There is a group of people I hover around on Twitter which I find thoughtful and earnest. They are loosely referred to as "TPOT" (This Part of Twitter) but this label is rather meaningless because there isn't a legible "thing" which brings them together, it's more of a general vibe of people who tend to be conscious about how they interact with other people online, and they develop, consciously or not, healthier ways of communication as part of a larger pro-social background.
I am fond of this, both the intentions and the fact that the conversations do tend to be constructive and interesting, far more than what you would get on other parts of the internet.
It's worth noting that TPOT is a scene, not a community. The way I see it is that nothing on the internet could be called a community, something which insures some form of long-term value to its participants and gives them a sense of belonging, similar to a real culture. But it is certainly a scene, a more transient but still real cluster of intentions, protocols and vibes, which help a group of people go in a certain direction. The point of a community is to create solid foundations and give a sense of stability, so that something beautiful may emerge, whereas a scene is more transient, which means its successes might involve some key members leaving, perhaps doing their own thing, or taking part in their own local community.
And I think pretending that it is a community is part of a larger set of blindspots that TPOT has, which is to say that the scene features intelligent and conscious people, but who haven't yet learned what a real community is and all the mundane but real challenges that living together for a long time entails. As expected from an internet scene, it is obsessed with possibilities and experimentation, it is very nomadic both physically and intellectually, but hasn't come face to face with the constraints and ups and downs that communities have to face, and therefore hasn't settled into a more stable and coherent structure.
Which is fine. I think scenes can be a very powerful container for helping people move towards a healthier and more whole version of themselves, and many people have met through it who would otherwise have never even known about one another. I think if we accept the transient reality of what an internet scene is, we can participate in it and recognize that there is ultimately something else, more local and grounded, asking us to move towards it.
Some people are in fact building local neighborhoods, such as the NYC Fractal, which help people find and learn from one another, build things together and spend more time offline, which are initiatives I salute. I do not know enough about the details to assess the long-term sustainability of those neighborhoods, and how resilient they truly are to ideological and financial pressures, but they do have real outcomes to show for their effort.
The blindspots and ideological positions of TPOT make it difficult, if not outright impossible, for me to feel truly "at home" there, but then again, why should I expect a large group of very online people with wildly diverging views to provide a suitable replacement for my relationship needs. They clearly can't, because nothing online can.
But I say this because I do have my fair share of problems with many of the fundamental assumptions and directions of the "bigger" accounts, namely:
Not that I expect any of them to read this list, not that I expect to convince anyone if I were to write more deeply about those subjects, but it is useful for me to write the fundamental grounds on which I disagree with people, because it clarifies what I see and think.
TPOT is an online scene all around possibility, and while I love the individual side of it, the conscious examination of oneself and how to uproot patterns which do not support the life you want, I find myself disagreeing with basically every aspect of their view of a "better" future, one which makes people even more dependent on the inhuman and unsustainable technological system, one which is out of touch with basic material constraints such as our dependence on non-renewable fossil fuels, and one also severely out of touch with what a majority of people think about our times, such as the right-wing at large.
I like it when people focus on what they want to see more of, but that too has its limits. On an individual level, you can be blind by focusing on the wrong things and being too stubborn, and on a collective level, unchecked hope becomes delusion and grift, creating a shadow from those who do not believe in the naive vision of hope and who will do anything it takes to improve their own life.
The piece above was written in 9th October 2025, though the original ideas dated from roughly one year ago from when I am writing this (24th February 2026).
Let's make this short: my prediction is that TPOT will drift towards (and has already been drifting for a while) towards a combination of two things: 1) coaching and self-help, sprinkled with some form of spirituality, and 2) getting good at fundraising money, but the core attempt at changing culture and raising consciousness will largely be captured by the games of earning money and attention, and getting caught up by surrounding hype (most notably AI).
I have a problem with 2) because people who are rich, or who are getting rich, necessarily have a political outlook which justifies why being rich is fine, or perhaps even good. 2 What this means is that "the golden age of humanity" that some of these people are trying to bring about will necessarily push towards wealth as a way forward, at least for them, but possibly for everyone, except that it's impossible in a world of finite energy, which only keeps getting more and more expensive because nothing can replace fossil fuels. In other words, the golden age, when faced with the realities of the limits of growth, will become an exclusive club only reserved to wealthier people, which strikes me as very problematic if the vision is to help "all beings" (no such thing I am afraid).
As for 1), I am not inherently against coaching, after all we do need advice, guidance and possibly some techniques and methods to apply to our lives, and you would probably be better served from TPOT people for your problems than the average therapist, but again you better believe that the coaching activities will be targeted at middle and upper class people, because that allows the coaches to make enough money to have plenty of time for themselves and not work at regular jobs.
Not everyone in the scene presents themselves as acting for "the benefit of all beings", but some really do push that image, and I think it's just very hypocritical to claim such a thing, because I don't think any of the big accounts are remotely close to being lower class. 3
What you won't see from TPOT is radical philosophy, the kind that really examines the system in a way to understand how it works and what a better path forward would look like, because they need the system for the money and the connections, and inspiring art. The people in that scene are too interested in ideas for an artist to really take roots and make something lasting I'd say. Too much of a drive for novelty makes art impossible to blossom.
Which is why, as far as I can tell, there are very few artists, and the number is slowly trickling down, or some of them are dabbling into AI art, which I am rather dubious of to say the least.
I write all of this because TPOT is the closest thing to a cluster of people I resonate with, but at the end of the day, I don't think I belong to any large group of people. Too doomer for the naive hopers, too hopeful in individual consciousness and convinced in the power of love for the doomers. Too artsy for the thinkers, too thinky for the artsy people. Too leftist for the right-wing, too right-wing for the left.
1 I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that software people don't care about hardware, but it is quite harmful that many of those people posture themselves as "technology" experts, when really they are only knowledgeable in software, and not the harsh realities of finite resources and industrial processes.
2 Although some rich people feel guilty for all the money they have, which is probably why they give much of it to charities, but as far as I can tell they never give so much that it seriously threatens their wealth.
3 Not that I am either. But I don't claim to have radiant compassion and have plans that can bring the "second renaissance" to humanity.
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Community Groupthink Impermanence Limits Copehope Collapse Selfhelp Chasingmoney
2025-10-09