Where My People At?

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a lift from an old biker looking dude in a 1981 Oldsmobile. Ok, it was a journey of a couple of kilometers and technically it started with, “you want a lift, I have a car and I am not drunk?”

This is how I got my groceries home yesterday in an admittedly light winter storm. I was standing outside the store waiting patiently for a cab when this dude rolled up in his chugging, belching Oldsmobuick. To make a long story short, according to my random guy in a car driver, screw the local cab company, local coeds are hot and apparently in desperate desperate need of a lift, and you can smoke weed in a variety of exciting ways.

In contrast, my wife appeared at our home at the same time, her ride home was from a colleague. I assume they discussed doilies and knitting patterns. Not trying to be a misogynist, just being factual about their particular interests.

This juxtaposition of Osmond like proportions got me thinking about the search for our people, the tribes that we belong to, and how this has changed drastically.

When we are born, we find ourselves in a family. This family and the community that surrounds it, by nature, is not of our choosing. To the best of my recollection, I was not given a menu of options to choose from before being rocketed out in to the world. Imagine what the world would be like if we were given that choice. I feel like it would be a smaller, more homogeneous place, with little deviation in the genetic pattern or personalities of our neghbours; except for the masochists. They would all be living on an island that gets blisteringly hot in the summer and hypothermically (look, I made a new word) cold in the winter, where all the sadists would choose to be incarnated as mosquitoes.

Digressions not withstanding, our first tribe is not at all within our power to choose. Because of this, we end up with a crap shoot of relatives that may or may not be comfortable, or even in line with our desires, interests or personality.

Some psychologist at some point came up with the idea that in our teenish years, we start to try and develop our own identity. As part of this process we try on many different outfits, and experiment with our peer groupings. This is a time of uncertainty and trial and error in which we look awkward, and feel even worse. Those who are lucky end up with a few lifelong friends, and the rest of us end up with attachment disorders, acne scars, and baggage our significant others must find annoying.

The thing is, these tribes are often also not of our choosing. More often than not, they end up being chosen by others for us, or thrust upon us by circumstance. There’s a reason why the military recruitment office in Beveryl Hills is a very quiet place, and the chess club of Hazard County never took off. To be clear in my thinking, it is not because of a lack of empathy or desire to service in the former, or a lack of intellect in the latter. When our choices are limited by the nature of location and lucrative schema, we tend to end up in situations that are not wide ranging in their options.

As we enter adulthood and gain the independence of movement, we are open to a much larger pool of options. Our tastes have formed and we can now seek out like minded people, even if we have to travel to find them. This means we can find our third an final tribe, our people, our compatriots who share our visions of the world.

In the olden days of 1995 that meant we had to physically get out of our chairs, put our favourite cd’s in a travel case, and hit the road. We might have to move to the city, or the country, or even a far off land of mystical or mythical properties. We followed rumour an inuendo to dark alleyways to find people who could handle our proclivities.

The world has become a different space since then. It is a smaller space, but a place of unlimited possibilities. The internet has given rise to two major changes.

1. We can find our people with a few clicks.
2. Our fractured nature is nurtured now.

One can use the almighty Bing to search up a group dedicated to left handed vietnamese bowlers, and now you have found your people. You could type in any combination of nonsensical words and find a group dedicated to the practice of Spaghetti Harvesting. The options are as near to endless as it is likely possible.

On the other hand, what has happened with increasing frequency, is that we are able to find brief fleeting interests in a variety of places. Like flowers? Join a horticulture society. Like G.I. Joe cartoons, join a cartoons of the 80’s message board. Enjoy colouring with pastels, painting miniatures, there’s an app for that. While this brings us closer together and provides an outlet for our impulses, it also leads to a fracturing of our personalities.

Before we had to picka lane, pick a tribe, find the people most like ourselves and stick with them, even if there were some aspects of the group that were not in line with our sense of individualism. Now though, we can be Pastafarians on Tuesday, gamers on Friday, left handed Vietnamese bowlers on Wednesdays, and so on. This seems great at first, but we begin to spread ourselves thin as we indulge each minor aspect of ourselves.

What I find happening is that we have small pockets of tribe, never mixing, never bringing fresh ideas and perspectives into our tribes; essentially, existing in an ever increasing number of echo chambers with limited world views. Gamers rarely discuss noodly appendages, bowlers are too busy to discuss the latest class options for rogues. In the past, we brought all of our intersts and knowledge in to the greater tribe; however, now we find ourselves able to split ourselves among the smaller  groups, never mixing the two.

And now we get to the awkwardly narcissistic self disclosure part of our program. Is it poisoning the well if you do it to yourself?

In the last two years I have been searching for my people. I have tried various groups and places to find where I belong. I am of an age that makes it hard for me to always jump in to the deep end of the technological world. Fracturing myself has seemed shallow and somewhat unfullfilling. The problem has been that I haven’t been able to find the ex-street-kid, gamer, atheist, writer, boob enthusiast, 80’s film buff club.

Either I had to relax my requirements, and thus be unfullfiled, or I needed to create my own group. I think that is why I carved out this little piece of the internet. It is a place where I can express the totality of my being, and try and share it with other people who might stop by. I am ok with people just stopping by for one reason, but I needed to express it all. I think we all do, and maybe that is the true power of the internet. It is not a place to meet your tribe, so much as it is a place to call your own and invite people to hang out from time to time if they see something they like… oh and like and subscribe and buy my merch. I need to get merch. I am thinking everyone will want a peel and stick tattoo of the dragon on their navel. Call it a tribal flag.