Communities of Not

Communities of Not

<p>There is a strange thing that happens in communities that gather around abstinence from something: identity from opposition. At their best these communities are not <em>just</em> negative: childfree spaces can be about autonomy, choice and acceptance, anti-car spaces about safer streets and transit, and LLM-skeptical developer spaces about the future of labor, code quality and slop<sup class="footnote-ref" id="fnref-1"><a href="#fn-1">1</a></sup>. But the thing being refused often does not go away and instead becomes the main subject of the community’s identity.</p> <p>That would be fine if it stayed at criticism, maybe even angry criticism, but more often than not it turns into policing and hatred towards others. An influencer without children becomes a parent, an urban bike commuter by choice buys a Porsche, a respected developer tries LLMs, and the community feels betrayed because it assumed they were members of the same tribe. The expulsion of that person (who never signed up to be a community member) is entirely imaginary but the punishment that the community unleashes is not: people pile on and shame them, quote them out of context and turn their weakest moments into proof that the person was always unserious, a sharlatan or should not be listened to.</p> <p>I do not think the answer is to tell people to stop paying attention. Cars shape cities even for people who cycle, children influence politics, workplaces and taxes even for people who do not have them. Fo…