What a lovely piece! It’s been a privilege being invited in to your engagement funnel, even if I could only attend a few times. I always WANT to attend, however, which is impressive work for someone who, like you, really enjoys being at home with my pets and my family and my big TV. also like you I have a career that means rarely seeing other humans, rarely getting the benefit of team experiences (I often think: when was the last time someone else’s input made me better at my job?) and no longer having a group of ready-made friends in the form of excellent colleagues (00s lunchtime drinking culture wasn’t good for us, but I do sometimes miss those days).
I attempted something similar locally but maybe gave up a bit too quickly when some people left the group after declining an invitation. Perhaps I’ll try again and be a bit tougher.
Anyway, my final word is a mild rebuke – though more to the current state of liberal discourse than to you personally. That is, I think we should be able to write “I have a lovely life but I sometimes get lonely” without having to check every privilege, undercut every mention of how we enjoy attending lectures, or apologise for every middle class problem. Here’s to 2026 bringing back a default to good faith in both writing and reading – and earnestness without apologies. (And here’s to me taking my own advice because I’d definitely have added the same footnote after saying I attend lectures)
By sheer coincidence, someone just shared this piece that talks about our descent into ironic self-awareness and thought policing: “We can’t have meaningful conversations about any of this stuff because everyone runs their thoughts through their own kind of personal HR filter. People are self-reporting their thought crimes to themselves. I’m literally doing that right now. I’m sure I’ve theoretically “offended” all sorts of people in the last paragraph alone.” https://open.substack.com/pub/catherineshannon/p/everyone-is-numbing-out
I did almost the identical project James did, for the same reasons, in the same style. Reading that article could have been (with 10% of details tweaked) about my experience.
The biggest difference in how the author approached and how I did: he did it monthly; I did it *weekly*. I found that made a HUGE difference in building community. If it's once a month, and people come on average 50% of the time, then you'll see these people 6 times a year. That's nice, but one of my goals was to build real, deep relationships with more people, and having a party where I speak a few minutes to each person (if you're the host, it's hard to get more than 30 minutes with one person) 6 times a year - you can't really build a real relationship. Also, once a month puts pressure on people psychologically to attend, but I wanted it low-key, "Come if you want, if not next week, or the week after - or never! It's all cool and you go live your life and you be you!" was part of the vibe I was going for, and it's easier to get that vibe when it's all the time, but the less frequent it is, the more subconscious pressure there is, and I wanted a low-key event (for example, imagine a wedding - that's very irregular, hopefully once in your life - so there's massive pressure to attend, and I wanted the precise inverse).
But my doing it weekly, made it a bit more like church/synagogue, in the best communal sense of the word: a place to go at the same time, same place every week, time to build real relationships, you always knew you'd have a place to go, etc. And because many of the people were the same week on week, it naturally led to longer, deeper conversations, both individual and group conversations.
I was also strict on a few rules. There were a few topics that were banned from being discussed ("politics, business, and sports" basically - and everyone knew going in those were banned) so that forced people to avoid those generic and tiresome topics that (politics in particular) just make unhappy. Also, I had a very strict "no cell phone" rule and I enforced putting cell phones into a box near the entrance.
It also became a HUGE success in my city. Mentioned in the media and featured in videos. Because it became known as the nexus of interesting conversations in a spot with cool energy. Many dotcom/tech superstars as well as ambassadors and other interesting and curious figures, when they were in my city for a few days for business, they'd hear that my apt was the place to be that night and they'd contact me to invite themselves.
It revolutionized my life and my social network. I'd strongly recommend everyone who is suffering from these same sorts of social challenges create their own sort of variation of this concept.
This lasted almost a decade, almost every Wednesday night from 2007 to 2016. Then... adult life happened: family, moving internationally, and... alas. I have a personal challenge these days that I should invest energy in figuring out: the best way to reboot this for me, but in the world I life in now, not only post-covid, but with kids and family life. Sometimes I think about rebooting it but in a public venue on my "date night", sometimes I think about doing a "Zoom" version of this where it's beers on Zoom, etc etc there are many possible ways to approach this challenge - but I haven't yet been inspired with the right formula for me.
There's a time and place for everything under the sun and this was a beautiful and life-changing era of my life.
