Build the Event, Join the Group Faster

Breaking into a new social circle often looks hard from the outside. Ben Landau-Taylor’s argument is that the fastest route in is usually simple: organize something.

Writing about his own experience across different communities, Landau-Taylor says groups almost always have more demand for events than supply. Whether it was a new city, an online fanfiction discussion circle, or what he describes as “vanguard intellectual movements directing hundreds of millions of dollars annually,” he found the same pattern: people want dinners, meetups, reading groups, and other shared activities, but relatively few are willing to do the work to make them happen.

That imbalance creates an opening. You can become part of a group by regularly attending other people’s events, he writes, but it is often easier and faster to build relationships if you also host your own gatherings, invite the people you want to know better, or help someone else run theirs.

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His broader point is that many people treat communities like something that naturally exists on its own, ready to be consumed. In practice, he argues, social scenes depend on people doing unglamorous logistical work. And because even a small amount of legwork deters most people, those who consistently take it on often become a community’s de facto leaders.

Landau-Taylor says that labor is frequently underappreciated by casual participants, but not by other organizers, who quickly notice who is sharing the load.

He frames that as part of a larger social alienation problem: too many people want to benefit from social infrastructure, while fewer feel responsible for producing it. His answer is local rather than systemic. If a community lacks the social fabric you want, start supplying it yourself.