If You Build It, They Will Come(www.benlandautaylor.com)
78 pointsby barry-cotter4 hours ago11 comments
  • xyzelementa minute ago
    // Lots of people have a sort of consumer attitude towards their communities, where they take everything for granted. I saw things this way when I was young. A social scene is an automatic feature of the world that appears on its own, like a wild blueberry bush. It starts sprouting parties and dinners and conferences and reading groups as naturally as the bush sprouts berries

    True in general. As a kid you think of things as bigger than you. Like whoever maintains a hiking trail or runs your towns diner is "big" compared to you.

    As a grown up you hopefully realize that it's the other way - the work and effort to make and maintain those things is vulnerable and fragile.

    I think about this whenever I see someone hop over the subway turnstile. The transit system is "for granted" - it's you and your few bucks that matters. But of enough ppl feel that way it all goes away via decay eventually.

  • embedding-shapean hour ago
    > Lots of people have a sort of consumer attitude towards their communities, where they take everything for granted. I saw things this way when I was young. A social scene is an automatic feature of the world that appears on its own, like a wild blueberry bush. It starts sprouting parties and dinners and conferences and reading groups as naturally as the bush sprouts berries.

    I feel like this generally applies a lot in life, and most people generally sees themselves as passive consumers when it comes to most things. You can just do things, even if people look at you weird or say your weird, even in public, and nothing really changes when they say/think those things about you. Just enjoy life as much as you can, in the way you wish, without harming others.

  • crab_galaxy2 hours ago
    You really have to do it for the love of the game. It can be surprisingly vulnerable to be the social fabric, and it’s super easy to fall into various toxic inner dialogs when you’re busy and others don’t pick up the slack, or if others don’t reciprocate the effort, or worst of all when others don’t include you for whatever reason.
  • mattmaroon2 hours ago
    “I’ve come to believe that part of today’s problem of social alienation is a problem of too many free riders.”

    I started planning street festivals a few years ago. It’s now a lucrative and growing business for me. The demand for events at all scales vastly outstrips supply, and I think growing social isolation is part of the reason.

    The free riders might seem like a problem to someone who just wants there to be events, but it is a huge opportunity to us who throw them.

    • jasondigitizedan hour ago
      Would love to hear more about the impetus for your festivals, the festivals, and the process to get there.
    • Skidaddlean hour ago
      What kind of street festivals are we talking about?
    • dominotw13 minutes ago
      we have tons of street festivals in chicago in summer but now they have lost been outsourced to festival companies and subsequently lost all charm and local feel. They are all copy paste of each other and outright scams.

      how do you make sure they have some charecter and dont turn into mc-festival

  • sam_lowry_2 hours ago
    Do not expect a reward, dude.

    I spent 15 years building a local community, I had 10,000 daily users once, people recognized me on the street, then everyone left on a whim when Facebook made it easier to hang in one's own echo chambers.

    I still think it was worth it.

    Once in a while, I bump into a stranger, and they tell me how the found their only true love because of me, or how they landed a job that made them loads of money because I facilitated communication in our community. Other times... I barely escaped molestation by a disgruntled member once, and someone threw a glassful of Orval at me (yes, it really happened).

    It was still worth it.

    • customguy2 hours ago
      A bit of a tangent, but it's fascinating how often you hear these stories (and I experienced one, myself), of communities "moving to Facebook" and basically dissolving as a community. I would like to see a collection of such anecdotes, but I can see why it doesn't get compiled, because it would essentially just be [description of community] and then [Facebook], with no specifically interesting thing to report other than "it petered out". Same for Amazon, come to think of it. You can describe what used to be, and that it's now longer there, but there isn't really any compelling tale in it.
    • positron263 minutes ago
      Would like to hear the rest of this story. Don't have an X account atm.
    • NeutralForest2 hours ago
      Wasting Orval is the biggest sin of all.
      • m0llusk44 minutes ago
        Friend, I know where there is stored an entire casque of Orval!
      • fredland2 hours ago
        not if it was open source
        • sam_lowry_2 hours ago
          Sorry for my French, but they say, it's the only masculine name for a beer because it's the verlan of Val d'Or. So... un Orval, not une Orval.
  • sebastianconcpt2 hours ago
    Reminds me of 2013 when I organized a TEDx, gosh so much work for absolute zero return. Also risk, what was I thinking?
  • salahadawi2 hours ago
    This makes me realize I should show my appreciation to organizers more. It’s easy to take events for granted.
    • qurrenan hour ago
      During my grad school years, back when the world was less competitive, I organized a LOT of events. I liked giving to the community, I had space to do it, and my needs were taken care of.

      Nowadays I feel like anything I do either needs to be either (a) getting me closer to opportunities to build a living or wealth OR (b) individual recharging time.

      When my poke bowl costs $24 (yes, it actually did), and my job application acceptance rate has cratered from ~100% to 10% over the past 10 years, I don't really have space to give to the community for free anymore.

    • patconan hour ago
      <3
    • pphyschan hour ago
      Well, at least the organizers that care. There's definitely a class of grifter organizers that view events as an opportunity to profit from high entry fees and low production quality / relying on volunteers.
  • Felgeran hour ago
    Thought it would be about feds breaking in because you built a nuclear reactor in your basement while exposing your neighbors to some radiation.
  • 2 hours ago
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  • rvzan hour ago
    In 2026:

    - If you build it (and it doesn't take off) then they won't come.

    - If you build it (and it does takes off) they will come and compete with you to build their own.

  • triprjt2 hours ago
    no offence but i dont know what is this article doing on hackernews. looks like a diary entry at best.
    • alwaa minute ago
      Sometimes when I feel that way, I take it as a sign that there must be something about it that I’m missing.

      Sometimes I figure out what that is, other times I stay puzzled. Sometimes I get it and it’s just not for me, but I can learn something from the way the others appreciate it.

      Either way I try to take that feeling of “why is this here” as my cue to reflect more deeply on what it is the others are seeing in the thing.

      YMMV, Chesterton’s Fence, etc.

    • ema2 hours ago
      Please have a look at the Hacker News guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    • an hour ago
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    • _superposition_17 minutes ago
      Shakes fist at cloud
    • nefarious_endsan hour ago
      I'm right there with you, pal. The quality and focus of this site has declined significantly. More often than not these days I regret opening the site at all.