our interests. There are platforms to monetize everything we do, from Etsy (crafts) to Substack (writing) to Twitch (playing video games) to YouTube (opening presents), and that each of those platforms takes its own cut, either in money or information, usually both. And I know we are also yearning to connect with each other, to make meaningful friendships and loving relationships. This grift capitalizes on our yearning and promises that we can be cool, beautiful, accepted, known....as long as we have the right dusty-rose yoga pants and money for the tickets. I'm going to leave my wallet in my purse and see how I make out; it's old-school, I know, but I've got hope that it might also be the future.
Illustration by Nikolas Ilic
