Scrolling Alone
As a longtime reader of The Atlantic, I’ve often dreamed of one of the projects I’ve worked on — perhaps Bonobos, the movement behind Burn Rate, now Pie — gracing its pages.
We finally made it.
But after I read the piece, I felt weird.
I probably should have expected it. Great journalism makes for a nuanced take, and this one is about a nuanced relationship: money, social media, and community building. The phenomenal Nancy Walecki’s feature, initially titled “The Future of Socializing Will Be Sponsored,” captures both the beauty of the IRL movement and how capitalism is shaping it, maybe even enabling it, and perhaps corrupting it?
The money was the story. And I wondered if the mission got lost in it.
Which is ironic. We’re a pre-revenue startup. We aren’t making any money.
In fact, we’re putting it to work. The Pie Creator Club is a rewards program that provides kickstarter capital to emerging community builders. Our hypothesis is that bringing people together is thankless work. Fund the people doing it now, and maybe we can help conjure an ecosystem to life that can sustain itself later.
Here’s what Nancy writes about Pie:
And here’s her take on a purer version of gathering:
Here’s the thing, though. Socializing has always been sponsored.
Little League jerseys carry the name of the local pizza joint. The bar, the original third place, exists because it sells beer.
And for most of American history, the biggest community builder in town was the church. It ran on the collection plate. The plate paid for the potluck, the fellowship hall, the youth group, the softball team. Nobody called that sponsored socializing. They called it Sunday.
My hunch: that kind of membership, people chipping in to belong, may end up funding this new IRL movement more than brand sponsorships ever will.
Walk into a Pie gathering and you’ll find what you’d find in that church basement. The awkward hello. The person who came alone and almost turned around at the door. The small talk that, if you’re lucky, turns into real talk.
That friction is the point. It’s how strangers become friends. And it’s not easy, no matter who’s hosting.
***
Dr. Marisa Franco, whose book Platonic pushed Pie’s product toward ritual social collision, says friendship comes down to two things: consistency and vulnerability. Show up again and again. Eventually, say something disarmingly honest, and watch what happens.
Nothing about a sponsor changes that. Not a logo on a banner, not a stipend for the host, not an app on your phone, not an ad on the Youtube of the podcast. The ritual of social collision and shared vulnerability is older than any of us. It has always required the same things, and it always will: a room, a reason to be there, and the nerve to stay.
Who paid for the snacks was never the part that mattered.
When the pews emptied, we lost the plate and the potluck with it.
***
Commerce and convening aren’t new. As convening in person gave way to scrolling alone (a fitting sequel to Bowling Alone), the money moved too. It stopped flowing to gatherings and started flowing to feeds.
Tonight most of us will spend the evening scrolling an app that sells our attention through ads we barely notice. As Derek Thompson says in this blistering piece, everything is television now.
Derek ThompsonThat’s sponsored too.
A Michaels logo at a knitting circle is at least honest. You can see it. You can ignore it. And everyone is in the room together.
If ads are going to pay for our evenings either way, I’d rather they pay for us to be together than to be solo.
***
The money also goes to the people who do the work.
Community building has mostly been unpaid labor, much of it done by women. That’s why hosts burn out. That’s why groups fizzle. Our view at the Pie Creator Club is that paying a host, say, up to $3,500 a month at the high end at $450 as an average doesn’t corrupt the circle. It keeps the circle alive.
Funny what we find dystopian. A brand paying for a knitting circle bothers us. The person who ran it for free for a decade years never did.
And nobody else is paying.
In 2023 the surgeon general declared loneliness an epidemic. There’s still no line item anywhere for dinner parties and run clubs. If brands want to fund real-world connection, turning them down on aesthetic grounds is a luxury our society can’t afford.
***
There is a fair fear in all this, and I share it.
It’s control. If sponsors start deciding who gets invited or what gets talked about, or if hosts start treating guests like an audience to sell, then the critics are right. We’ve rebuilt the feed in a living room. We’ve recreated the Tupperware party.
Holding that line is on us.
A few days after the pieced came out, I noticed the headline had changed. “The Future of Socializing Will Be Sponsored” was now “The Rise of the IRL Influencer.”
That fired me up.
Because that’s the real story. The hosts. The people doing the hard and thankless work of getting strangers and friends into the same room. The money they might make isn’t the point. It’s the railroad. It’s what makes the work possible.
And railroads required capital, the same way churches always have. When it comes to gathering people, the present rhymes with the past.
It’s part of why — when I met Nancy — I found her in-home bible study to be so inspiring. That kind of gathering, with nothing to sell and no costs other than some wine and snacks, may be the highest form of socializing there is.
This recent story by Derek Thompson blew my mind…
Derek Thompson…and made me even more fired up by the work we’re doing, as dinner parties are as much our goal as run clubs.
With a huge thanks to Nancy for raising all these important concerns and nuanced takes, it’s back to work.
Gratefully,
Andy
Sorry for the hiatus. 2026 has been a doozy. One day it will all be clear. Until then, a monthly post at a minimum is my new goal. That might be an average, as inspiration and bandwidth tend to come in flurries.
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