If anyone is interested in creating their own version of this (particularly James), just drop me a line and I'm more than happy to Zoom any time with you and give you some tips. My email is morgan@westegg.com (I still love meeting people even if through email and Zoom!), and my personal website is westegg.com and I have an ancient and embarrassingly bad web page 2008 tumblr-style page about these events at: wnip.org - If the above sounded interesting, I'm always up for a brainstorm so ping me!
(PS: I found this through Hackernews and I posted my comment there as well)
Thanks for the thoughtful and detailed comment! I'd love to switch up my thing to weekly and agree that would be a fantastic way to create community like you describe.
Unfortunately though, I'm not sure I could ever make it work – this might be a London-specific problem – I both don't have a house large enough to accommodate guests, and no one here lives centrally, so there's much less of a culture of hanging out at people's homes.
(Of course, I've long imagined winning the lottery and establishing my own private members club of sorts in Westminster, but am not holding out much hope.)
Thanks for sharing this James. I’m now wondering how to get on your engagement funnel! Here’s to great infrastructure and well built homes 🍻
Editing to say: I did try something like this, and no one turned up 🥹 BUT then I attached myself to a bunch of existing ones and whilst the interest venn diagram isn’t perfect, I’ve found a lovely bunch of people from those groups, who I now consider real friends.
Excellent piece and interestingly James, you and your partner are the people who got me into the Skeptics world, via the much missed Pod Delusion podcast. Like you I loved the Skeptic movement and was very active in it with the monthly meet up. In fact I think your partner was the first SITP meeting I ever went to when she talked about (I think) the history of social welfare in a Nottingham pub. I was a regular at QED and I remember seeing you there. Out of SITP, two of my friends invented PubHD which is still going to this day. The whole Skeptics thing was such a massive thing for me, but like yourself I fell out with the whole thing, mainly because my views are, what might be called Gender Critical and that made me feel like a social outsider in that world. I went to the QED in 2024 and didn’t enjoy it, especially when Robin Ince turned up on stage…..Nowadays my social meet ups are about cricket, films and Doctor Who. I sort of miss the SITP days but I’d never go back.
I might have used this analogy before, but I look back on the skeptics scene back then a bit like how people look nostalgically back on Britpop - a big cultural moment caused the temporary alignment of various forces (Blur, Oasis, Euro 96, Chris Evans, Blair). And I still look back on the skeptics scene very fondly - and it makes me sad it basically divided in two over That One Issue. Half of the people became skull-measuring libertarians, the other half became ultra-woke social justice people. So it felt like it was just me left in the middle, with the make-nobody-happy position of “biology is real, but don’t be an arsehole about it”.
I'll admit that when you first invited me into your engagement funnel, it seemed slightly mad to me - I could never do it for a million reasons. But having come along a couple of times and meeting some lovely people, it does seem to have worked. I really should try and make it along more next year.
Another option is to join a ready-made community, preferably one that is physically located in your local area. It was only after being in a similarly comfortable, working from home job that I began to realise why religion has been so successful over the years - it gives us a connection to those around us; without it, we are strangers and with that we don't know who we can trust, or who we can turn to in a time of need.
For me, I joined my local running club, even though I didn't do much running when I joined. I was also seeking physical activity, as I wasn't even walking to the train station anymore. They were incredibly welcoming and have made me an OK runner. I enjoy it, but I think it's the community aspect of it - getting to know plenty of people in my town, that's more important to me.
I also get to know people from different backgrounds; different professions and different ages. I think this helps to give a more broad view on the world than bouncing around in my liberal echo chamber.
Thanks for posting. I have a very similar situation. However, just thinking about organizing something or contacting looser connections gives me so much anxiety that I don’t do it often. Something to work on..
That was where I was! But the worst thing that will happen is that a looser connection will pretend to be busy – and I think people are much more flattered to be invited to things than you think.
I wouldn’t be the type to organise an event myself, but I certainly agree regarding the importance of community. In the last couple of years, I’ve found myself in some great communities of friends - two organising mainly on WhatsApp, the other on Discord. They have enriched my life considerably. Your blog made me think about what makes these communities work.
You obviously need a space to talk; but you also need regular (or irregular) events to bring people together IRL. (This can also be done online - the Discord group does fortnightly video chats.)
