Hi, friends.
Today you're meeting friends, Eugene and Charis (!!), making their debut through the latest edition of friends who talk. Today's piece isn't short but I figure the interested ones will make their way through it. E.g. if your career depends on being online / if your community depends on internet friends. Our guiding questions:
- How have platforms shaped our digital/physical personas and relationships? (Using ourselves as case studies)
- What is a "community" now? How has it morphed? Where is it going?
- Is there any tech left that builds narrative, ritual, and context for community? How can we steer tech in that way?
Visuals courtesy of Eugene, who fed our convo themes to Midjourney’s AI art generator. (Prompts in bottom left below images, sorry the caption formatting blends in with the body copy.)
with that, intros
Eugene Kan is a Hong Kong-based entrepreneur and creative. Born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, he left Canada after university to play one forgettable season of professional soccer before making his way into the editorial and creative world. He’s the former Editorial Director at HYPEBEAST.com and together with partner Alex Maeland, the two founded MAEKAN.com, a ground-breaking platform focused on challenging creative culture through provocative stories and discussions around purpose and reason.
Beyond his role at MAEKAN as Editor-in-Chief, he serves as a co-founder of Adam Studios, a multi-disciplinary creative agency. He’s an expert generalist excited about making sense of our complex world.
Eugene’s other interests and passions include the tactical side of football, photography, identity, the role of AI in creativity, and the intersection of technology and culture.
Charis Poon does many different things. After graduating from Parsons The New School for Design, she designed websites and did any other freelance design work that came her way. In recent years she worked with MAEKAN as a Managing Editor and with Asian American advertising agency Intertrend as a Creative Strategist. Since earning her MA in Design Expanded Practice at Goldsmiths University of London, she moved back to Hong Kong, where she calls home, and is now teaching at PolyU School of Design.
She is interested in inclusivity and intimacy within groups and between individuals, poetics in communication, and spending time in consideration of small things.
friends who talk about where we virtually begin
Enter: Eugene, Charis, and Vicky on the digital WhatsApp stage. It's morning in Brooklyn, evening in Hong Kong. Eugene is bleary-eyed from caring for a newborn, Charis's dog Koopa munches on carrots in the background, and Vicky sits before her tall living room window.
Vicky: would yall prefer lowercase chat sP3ak or normal sentence case, i'm fine with either
Eugene: I likely will use normal case.
Charis: I'm fine with typing grammatically correctly. It'll make your life easier.
Eugene: But then people might think we're uptight and lame!!!!
Charis: We are uptight and lame!!!
Eugene: Right, let's stay on brand.
Charis: Speaking of brand, Vicky, what is your impression of Eugene based solely off of his virtual representation of himself? Don't hold back.
Vicky: I'm having trouble articulating this so I'll just start from the beginning — Eugene and I have technically been in the same room before, back in 2018 or 2019. He was meeting a coworker at my old office in Greenpoint (Brooklyn). I only saw his back for a few seconds but had a feeling it was the MAEKAN guys. (Eugene did you previously have a man bun?)
Eugene: I've had a man bun since like 2013 or something lol.
Vicky: Then when we actually got in touch in 2020 — I was actually really touched by my early interactions with Eugene. He always so thoughtful, at length, in both newsletter support and Discord replies.
But to get a better sense of his dorkiness-meets-mechanical thinking, our mutual internet friends — who have met him in real life — helped here.
Charis: Hmm… I can talk about how I think Eugene-online and Eugene-in-person match and don't match. Vicky, your description of virtual Eugene DOES match with in-person Eugene, probably because you're describing 1:1 interactions.
To me, the film photos Eugene posts on IG and the majority of what he tweets is Eugene very intentionally presenting an intellectual side of him for outside consumption.
Eugene: I actually kinda hate it. I feel that it's a bit of a "dated" persona these days.
Charis: I was ABOUT to type "Which I bet he hates." And the recent influencer parody strategy on IG is, to me, Eugene trying to be humorous but intellectual at the same time. Like satirical and clever. I'm not sure it's always landing. And I'm also not sure you're having fun with it!
Eugene: My self-worth is measured in emoji reactions and I'm at an ALL-TIME HIGH RIGHT NOW OK
Vicky: I will never unsee you sticking choy sum up your nose #FreeEugeneFromTheRebrand
Eugene: If you look at the era of Instagram which I was undoubtedly part of in sort of "growing a brand," it was rooted in this very buttoned-up aesthetic. Call it the Kinfolk/Cereal Mag approach. Just fake ass shit.
