the platforms suburbanized the Internet, making it easy to avoid all the people who make you uncomfortable, by giving you, instead of the space you're in, the locus of curation
I've thrived in the spaces that still built themselves within there, that were interconnected and had a continuity outside of the personal model of my social network represented as my "following" and "followers" lists, but i get the impression most do not, and instead simply see it as rss. good fences make good neighbors, after all
make close connections. be weird and unhinged. get entangled with other people with barely any experience in relationships or organizations and then mutually hurt each other trying to make it work. have explosions and schisms. half the people you find through that you'll still keep up with for over a decade.
I don't have that with people I kept distance from, sending hellos as I passed by, maybe meeting at the store every so often serendipitously but otherwise only interacting with people I care about and am interested in. Friend groups that don't push back when you do things that are kinda out of line aren't an accommodation or a blessing, they're a curse where you start to think acting like that is normal because everyone else just leaves, the pattern getting stronger and stronger each breaking wave.
there's some level of vulnerability required to actually build connections, and investment, and risk, but if you're wanting a place you won't have to deal with people who challenge how you think, you're looking for a good Christian town that keeps to itself and it's property value, not somewhere hospitable to human life.
the urge to make everything comfortable to you personally is the kernel of fascism in a very literal sense, and is worth examining in yourselves if it rings true. not that it destines you to be fascist, but that it is the thing fascism tailors itself to exploiting.
your enemy isn't the other people walking the city streets, it's the people who don't deign to mix with the people walking in the streets, preferring cars and drivers with blacked out windows, or helicopters, or working from the Greenwich office.
