Friction Point: A Community for Everything
Text BELONGING to 71403
Friction Points is a new series of short observations about things that shouldn’t be this hard, this stupid, or this annoying – but are.
I bought a pan. A decent pan – stainless steel All-Clad, the kind that’ll outlast me if I treat it right.
Inside the box, a card invited me to “Join the All-Clad Community.”
A community. For cookware.
I’m asked to text a photo of a camera icon to a five-digit number so I can “find out about exclusive deals and the latest innovations.”
This ‘community’ is a mailing list wearing a see-through costume.
Somewhere along the line, marketing discovered that humans are lonely and that belonging feels good. So now everything has a community.
Levi’s has a community of 38 million people.
This is so stupid.
A community isn’t a newsletter signup with better branding. Community is mutual obligation, shared identity, the messy work of actually caring about people you didn’t choose. What’s being sold here is the aesthetic of belonging without any of its substance or cost. The exchange is simple: you hand over your data and inbox; they send you ads and call it membership.
Keep calling mailing lists “communities” and eventually we’ll forget the difference.