My favorite books about communities, subcultures, and cults
Over the past couple of years, I have been thinking a lot about things that bring people together. It is a big part of my job at Felt, where user-generated maps help us bring more people in and allow them to learn from each other. It was also a big part of my role at Miro, where Miroverse helped thousands of people get over their fear of a blank page (or board!).
More broadly, I have been always interested in communities, cults, and subcultures, and my interest peaked during the pandemic. In the last couple of years, platforms like Twitter have turned into machines for generating outrage and anxiety. In response, I have been getting into the cozy web (i.e., smaller gated groups that flourish on Discord, Telegram, and Patreon) and searching for good books about communities to find some inspiration.
There are plenty of resources about community marketing that are very tactical, so instead, I’m focusing on the books that look at communities from a historical, sociological, and anthropological perspective. Plus, I included two books that examine communities of the early web.
Here are the best ones I read in the last couple of years:
Subculture: The Meaning of Style by Dick Hebdige
When I started one of my first tech jobs, everyone on the team was focused on building a subculture. In the early- and mid-2010s, there were little to no frameworks for community marketing or community-led growth, so this book served as my inspiration and allowed me to think about content strategy and brand marketing in a new way. Hebdige discusses the factors that shaped punk as a subculture in the late 1970s, and one can easily apply his theoretical work to try creating a new subculture or community today.
From Counterculture to Cyberculture by Fred Turner
This is an incredible read for anyone who has ever wondered how tech lost its utopian edge. Turner chronicles the career of Stuart Brand and his path from building a community around the Whole Earth Catalog to managing one of the first online forums, The WELL (or The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link). The WELL heavily influenced WIRED magazine's editorial strategy, which was a big departure from the Whole Earth Catalog point of view. As Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron explain in their essay "The Californian Ideology”, WIRED “uncritically reproduced the views of Newt Gingrich, the extreme-right Republican leader of the House of Representatives.” Nonetheless, the WELL and the community around WIRED are fascinating because you can see how their policies, guidelines, and formats shaped the way we think about communities today. There are clear parallels between the WELL and popular subreddits or Discord groups.
The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media by Kevin Driscoll
This book is a curious history of the rise and fall of BBSs, or dial-up bulletin board systems. These can be considered the first computer-mediated communities, which flourished in the 1980s, well before AOL and widespread adoption of email. My favorite part of the book is focused on the ethos of sysops, who were BBS moderators that created rules for their communities and sustained them in the absence of venture money or any support from hardware and software manufacturers. I also loved Driscoll’s focus on the history of bulletin boards that brought together people affected by the AIDS crisis. This is a great example of how early internet communities functioned as a space for people who were living through very hopeless and cruel times.
Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia by David Graeber
This is weird one! But in a way, this is a book about a very tightly-knit community or even subculture. Graeber shows that pirates were not just ruthless and violent outsiders. In fact, they followed specific rules of conduct reflecting their worldview. These rules codified what was moral and good, offering an alternative to the exploitative practices of the transatlantic slave trade. This book is a great read for anyone interested in communities, and also provides an incredible account of the early proletarian movement.
On my list:
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam
Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information by Erik Davis
Cultish The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell
What’s on your reading list? And what would you recommend to someone interested in communities, subcultures, and cults? Share your thoughts in the comments!