A Sea of Anchors

Dispatch from Less Online

I’m currently at a blogging conference. If you’re here, you can probably guess why! There’s an hour where everyone is meant to try and write something. That hour is now. I’m here in part as the guy who gives feedback to other people’s blog posts, so I feel like I’d better participate.

I haven’t been in Berkeley for a while, and just as the previous two times I’ve been here, there are refrains of culture shock. Everyone has intense, specific goals, and is also introspecting about them and anxiously ready to pivot. Cool and ridiculous outfits are common. Every human being, somehow, has previously worked at Google.

But I’m not here to talk about generalities. I’m here to talk about one specific, endearing tic, that half we bloggers have.

The Party Anchor

To a first approximation, Less Online is a party. The main activity is small group conversation, and while there are prepared sessions (I just gave one!), the hosts encourage people to mingle rather than attend. When I go to a party, even a party where I feel secure and popular, I have a specific playbook:

1. Find whoever I’m closest to or like the energy of best

2. Orbit them

The word “orbit” has acquired some unfortunate cultural baggage, but I don’t mean it negatively here. It’s simply the best word. I don’t glom onto whoever My Person is, or crowd them, even if it’s my wife.¹ Rather, I vaguely keep them in my attention, and come back to them to report on whatever else I’ve seen, and go look for them as a default activity when I’m overwhelmed.

I suppose this is part and parcel of “introversion”, or whatever, though I wouldn’t say I’m non-gregarious at parties. I want to talk to lots of people, and shake lots of hands, and hold forth and be held forth upon. But it really helps to have a person who, when I see them, I feel secure and focused.

One cool thing about Less Online, is that lots of people are like this. And so, for almost the first time, I’ve gotten to experience it from the other side.

To Be Seafloor

I don’t know many people here, and most of the ones I do know are either very popular (because, e.g., they’re running the event), or are specifically here to make new friends, and so I don’t want to crowd them. So my own anchors have generally been people I just met, and am really excited to wave to and update on the goings on.

But also, multiple people seem to have anchored on me, and are eager to seek me out, hand me things, and tell me what’s up. It’s lovely! You may be imagining a situation where someone’s bedraggled and adrift, seeking a lifeline. But no, the people who keep finding me actually seem very cool, at least as cool as me. Which is one of the best parts; the experience simply isn’t about status. It is, I suppose, the human emotion called friendship,² under extreme and crowded conditions.

Two Way Orbit

I ordinarily think of my anchoring tendency as a bad habit. Not one I want to break, exactly, but clinginess isn’t desirable, and in the limit I suppose I can be clingy.

But in the context of this conference, where so many people seem to share my desire, it’s just great! When someone actively approaches me a few times, now I want to actively approach them. I start to notice more about them, and take an interest. Sometimes the orbit even becomes very close; the highlight of my conference so far has been talking for several hours to a digital shrimp.³

I wonder if this is part of the point of a subculture: a tic that would ordinarily make you feel unevolved can suddenly become a shared and robust piece of social technology. You’re in a sea of people, but keep coming back to the same few, and they keep coming back to you. Goals and intentions for the conference melt away. I suppose I was hoping to find new subscribers (if that’s you, welcome!), or something. But now I’m mostly here to see my new friends, and then, an hour later, to see them again.

1. It often is!

2. Also, there are multiple Homestuck readers here. Pretty great!

3. Her welfare seemed pretty high to me.