(Some quick thoughts of reflection five years later)

For the past decade, companies mistook audience for community. They optimized for scale, gamed distribution, and locked users into products under the guise of addiction (or ransom?). But the real stickiness wasn’t in the feed, it was in the feel. In 2025, brands that matter will be those that generate subcultural gravity. Not solely by going viral, but by creating a consumer orbit. Here, devotion not distribution is the moat. And if you're not building for that, you're replaceable.

We moved away from this because we were sold a false binary in that we either scale or die. Advertising models rewarded reach. Product roadmaps prioritized frictionless loops over meaningful ones. Companies got addicted to dashboards and faded on dialogue. And somewhere in there, we forgot the internet was the prime medium for emergent behavior. Companies became the sole authors of the product, the experience, the narrative. But the most potent systems, the ones that endure, are the ones you let go of, just enough to see what others do with them.

Look at The Free Press. On the surface, it’s a publication. Underneath, it’s a network protocol for independent thinking. Its subscribers aren’t just reading, they’re gathering, debating, and contributing signals back into the system. It’s a form of civic architecture facilitated by media. Then there’s Farcaster: a protocol-layer social network that invites you to build on it, not just scroll through it. Developer communities shape it. Culture emerges through it. The playbook is to design the scaffolding. Subcultures don’t want products, they want infrastructure and spaces to deepen identity through collaboration and community.

This shift is structural-- in media, in consumer software, in finance, in physical goods, subculture is the strategic unlock. Today’s network effects don't come from product features, they come from identity formation. So the question isn't "How do we retain users?" It's "How do we build systems people will defend, fork, and ritualize?" When you start there, you stop writing stories for people and start building the stories they want to live in.

To build cultural infrastructure at scale, start by clearly articulating values that invite participation and create belonging. When people see and resonate with your worldview, they self select into your community. But values alone aren’t enough, design your product and brand as a platform for participation, not just consumption. Enable your users to contribute, remix, and co create through modular tools, open APIs, or member led initiatives. Cultivate rituals and recurring moments, whether virtual or IRL, that reinforce identity and social bonds. Measuring success means shifting away from simple engagement metrics toward signals of cultural vitality like user-led events, organic advocacy, creative remixing, and peer networks. This emergent, decentralized approach transforms passive users into active stewards, creating a resilient, self-scaling subculture that becomes your true moat.

The move now is clear: Open the surface area. Build participatory layers. Give your users tools, not tasks. Design systems where your community can see themselves, shape the product, and extend the narrative on their own terms. Devotion scales when ownership is shared. When your people become the engine, not the endpoint, you don’t need more engagement. You need more allegiance. That’s how companies become infrastructure. That’s how subculture becomes the business