Who exactly are you people?
If you’ve made it this far, chances are you want to make sure you’re not signing up for an actual cult, or throwing your lot in with serial killers. Read on for a brief history of Friend Cult, the two humans behind it, and why we’re creating it.
2020
Our pandemic was fine, how was yours?
Whatever vestiges were left of healthy, physical separation between work, home, and community collapse. Home is work. Community is work. Work is work. Everyone eroded into an island. Social media, streaming services, and games rushed in to fill the gaps…but the memes were like freaky good tho, right?
2021
Death buys us a calendar
We were visited by the specter of death. We realized how precious time was, and how much was being misspent. Would you still spend those extra few hours a night on work, if someone told you you’d only see your parents 10 more times…ever? That you’d only see friends a dozen times this year? That you have less than 40 dates left with your partner in your lifetime? Our lives were out of whack.
So we made a tool to help us see how we’re spending our lives, to keep time from slipping through our fingers. A yearly calendar, with stickers to mark time with family, friends, on dates, taking walks…not goals to be met, but a map of our lives to see if we were living well. We look back every 6 months to check the balance and find ways to live better. (We’re on year 3 now!)
2023
A cult is born
Our calendar said we barely saw friends. We only saw them on weekends, one at a time, and it often took weeks to schedule. But it wasn’t always this way. In college, we could drop into houses and dorms on a random weeknight to see friends, and everyone knew each other. We regularly met new and interesting people. Where had it gone? What could we do to bring it back?
We had to make hanging out more convenient. As dutiful user researchers, we conducted interviews. We learned the problem was widespread, and fundamentally due to scheduling. We also heard that people feel really guilty for not being better at keeping in touch. But this much planning is hard, and also unnatural.
Historically, we’ve had structures that naturally gather us. People have gathered around campfires since time immemorial. Today, dorms gather students, and pubs and cafes still gather people in other countries. But the US, through systematic erosion and bad public policy, basically has no such gathering space. So…we started a cult to reintroduce a campfire to our culture, with the conveniences needed to suit hectic adult life.
