Written by Sriram Krishnan on 2024-05-19.
Most of the interesting conversations in tech now happen in private group chats: Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, small invite-only Discord groups. Being part of the right group chat can feel like having a peek at the kitchen of a restaurant but instead of food, messy ideas and gossip fly about in real time, get mixed, remixed, discarded, polished before they show up in a prepared fashion in public.
Salons and groups have always existed but why the recent shift to private discourse?
- The great culture wars of 2020 meant people, especially in tech, weren’t comfortable sharing their views in public lest they get various online mobs after them.
- COVID meant we all had to shelter indoors and turned online for community.
- Many of the big internet trends of recent years – crypto, AI – all started or found homes around small online communities.
Time and time again I’ve seen group chat conversations act as the memetic upstream of mainstream opinion. Like a standup comic workshopping his set in a small club before a big Netflix special, people trial content and ideas, find bonds and you’ll often see narratives and ideas discussed make the jump to X/Twitter and then mainstream discourse.
Which leads to the question: what makes one of these work? I’ve been a part of several groups and have tried to stand up many myself and I find the same patterns repeating across all the good ones. The best ones are a “forever dinner party” – good friends and conversation happening in perpetuity. They often share the below.
Gardener, not carpenter
A strong and fair central leader who sets the tone and enforces the rules. The open source community uses the phrase “benevolent dictator” but I think this is more akin to a gardener who knows how to tend a garden – plant seeds, pluck weeds, water and always give the garden the love and care it deserves.
A good group chat gardener has to know when to bring in new members, when to bring in new ideas or shut down conversation and generally keep the dinner party going in a manner that is fun for everyone. At any given moment, this person has a certain intangible but very real instinct of the vibe of the group.
This person also lays down the law: a misbehaving member or someone breaking Chatham House rules (unspoken but accepted in most groups) will find themselves immediately kicked out.
Cooling rods and nuclear reactors
Cooling rods are used in nuclear reactors to control the rate of the reaction. When they pull back, the rate increases and when they go in, the reaction slows down.
Every group chat usually has one or two people that like to talk..a lot. They are critical: you need the provocateurs who inject new ideas consistently. However, almost all of them have a tendency to dominate these groups.
This is where the cooling rods come in. This is usually the BDFL or some trusted member who can judge the state of the group. Conversation slowing down? Get some of these spicy provocative takes going. Conversation getting heated/dominated? Take someone aside and calm them down. No different from a friend of mine who tries to get everyone’s glasses filled again and again if he feels the dinner getting boring.
The n-1 group
Every group I’ve been a part of has had multiple side chats. This is to either make fun of, discuss in private or just to avoid certain loud personalities. This is desired! I look for this to know if a certain community is “working”.
This leads to one of my favorite axioms: every group chat has a n-1 group containing everyone except that annoying member. And if you think your chat doesn’t have such a group, oh boy, do I have some bad news for you.
Dinner party alchemy
There is a touch of alchemy to picking the right people to come into a chat. A great dinner party doesn’t have the same kind of person – the best ones have a mix. You have someone who will be entertaining, perhaps someone famous, someone who is warm and keeps the conversation going and definitely someone who will be a great raconteur. A good group chat needs a mix of personalities. Some archetypes:
- the very online person who is familiar with participating in chat at all times
- The celebrity who everyone is surprised to see in a chat.
- The deeply thoughtful people who don’t speak up often but when they do, have real depth to their opinions
- The cheerful bon vivants who keep the group light/funny/fresh.
Gravitational pull of a few topics
It is common for group chats to suffer from audience capture and start circling the same topics incessantly. This happens in a few ways:
- A certain topics gain outsized influence and the group can’t stop having the same debate ad-nauseaum
- Two or three people in the group align themselves into various teams and feel locked into supporting or opposing the same causes or people every single time. In the chats I moderate, I always look out for two people arguing with each other incessantly.
- The angriest/most provocative topic usually winds up sucking the most oxygen. I’ve seen many groups die because they couldn’t get past talking about the one issue they disagreed on.
This is where variety comes in. You need a constant injection of new ideas, themes, and members into the mix. Stagnation is death.
Size and Pruning
Every good group chat has an inverse relationship with size. It is impossible to add new members forever without decreasing quality. Over time, the group decays in quality and I often find groups with >100 members unsustainable. Far below Dunbar’s number, it breaks some human model of intimacy.
This is where pruning comes in. Good group chats make you earn your spot periodically. And if you haven’t participated in a meaningful way in a while, you should find yourself kicked out.
On the flip side, one of the best ways to add value to a group is to suggest a good new member who will fit in.
Shared rituals
The best group have shared rituals, jokes, routines. They range from the simple (post the same thing every week) to something deeper (organize a multi-day trip once a year). These rituals bring people together in deep ways and give meaning. After seeing several of these, you can easily see how religions and communities need these as a bonding experience.
So, what makes a great group chat work? I recently stumbled onto a 1930 Vogue essay on hosting great dinners by early 20th century columnist and socialite Elsa Maxwell. I’ll leave the final word to Ms. Maxwell writing nearly a century ago.
“What makes or breaks a party?. A new idea, plus a sense of humor, makes a party – and the bores break it.”
Thanks to Erik Torenberg, Vitalik Buterin and many others who read versions of this and help sharpen my ideas on this.