You need some kind of common interests. This may be why the more successful communities are demographically similar, with most people around the same age bracket and from similar social backgrounds, because it means their members will have the same cultural reference points.
And you also need some degree of shared values. From the sound of it, this is what broke the Skeptics community - its members may have agreed on their views of religion and science, but they had wildly different moral values. So some former Skeptics wound up supporting Trump, while others found that incomprehensible.
No real conclusion here, but just some advice for anyone else considering starting a community themselves.
I am happy for the author. But. The absolute prevalence of posts like this right now, and the volume of millennial (or millenial-adjacent) people in this exact same predicament should be a huge tanoy announcement to everyone coming behind us. "We were wrong. You have been lied to. The neoliberal, postmodern forces, who want you to stay at home, spend your money, don't have kids, reject religion, spend your money, go on another skiing holiday, focus on your career, go to the gym, spend your money... they aren't guiding you to a good life. They're not interested in your fulfilment." As it happens, all those simple folk from "the olden days" and their stupid traditions, and rituals, and large families, and basic lives, and villages....yeah, turns out there was wisdom locked away in that lifestyle that we have lost and its taken us a couple of generations to realise that Apple technology and Facebook statuses aren't a substitute for sitting around a table with people we care about.
Really enjoyed your post, thanks. In order to get a fuller picture, can you share about how much you spend on this each month? I'm from the US, and I assume that "announcing drinks" means "taking people out for drinks."
Interesting. But you started with a load of people you already know. I have maybe 8-10 friends all of whom are over an hour away. How would I start making friends in the town I moved to 3 years ago?
Great Idea! I wonder what interests the community develop around.
I have been thinking about doing this myself connecting people around PKM (Personal Knowledge Management), writing and literature in my small U.S. Town. Heard about this article on hackernews. Thanks for the ideas around creating community.
Very interesting observation and recommendations. For someone who is uncomfortable meeting humans in public and likes to have air gap between private and internet life, how do you suggest starting a community?
What a lovely piece! It’s been a privilege being invited in to your engagement funnel, even if I could only attend a few times. I always WANT to attend, however, which is impressive work for someone who, like you, really enjoys being at home with my pets and my family and my big TV. also like you I have a career that means rarely seeing other humans, rarely getting the benefit of team experiences (I often think: when was the last time someone else’s input made me better at my job?) and no longer having a group of ready-made friends in the form of excellent colleagues (00s lunchtime drinking culture wasn’t good for us, but I do sometimes miss those days).
I attempted something similar locally but maybe gave up a bit too quickly when some people left the group after declining an invitation. Perhaps I’ll try again and be a bit tougher.
Anyway, my final word is a mild rebuke – though more to the current state of liberal discourse than to you personally. That is, I think we should be able to write “I have a lovely life but I sometimes get lonely” without having to check every privilege, undercut every mention of how we enjoy attending lectures, or apologise for every middle class problem. Here’s to 2026 bringing back a default to good faith in both writing and reading – and earnestness without apologies. (And here’s to me taking my own advice because I’d definitely have added the same footnote after saying I attend lectures)
By sheer coincidence, someone just shared this piece that talks about our descent into ironic self-awareness and thought policing: “We can’t have meaningful conversations about any of this stuff because everyone runs their thoughts through their own kind of personal HR filter. People are self-reporting their thought crimes to themselves. I’m literally doing that right now. I’m sure I’ve theoretically “offended” all sorts of people in the last paragraph alone.” https://open.substack.com/pub/catherineshannon/p/everyone-is-numbing-out
I did almost the identical project James did, for the same reasons, in the same style. Reading that article could have been (with 10% of details tweaked) about my experience.
The biggest difference in how the author approached and how I did: he did it monthly; I did it *weekly*. I found that made a HUGE difference in building community. If it's once a month, and people come on average 50% of the time, then you'll see these people 6 times a year. That's nice, but one of my goals was to build real, deep relationships with more people, and having a party where I speak a few minutes to each person (if you're the host, it's hard to get more than 30 minutes with one person) 6 times a year - you can't really build a real relationship. Also, once a month puts pressure on people psychologically to attend, but I wanted it low-key, "Come if you want, if not next week, or the week after - or never! It's all cool and you go live your life and you be you!" was part of the vibe I was going for, and it's easier to get that vibe when it's all the time, but the less frequent it is, the more subconscious pressure there is, and I wanted a low-key event (for example, imagine a wedding - that's very irregular, hopefully once in your life - so there's massive pressure to attend, and I wanted the precise inverse).