I also don't think I had the personal confidence to venture out and try to create my own persona that was probably closer to what I feel is personally interesting and sustainable.
But truthfully said, we all recognize that shit right now feels much more real and authentic than that mid 2010s era of social media. I find it more interesting and complex, where there's less of a "here's where I am!" to "here's what I'm expressing."
Charis: I have to share this book with you two, it's called Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich published in 1971. Essentially he says that we don't need schools and we could each of us be teacher and learner. And some of what he says did come true, with the Internet and Discord channels and Patreon, Substack, etc.
And actually to what Eugene said about being attracted to "here's what I'm expressing" is what he puts forward as a possible model for how people can come together — that people will come together based off of a common media artifact or a common desire of expressing yourself around something.
We talked about this a LOT with MAEKAN and never really wound up somewhere actionable. How can MAEKAN not revolve around me and Eugene and [Alex] Maeland, but be about equal participation, as much participation and action that any one participant wants?
Eugene: Removing barriers to participation is kinda key. Like good ideas aren't held back by needing some sort of baseline production skill or access, like creating a TV-quality show and knowing somebody to put it on TV.
Vicky: Ah! Reminds me of a Paul Ford piece on how people find labor…laborious. Which includes building the infrastructure to express yourself:
’00: There also must be some really good music discussion forums.
’20: Independent forums are mostly dead, swallowed up by Reddit, social media, and the like. I cannot overemphasize how much the lesson of the web is that people, given the choice between the freedom of operating and managing their own platform, and running a centralized platform that they do not control, will choose the centralized platform. The desire of regular people, people with things to do, to also become systems administrators is far less than what we assumed it would be.
Personally, I think it’s relaxing to write this, even though 150 people will read it at most, because it lets me resolve internal tensions and organize my thoughts. The reward for doing good work is more work. But most human beings find labor…laborious. Most people don’t have obsessions with boring, abstract things. They don’t get the chance. And they don’t have lots of time they can use to write “for free.” There are many theories about how this all works, including, say, Marxism.
Charis: I read this! Made me sad. We let our conversations be dictated by the form of platforms rather than intentionally crafting our spaces of communication. Vicky, you choosing to use Whatsapp to host this groupchat to become an article is actually a wonderful demonstration of reclaiming how we talk to each other.
Eugene: I always tell people building HYPEBEAST in 2006 was sooooooooooooooooooooooo easy in retrospect. There was just so little to do on the Internet, and just a bit of elbow grease went a long ass way.
Vicky: To both of your points on participation, this all ties into - (and web3 is running into) - governance is hard! It's always been hard!
Charis: Oh, she said the w word
Vicky: Eugene Beast Mode: Unlocked
Charis: Web3 wasn't on the agenda! But maybe you bringing that up fast forwards us to this question, "is there any tech left that builds narrative, ritual, context for community?"
Does Web3 answer the questions we have about tech in relation to community?
Eugene: I think about this a lot. Cause right now there's a lot of Web2 but throw on a layer of tokenization!!! Versus, let's think of creating something from the ground up that can be unlocked with Web3.
Ultimately before we even decide what is the underlying "tech stack," there needs to be a clear perspective of the goals of the brand/publication etc. Once that's sorted and long-term stable, then it becomes a matter of adding tools atop it all.
Like MAEKAN I feel exists just fine with its current tech stack, but it could be better, potentially, but not in a way that the tech would solve anything. There's a strong human layer that needs to be imparted on top of it which creates the value and then the tech distributes it.
But if you don't have intentions worth getting behind, it's a fruitless act. Like let's use our two current examples, MAEKAN/Currant. I don't think our current community would go from 50 to 200 cause all of sudden there was a speculative token layer attached to our publications.
But I do see huge upside in respecting and valuing people's contributions. < this part I wish I was better at
Vicky: Ooo this reminds me of a couple quotes that have recently struck me:
"Care is not an infinite scroll" by Sara Hendren for New Public Magazine:
"I guess this is where I’ll admit that for me, the draw to Notabli and away from Instagram isn’t really sourced from a high-minded refusal so much as a sober realism—vivid and bracing in middle age—about human fallibility, the liquid slip of time, and the lie of quantifiable value."
