The World’s Best City Is Online

On Community & the Commercialization of Space

A summer movie night in Bellevue Park in Bellevue, WA, photo by me

I was listening to Lana del Rey’s Ultraviolence this week and - as typically happens when I listen to that album - I experienced a kind of out-of-body ascension. We’re all likely familiar with that feeling of listening to a song or reading a passage and it connecting with your spirit in a manner that’s challenging to put into words. I often feel that way about media that’s hyper-atmospheric - that takes care to paint a vivid setting and mood. Part of why I love Lana’s music is because of her expert ability to lead the listener through her many lucid personas: a mistress to a man plump off old money, a misfit motorbiking through the American Southwest, and a weathered Midwesterner yearning for a man who will never come.

The atmosphere of Ultraviolence is dark and laden with a sadness so thick, it could be cut with a knife. And yet, listening to it restores a lightness in me because it was one of the first bodies of work I felt like I found wholly organically and independently. It was one of the earliest gifts that the internet ceded me.

I often take for granted that I was a part of the first generation to have the internet as readily accessible as it was. While older millennials uniquely came of age with a rudimentary blogosphere at their fingertips, I entered teenagehood with platforms that brought media discovery, human connection, and self-expression even more in reach. Social media and blogging platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr acted as presets - imbuing color and personality on them was far more streamlined than starting with a blank page or empty Word doc.

Online, people discovered music, TV shows, book series, and other forms of media and founded spaces to obsess over them with other people. They transformed their online profiles into places that captured the essence of their obsession. They cemented a kind of atmosphere that took on the characteristics of the atmospheres their favorite artists illustrated. The subset of the internet obsessed with Lana del Rey contained imagery that often materialized in her songs: cigarettes, bruises, palm trees, and mascara-strewn tears, among other things. In a lighter online community like the One Direction fandom, the atmosphere was laden with Union Jacks, hearts, bow ties, and Valencia-filtered images of the floppy-haired singers themselves.

Creating these online spaces was a collaborative, creative effort - forged out of the collective labor of young people motivated by passion, not profit. These individuals leveraged new - and at times, unknown - platform tools in real time and set a precedent for future fandoms to follow. In many ways, their efforts remind me of those of bottom-up city planners, which is unsurprising considering these internet users built a new kind of world and way of living for themselves and the people to follow.

Central Park in November 2022, photo by me

Communication scholars and urban sociologists have long theorized about places where people can come together to authentically connect with others outside of their homes and places of work. Ray Oldenburg called these realms “third places” (neither home, nor work, but a third space exclusively for social interaction). Dr. Nancy Rivenburgh, a former professor of mine, refers to these places as “communication-rich environments” or CREs in her book Envisioning Better Cities: A Global Tour of Good Ideas (2019).

According to Dr. Rivenburgh, “third places” or CREs are best illustrated in public squares and parks, where people can relax and engage with one another casually. She cites a myriad of traits such places must possess, many of which are incidentally also found in online communities. Rivenburgh writes that communication-rich environments must be informal and unscripted, which appropriately describes the kind of dialogue that transpires amid Twitter replies and Tumblr reblogs. People must be comfortable conversing - which users undeniably are online, free to say what they wish behind the veneer of an avatar and social buffer of a screen. 

Third places must be fluid - people should be able to come and go as they please. Similar to a park in one’s neighborhood, people online have the flexibility to drop in and out of online communities, bending their attendance around their daily obligations. I think that this kind of agency is what draws young people, in particular, to online spaces. In a world in which physicality is demanded of so many teenagers - attending school, participating in extracurriculars, making appearances at family events - dropping on and off the internet as they please offers a more nuanced form of freedom.

And finally, communication-rich environments must offer conversational prompts. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as “triangulation” in urban planning, or offering a third point of reference between two conversationlists. Within cities, the “third thing” may be a piece of public art or a dog at the dog park. Online, the “third thing” is the shared interests and obsessions of internet users, which can act as jumping-off points to exchange more intimate information and develop ties deeper than those of mere “mutuals.”

In this way, online communities are like digital cities - but even better. While users can drop in and out of them as they please, there’s rarely a reason to disengage - there’s no gate to be locked as there is in a public park, there’s no fear of the public square growing dark as night falls. Yet, the internet becoming increasingly fluid and at a shorter arm’s length means that it’s becoming far less like a place we can spend time in and more like the air we breathe. An air that’s becoming increasingly intoxicating, laced with shaky, consumerist intentions. An air that’s becoming increasingly siloed, as people settle into their algorithm-driven niches, hearing their own thoughts bounce off the walls.

Further, communication-rich environments are becoming increasingly sparse and inaccessible offline, particularly for young people, compelling them to spend even more time online. This is due, in part, to the fact that so many “third places” for people to hang out offline require money to be spent - a coffee shop, a bar, a shopping mall. It feels as though public space is becoming increasingly commercialized, alongside an America that is already dominated by highways and cars, with few safe and comfortable places for people to stroll and converse. The barrier of getting in a car and driving somewhere to spend money can be hard to upheaval when the internet is always right there.

Nonetheless, as with offline spaces, online spaces too are becoming increasingly dominated by commerce. Just about every website and popular forum is replete with banner and video advertisements. Instagram swapped its “activity” button for a “shopping” one. Tapping through Instagram and Snapchat “stories,” one is peppered with ads designed to feel like just another post from your friend. Alongside fan communities, influencers push consumer products, by companies that have developed a knack for pandering to obsessed people online.

When I first discovered Lana del Rey, One Direction, The Hunger Games, and copious other interests and the online communities that rallied around them, I felt as though I had discovered a new world - because I had. There was this feeling like we were on the cusp of something fresh and exciting, developing a language unknown to those who had previously taught us everything. There was a kind of electricity running through these communities that I would get rich off bottling and selling. Online communities have never been perfect. But I do remember a time when the internet felt far less commercialized. When attention felt far less exploited. But now that we’ve stopped going outside, companies have followed us inside and the outcome feels unsurprisingly bleak.

There are still platforms that have yet to be mined - Twitter is currently undergoing a commercial revamp, Substack has remained relatively unscathed (for now). The rampant commercialization of online space is a reminder that one of the most important resources we have in this economy is our attention - where we choose to place it matters. 

I’ve always struggled to enjoy moving through cities like Los Angeles. While walking or driving down a main street it feels like much is being asked of my brain - sensational billboards, print ads, and flashing lights pulling my focus from the side of the streets. Scrolling through TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube often feels similarly - a million voices calling my name, demanding my actions to benefit their stakeholders. We’re best off searching for the less noisy spaces, where we’re behind the wheel, in charge of discovering and connecting to what we please. Investing our attention in those types of places - and even forging them ourselves - will allow us to lean into communication and connection and mitigate engagement with environments that are just “talk” and sparkle - on and offline.

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This article is a great accompaniment to my last essay on BookTok encouraging consumption over engagement, here’s a link in case you missed it.