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group chats rule the world

sriramk.com · 1,149 words · saved by 9 readers

Most of the interesting conversations in tech now happen in private group chats: Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, small invite-only Discord groups. Being part of the right group chat can feel like having a peek at the kitchen of a restaurant but instead of food, messy  ideas and gossip fly about in real time, get mixed, remixed, discarded, polished before they show up in a prepared fashion in public. Salons and groups have always existed but why the recent shift to private discourse? Time and time again I’ve seen group chat conversations act as the memetic upstream of mainstream opinion.  Like a standup comic workshopping his set in a small club before a big Netflix special,  people trial content and ideas, find bonds and you’ll often see narratives and ideas discussed make the jump to X/Twitter and then mainstream discourse. Which leads to the question: what makes one of these work? I’ve been a part of several groups and have tried to stand up many myself and I find the same patterns repe

Group chats rule the world Most of the interesting conversations in tech now happen in private group chats: Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, small invite-only Discord groups. Being part of the right group chat can feel like having a peek at the kitchen of a restaurant but instead of food, messy ideas and gossip fly about in real time, get mixed, remixed, discarded, polished before they show up in a prepared fashion in public. Salons and groups have always existed but why the recent shift to private discourse? The great culture wars of 2020 meant people, especially in tech, weren’t comfortable shari

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