And an excerpt from "The Antidote To Digital Disconnectivity" by Nathan Gardels on Noema Mag:
South Korea-born German philosopher Byung-Chul Han on digital comms: “This has highly deleterious consequences for the democratic process. Social media intensify this kind of communication without community. You cannot forge a public sphere out of influencers and followers.”
Which prompts my question for web3:
Where are the public spheres? …Twitter and Discord? How effectively do they facilitate open discussion?
Charis: The question you're asking in itself is kind of a contradiction of my understanding of what web3 could be. Isn't the big public facing message about web3 is more transparency, more openness, more of a "for the public" ethos? So shouldn't the discussion of it be happening in a way that is that at its core and not just in name/marketing speak?
Vicky: Going back to Eugene's message - I think where we get tripped up is starting with the tech to imbue value, rather than doing the hard work of seeding, watering, pruning with the underlying human layer. Eagerness and sincerity can often work against builders (myself included) - by inverting priorities/decisions that would actually last in the long run.
Charis: Right, can tech ever, in and of itself imbue value? I suppose the three of us are coalescing around the idea that it doesn't. That tech, no matter how innovative or advanced, is always a tool that can serve human intentions or not.
So tech doesn't, independently of human effort and time, care, slowness, create meaningful value for others or nourishing community.
This quote stuck out to me strongly,
"Han says, “What we need most are temporal structures that stabilize life. When everything is short-term, life loses all stability. Stability comes over long stretches of time: faithfulness, bonds, integrity, commitment, promises, trust. These are the social practices that hold a community together. They all have a ritual character. They all require a lot of time. Today’s terror of short-termism — which, with fatal consequences, we mistake for freedom — destroys the practices that require time. To combat this terror, we need a very different temporal politics.”"
Vicky: Yes! Something I've been noodling on is - we describe tech as infrastructure (to achieve what we set our sights on, improve our state of being, etc) - but what if we instead/also saw humans as infrastructure?
Eugene: Yeah for me, tech simply leverages existing human desires and conditions. It doesn't reallllly change them to the extent we all believe imo.
These dudes sure ain't using an iPhone.
I'm actually gonna contradict myself a bit here but also share this piece around tokenized communities and what they stand to gain. I think the part that is interesting to me is that, when set-up properly, there's this really cool way to align incentives across the board with people.
Tokenized communities are fundamentally a new type of organization, but the new structure isn't enough on its own. Key phrase there "set up properly" — which encapsulates a whole lot. But I usually I feel it's strongest in an entrepreneurial / business context.
Vicky: And I think has the most interesting potential when people outside the traditional tech framework / circles play with it. Like, what would an indigenous community think of tokenization? Would it sound new or just a reframing of rituals they've always known?
Like, in all the advancements we want to make - we're not restricted by tech. We're restricted by our humanity. Is tech actually changing human behavior towards greater compassion? Would our lives be lacking without tech? My life would be far less interesting without the internet, but would it be any less enriching? Not necessarily.
Charis: I don't think tech is changing human behavior towards greater compassion, but to say this sentence seems to make tech into a villain, which I don't think it is. I think tech CAN change human behavior towards compassion. I believe it's possible.
Eugene: True, but is there money in compassion? Or more money in rage?
Charis: Womp womp womp
Eugene: Back to the tech <> tool convo, I think that tech can be an effective use case for defining a set of potential opportunities and outcomes.
But it's just a container. It needs to be filled with valuable things whether it's culture, content, discounts. That's the stuff that moves the needle. Tech just serves as a lubricant if properly set up. Below, similar to what I alluded to be more concise.
Once again, a DAOs shit probably ain't interesting enough and/or you're too busy/inundated to care.
Vicky: Mmm tech as lubricant. Tech as vaseline. Slimy but effective and highly functional? Just as beautiful without the frills?
Eugene: Maybe tequila as a lubricant comparison is better. A few shots are great, 10 shots is bad lol.
Charis: I like tech as tequila better than tech as lubricant, but maybe tech as salt works better. Tech fits into a lot of different recipes and in fact could be a crucial part of some, but overdoing it will quickly ruin the entire dish. (Also, Eugene likes food metaphors)
Vicky: Did someone say food metaphors??? Vicky Beast Mode Activated
Ok just throwing it out there, but maybe tech as bananas. It seems ubiquitous, easily accessible, a universal part of diets - but we don't realize the ways we've abused or overused it sometimes until it's too late. Like how the Cavendish banana - the main varietal that the western world eats - is facing extinction after centuries of homogenous production and scale.
