A hero’s journey model where a key stage is defined by accidental arrival at a Hacker News type community that’s off to the side of main adventure road via a confusing exit ramp. The hero’s job is to break out of the illusion that they’ve arrived and get back to the adventure 
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I’ve always been ambivalent about what a few people insist on calling the “ribbonfarm community”. I stopped objecting at some point because I didn’t want to seem ungracious about support I really do appreciate. Thankfully despite the label it has never been a proper community.
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Both in my head and in practice, it’s always been more of a slowly moving conversational traffic jam than a community. At least as many people have been annoyed at getting stuck in it briefly as enjoy it.
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Relativity theory. When I started writing I thought of my blog as a static place, with readers passing through, some lingering longer than others. At some point the metaphor switched. I was the one passing through. Initially alone, then with a troupe with a churning membership.
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Now it’s a fully relativity theory. Everybody is moving on a trackless land. Some people just enter mutual gravitational capture. That’s community. A stable gravity well of mutuality. It can grow bigger and bigger and warp adventure space.
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Really big ones like hacker news collapse into black holes. Someday somebody will take a picture of this.
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One of the reasons I still do refactor camp is that it’s 50% or so entirely new people each time. Reassures me that something is moving, hopefully me. I don’t think anybody besides me has attended all of them.
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This thread reminded me of one of only 2 India-themed posts I’ve done, this one on the hero’s journey metaphor in Bollywood music. I think too much is lost in translation here. I oughta do a western-native versionhttps://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/02/13/safar-aur-musafir-the-heros-journey-in-bollywood/ …
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End of conversation
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Communities always risk falling victim to the Iron Law of Institutions, where individuals prioritize elevating their own personal status within the institution over the success of the institution as a whole. Also related is Sayre's Law.
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Archetypically the fool then strays, or a kid chases a critter, and adventure continues.
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