But my doing it weekly, made it a bit more like church/synagogue, in the best communal sense of the word: a place to go at the same time, same place every week, time to build real relationships, you always knew you'd have a place to go, etc. And because many of the people were the same week on week, it naturally led to longer, deeper conversations, both individual and group conversations.
I was also strict on a few rules. There were a few topics that were banned from being discussed ("politics, business, and sports" basically - and everyone knew going in those were banned) so that forced people to avoid those generic and tiresome topics that (politics in particular) just make unhappy. Also, I had a very strict "no cell phone" rule and I enforced putting cell phones into a box near the entrance.
It also became a HUGE success in my city. Mentioned in the media and featured in videos. Because it became known as the nexus of interesting conversations in a spot with cool energy. Many dotcom/tech superstars as well as ambassadors and other interesting and curious figures, when they were in my city for a few days for business, they'd hear that my apt was the place to be that night and they'd contact me to invite themselves.
It revolutionized my life and my social network. I'd strongly recommend everyone who is suffering from these same sorts of social challenges create their own sort of variation of this concept.
This lasted almost a decade, almost every Wednesday night from 2007 to 2016. Then... adult life happened: family, moving internationally, and... alas. I have a personal challenge these days that I should invest energy in figuring out: the best way to reboot this for me, but in the world I life in now, not only post-covid, but with kids and family life. Sometimes I think about rebooting it but in a public venue on my "date night", sometimes I think about doing a "Zoom" version of this where it's beers on Zoom, etc etc there are many possible ways to approach this challenge - but I haven't yet been inspired with the right formula for me.
There's a time and place for everything under the sun and this was a beautiful and life-changing era of my life.
If anyone is interested in creating their own version of this (particularly James), just drop me a line and I'm more than happy to Zoom any time with you and give you some tips. My email is morgan@westegg.com (I still love meeting people even if through email and Zoom!), and my personal website is westegg.com and I have an ancient and embarrassingly bad web page 2008 tumblr-style page about these events at: wnip.org - If the above sounded interesting, I'm always up for a brainstorm so ping me!
(PS: I found this through Hackernews and I posted my comment there as well)
Thanks for the thoughtful and detailed comment! I'd love to switch up my thing to weekly and agree that would be a fantastic way to create community like you describe.
Unfortunately though, I'm not sure I could ever make it work – this might be a London-specific problem – I both don't have a house large enough to accommodate guests, and no one here lives centrally, so there's much less of a culture of hanging out at people's homes.
(Of course, I've long imagined winning the lottery and establishing my own private members club of sorts in Westminster, but am not holding out much hope.)
Good luck with your own post-family reboot!
Thanks for sharing this James. I’m now wondering how to get on your engagement funnel! Here’s to great infrastructure and well built homes 🍻
Editing to say: I did try something like this, and no one turned up 🥹 BUT then I attached myself to a bunch of existing ones and whilst the interest venn diagram isn’t perfect, I’ve found a lovely bunch of people from those groups, who I now consider real friends.
Excellent piece and interestingly James, you and your partner are the people who got me into the Skeptics world, via the much missed Pod Delusion podcast. Like you I loved the Skeptic movement and was very active in it with the monthly meet up. In fact I think your partner was the first SITP meeting I ever went to when she talked about (I think) the history of social welfare in a Nottingham pub. I was a regular at QED and I remember seeing you there. Out of SITP, two of my friends invented PubHD which is still going to this day. The whole Skeptics thing was such a massive thing for me, but like yourself I fell out with the whole thing, mainly because my views are, what might be called Gender Critical and that made me feel like a social outsider in that world. I went to the QED in 2024 and didn’t enjoy it, especially when Robin Ince turned up on stage…..Nowadays my social meet ups are about cricket, films and Doctor Who. I sort of miss the SITP days but I’d never go back.
I might have used this analogy before, but I look back on the skeptics scene back then a bit like how people look nostalgically back on Britpop - a big cultural moment caused the temporary alignment of various forces (Blur, Oasis, Euro 96, Chris Evans, Blair). And I still look back on the skeptics scene very fondly - and it makes me sad it basically divided in two over That One Issue. Half of the people became skull-measuring libertarians, the other half became ultra-woke social justice people. So it felt like it was just me left in the middle, with the make-nobody-happy position of “biology is real, but don’t be an arsehole about it”.