On second thought I think I'm trying to do too much with this metaphor but the moral of the story is tech is banananas.
Charis: I want to go back to what tech means to us individually and our sense of community. I want to know more specifically how your lives are shaped, good and bad by your tech usage, by the virtual communities and real life communities you have.
Eugene: We're halfway across the world having a pretty strong and coherent conversation. But this is also something that is challenging to maintain without some really high-level of commitment.
You know I got back onto Twitter heavy the last few months. I felt like being in HK, not traveling, I was losing a sense of what the outside world was like. I felt like I was unable to have conversations with strangers or new people and Twitter was in some ways an opportunity to just get a small slice of that.
Charis: And is it helping relieve your sense of losing the outside world?
Eugene: A little bit yeah. It's by no means a 1:1 substitute. I mean I consume a fuck ton of global media so I wasn't necessarily learning more context about the world, but I was gaining on a micro interaction level.
Charis: I've met a couple of internet friends in Hong Kong in real life in the last couple of months. Five, actually! That's kind of a lot. Three of them know me from Making It Up. One of them I'd read their book and one of them I'd met at a virtual zine fair.
This was intentional on my part. I wanted to connect virtual relationships to real people and hopefully have these relationships grow. The internet is a great way to meet people that I would never otherwise have met, but I still feel as though community needs that component where it's grounded in a physical place.
I do wonder if that makes me less imaginative or less open virtually than I could be. Perhaps I could learn to be more vulnerable and real in my virtual representations.
Vicky: To attempt an answer to your question, Charis, on how tech shapes my community - let me think about the whys behind my virtual/real life communing.
For virtual, the incentives tend to trend toward: Am I being intellectually stimulated? Am I being socially seen? Am I having fun?
Whereas for real life, it's: Do I feel loved? Am I being taken care of? Am I in a steady rhythm of giving and receiving?
Followings, products, revenue, whatever - that stuff can scale. But a heart? How do you scale a heart? That's my push against being online all the time.
Charis: Excellent questions
Eugene: That's kinda interesting that Virtual vs. IRL can't provide the same outcomes. It's interesting cause I definitely get more intellectual stimulation online (maybe cause I can curate that experience precisely).
Vicky: Bringing it back to the beginning - Charis, I'm interested in hearing your impression of me.
Charis: I think my initial impression of you, Vicky, through the assemblage of virtual instances was an extroverted, highly social individual who loves meeting new people and finding out about what they're doing/thinking. Someone who's happy to connect with others and make connections. Someone with a lot of interests and passions, perhaps juggling almost _too_mucch. Plus, someone who's really hard working at their job and ambitoius.
My perception became more filled out/multi-faceted after reading your essays and poems. I remember reading your essay "It’s in the Buckwheat Butter" and feeling differently about you — like I got to know another softer, reflective, dealing-with-tensions side of you. And continuing to read your essays and poems has me thinking that I do know you? I wonder if this is a parasocial effect. I appreciate your openness in your writing and admire your ability to write and publish in a way that reads as openness.
Vicky: It's interesting because I feel similarly when I hear you speak - though my parasocial relationship with you is primarily through hearing your voice on your podcast Making It Up, whereas what you get from me is written word and image.
And on second thought, I wouldn't consider it parasocial though we've never met in person. There's an intimacy afforded by the similar styles in which we express ourselves (e.g. through openness and curiosity) - also because you've edited me, which is a vulnerable place for a writer to be.
Charis: I knew that "parasocial" wasn't exactly the right word, but I was looking for a word to describe our relationships with one another (Vicky <> Eugene and Vicky <> Charis), where we began virtually. I suppose that's what we call "internet friends."
One more thing from me on the threads of this conversation is this long journal article, Maintenance and Care, by Shannon Mattern in Places Journal: A working guide to the repair of rust, dust, cracks, and corrupted code in our cities, our homes, and our social relations.
I am in the midst of reading it today and there are many good points and queries that arise from it, but perhaps the summary of it here is that we embark on trying to make new tech from the ground up, attempting to be slow and deliberate in what we make, it is useful to us to learn from the history of care, to untangle societal systems that make care possible/impossible, and to question ourselves and our position.
Vicky: "where we began virtually" - I love that line. To this very conversation: our attempt at tracing the contours of the digital wavelengths that connect us.
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