zlacker

Agreed. It's very difficult now to build communities that have lasting impact, because everyone's saturated with info as-is. Contributions to niche communities now rely on a societal "outsider" status, which means there's basically a couple of people that contribute heavily and very few onlookers. Everything else is either gamified or comes from video games / gambling.

On the bright side, it's THE time to cultivate close friendships and to seek like-minded people. The entire phenomenon of popular attention hugging a community to death does not exist any longer. You can now have OG members persisting with notions for a long time and building a shared mythos with a small group of friends, because information is now more accessible than ever.

Obviously, most people aren't part of these communities. The people that are "drifting" alone are given to wasting their time on charismatic attention-seekers that talk a big game (twitch/e-celebs) but deliver nothing of value. So there's also room in the market for charismatic folk with some technical expertise to rally people to their cause, but only very briefly. This is because the number of people half-committing and then jumping ship is likely the highest it's ever been. Also, platforms have now resorted to paying people to stay on their platform (youtube / tiktok / sponsorships / twitch boosting streamers / etc.) to combat occasional ennui, ironically exacerbating the issue.