An idea has been sitting with me from a piece on why the left can’t seem to build a movement with the same cultural pull the hippies had.
The argument: the 60s counterculture wasn’t just a set of opinions, it was communes, uniforms, music, a whole way of life people organized their identity around. Today, even committed activists mostly just post. A tweet, a hot take, an “instant” protest. It’s efficient. It’s also disposable.
Meanwhile the political right has built its own tribes: hats, names, in-jokes, a whole aesthetic people opt into. Not because they’re better organized, but because identity-building was never the point of their internet use in the first place. Anti-institution, anti-authority sentiment travels naturally online. Belonging doesn’t.
That’s the trade-off: the fastest way to voice a belief might be the slowest way to build anything around it. A hot take can go out in ten seconds. A commune, a subculture, a brand people tattoo on themselves, that takes years of unglamorous repetition before it looks like anything.
Trees make the same point. Nobody waters a tree once and gets shade. It’s ring by ring, invisible for a long time, until the roots can hold something up.
I think about this constantly outside of politics too:
– The founder who wins Twitter but has no community
– The brand with great engagement and zero identity
– The team that reacts to everything and stands for nothing
So, where have you seen “efficient” communication actually cost the deeper thing you were building? Genuinely curious what this looks like in your industry. Drop it below.