I'll admit that when you first invited me into your engagement funnel, it seemed slightly mad to me - I could never do it for a million reasons. But having come along a couple of times and meeting some lovely people, it does seem to have worked. I really should try and make it along more next year.
Very glad to be part of your engagement funnel James!
Another option is to join a ready-made community, preferably one that is physically located in your local area. It was only after being in a similarly comfortable, working from home job that I began to realise why religion has been so successful over the years - it gives us a connection to those around us; without it, we are strangers and with that we don't know who we can trust, or who we can turn to in a time of need.
For me, I joined my local running club, even though I didn't do much running when I joined. I was also seeking physical activity, as I wasn't even walking to the train station anymore. They were incredibly welcoming and have made me an OK runner. I enjoy it, but I think it's the community aspect of it - getting to know plenty of people in my town, that's more important to me.
I also get to know people from different backgrounds; different professions and different ages. I think this helps to give a more broad view on the world than bouncing around in my liberal echo chamber.
Thanks for posting. I have a very similar situation. However, just thinking about organizing something or contacting looser connections gives me so much anxiety that I don’t do it often. Something to work on..
That was where I was! But the worst thing that will happen is that a looser connection will pretend to be busy – and I think people are much more flattered to be invited to things than you think.
I wouldn’t be the type to organise an event myself, but I certainly agree regarding the importance of community. In the last couple of years, I’ve found myself in some great communities of friends - two organising mainly on WhatsApp, the other on Discord. They have enriched my life considerably. Your blog made me think about what makes these communities work.
You obviously need a space to talk; but you also need regular (or irregular) events to bring people together IRL. (This can also be done online - the Discord group does fortnightly video chats.)
You need some kind of common interests. This may be why the more successful communities are demographically similar, with most people around the same age bracket and from similar social backgrounds, because it means their members will have the same cultural reference points.
And you also need some degree of shared values. From the sound of it, this is what broke the Skeptics community - its members may have agreed on their views of religion and science, but they had wildly different moral values. So some former Skeptics wound up supporting Trump, while others found that incomprehensible.
No real conclusion here, but just some advice for anyone else considering starting a community themselves.
Really interesting to read this - I'm glad it worked so well for you!
I am happy for the author. But. The absolute prevalence of posts like this right now, and the volume of millennial (or millenial-adjacent) people in this exact same predicament should be a huge tanoy announcement to everyone coming behind us. "We were wrong. You have been lied to. The neoliberal, postmodern forces, who want you to stay at home, spend your money, don't have kids, reject religion, spend your money, go on another skiing holiday, focus on your career, go to the gym, spend your money... they aren't guiding you to a good life. They're not interested in your fulfilment." As it happens, all those simple folk from "the olden days" and their stupid traditions, and rituals, and large families, and basic lives, and villages....yeah, turns out there was wisdom locked away in that lifestyle that we have lost and its taken us a couple of generations to realise that Apple technology and Facebook statuses aren't a substitute for sitting around a table with people we care about.
Is the need for community and connection why the younger generation is apparently turning to organised Christianity?
I think there could be something in it, but my understanding is that the claims about the kids turning to religion is based on faulty data!
https://humanists.uk/2025/04/10/gen-z-religious-revival-the-evidence-is-incomplete/
Really enjoyed your post, thanks. In order to get a fuller picture, can you share about how much you spend on this each month? I'm from the US, and I assume that "announcing drinks" means "taking people out for drinks."
Nope - I literally just provide the coordination! People buy their own drinks (or rounds of drinks as and when).
Interesting. But you started with a load of people you already know. I have maybe 8-10 friends all of whom are over an hour away. How would I start making friends in the town I moved to 3 years ago?
Great Idea! I wonder what interests the community develop around.
I have been thinking about doing this myself connecting people around PKM (Personal Knowledge Management), writing and literature in my small U.S. Town. Heard about this article on hackernews. Thanks for the ideas around creating community.
Very interesting observation and recommendations. For someone who is uncomfortable meeting humans in public and likes to have air gap between private and internet life, how do you suggest starting a community?