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Dear Silicon Valley, Please start something (company or otherwise) that will make it easy for adults (young and old) to become part of a large, real world soci

Dear Silicon Valley, Please start something (company or otherwise) that will make it easy for adults (young and old) to become part of a large, real world social network. One which will help them form good career connections, as well as platonic and romantic relationships. Fraternities create their own unique culture (traditions, handshakes, songs, idioms, etc) to tie people together, so keep that in mind. Please leave hazing out of it too. Kindly, Baron

ThrustVectoring 9y ago
Making it easy defeats the entire point of something like a fraternity: excluding the less valuable and less committed people from the social space so that the high-value and committed people that remain can efficiently use their time. Now, of course, the fraternities can't say that that's why they're exclusive, but yeah, they're exclusive for a reason.
- OvidNaso 9y ago
  Why can't they say that? Because that sounds exactly like what their parent organization (the university), does every year. This thread seems to be really down on the exclusivity part, but I feel I'm taking crazy pills, because this is happening at universities!! All of pledges just went through a very judgemental, exclusive selection of elites...and they one that round. A further selection process is now abhorrent?
  - ThrustVectoring 9y ago
    I used "can't" to indicate that playing up that aspect of things is really bad PR. In America, everyone is special and elitism is terrible.
pascalxus 9y ago
Try LinkedIn and Tinder?
gkoberger 9y ago
Doesn't that already exist? It's not a technology problem. There's everything from Meetup.com to Facebook groups/events to private Slack channels to Tinder for dates to Reddit to so many other things. Silicon Valley already does have its version of frats: companies. Alumni networks are the equivalent of a frat; working at Google or Facebook or another big company all have their own culture and opens up a lot of doors when you're job hunting. At the end of the day, though, it's not a problem tech can solve. It's a people problem.
- danblick 9y ago
  > Silicon Valley already does have its version of frats: companies. Ew, no. Work-life balance?
aqsalose 9y ago
Problem is that the useful societal networks as described by e.g. the other comment below [0] are naturally scarce resources. A fraternity (and the associated wider friends-of-friends social network) that consists of dozens or even hundreds of people doing favors to each other over the non-frat people, that's still manageable and self-sustainable. However, the world has billions of people. A network of million already is useless, and would leave the market open for another exclusive social club. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15316723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15316723
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
defen 9y ago
Who wants to join a group that will let anybody in? It's a very basic aspect of human psychology that shared sacrifice (real or perceived) leads to stronger social bonds.
- MagnumOpus 9y ago
  Who wants to join a group that will let anybody in? The majority of the human species that participates in organised religious groups that let anybody in who can recite a credo or a shahada... (Of course there is still sacrifice - they all have arbitrary rules and constraints to lead to shared hardship and to create the essential us-vs-them.)
SeeDave 9y ago
Hey Baron, I think Vive Church [1] offers exactly what you're looking for! [1] https://vivechurch.org/ https://vivechurch.org/ -David
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
dragonwriter 9y ago
> Please start something (company or otherwise) that will make it easy for adults (young and old) to become part of a large, real world social network. Churches are real-world social networks that are generally easy to join (the degree to which they provide large or strong networls vary considerably, of course.) There are lots of other examples. I'm not sure what the opportunity for Silicon Valley is here.
- davidw 9y ago
  "Silicon Valley disrupts religion" sounds like a gold mine for parodies.
  - SeeDave 9y ago
    Hey David, It's actually a thing that I'm a part of! Check out Vive Church [1], formerly known as C3 Silicon Valley [2] [1] https://vivechurch.org/ https://vivechurch.org/ [2] https://www.buzzfeed.com/nitashatiku/c3-silicon-valley-church?utm_term=.se8vaW12a#.rgM70ljE0 https://www.buzzfeed.com/nitashatiku/c3-silicon-valley-churc... -David
- tdb7893 9y ago
  I miss church but not religion, sometimes it's nice to just eat some donuts and chat with random people. Sadly I can't do a startup where people just eat donuts and chill
xienze 9y ago
In all seriousness, that's called "church."
crush-n-spread 9y ago
It should be hard. That's why networks are valuable.
danieltillett 9y ago
I actually have a rather good idea on how to do this. I was looking to solve the problem of religion, not frats, but in many ways frats and religions are very similar problems. While I don’t want to go into details, the basic idea is to use technology to track and bank reciprocation as well as the problem of in-group identification. I thought it was clever, but it just got added to my ever expanding good idea list :)
austenallred 9y ago
It's called Y Combinator ;) I'm only somewhat kidding.
psyc 9y ago
This has been near the top of my "app ideas" notebook for 10 years, and I've never found any serious attempt out there. I view this as a game theory problem, whose solution would be facilitated by a social network that modeled whatever the problem is. If it ever succeeded, it would probably be in continual hazard of turning into that Black Mirror episode about reputation scores.
beager 9y ago
http://facebook.com http://facebook.com http://linkedin.com http://linkedin.com Now that I'm done being flippant, there are other things like IVY which purport to be exclusive networks that give you access to events and networks that will help your career and social stature, but at their core any and all of these things will be businesses that will extract as much money as they can from all parts of their client base. Contrast that to a fraternity, which seems much less like a business, at least in the sense that the proprietors are separated from the consumers of the product. All I'm saying is that SV's motivations in creating something like this may necessarily not provide folks with the same authentic experience that a fraternity would.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
JamesBarney 9y ago
I always thought a group based around the giving pledge would be great. You filter yourself to high value people because they're more likely to be able to afford 10%. You have a sacrifice these people are making, and a reason to help others. If you help some random guy land a job where he's making good money it further your goal of increasing donations to charity.
tomcam 9y ago
Houses of worship often serve these purposes.
archagon 9y ago
I think projects like Latitude[1] and Kalu Yala[2], while easy to poke fun of as examples of Silicon Valley out-of-touchness, also reveal the deep longing many of us have for genuine, spontaneous community interaction. I lived in a student co-op in college and it was the most significant social event of my life; how I wish there were more avenues in the “real” world to live, laugh, and love in a community of equals under the same roof! (One major issue from the SV side, I think, is that the business models don’t align with the goals. A startup aiming to tackle this problem would probably need to be organized as a cooperative. See “Jungletown” for an example of what happens when community thinking butts up against top-down, profit-driven leadership.) [1]: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xygykj/my-year-in-san-franciscos-2-million-secret-society-startup https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xygykj/my-year-in... [2]: https://www.viceland.com/en_us/show/jungletown https://www.viceland.com/en_us/show/jungletown
mitchellst 9y ago
So many replies to this comment, and none have yet acknowledged the high probability that Baron's request is sarcastic. When frat guys with names like "Baron" claim they have superior social awareness, this is what they mean.

ThrustVectoring 9y ago

Making it easy defeats the entire point of something like a fraternity: excluding the less valuable and less committed people from the social space so that the high-value and committed people that remain can efficiently use their time. Now, of course, the fraternities can't say that that's why they're exclusive, but yeah, they're exclusive for a reason.

OvidNaso 9y ago
Why can't they say that? Because that sounds exactly like what their parent organization (the university), does every year. This thread seems to be really down on the exclusivity part, but I feel I'm taking crazy pills, because this is happening at universities!! All of pledges just went through a very judgemental, exclusive selection of elites...and they one that round. A further selection process is now abhorrent?
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  I used "can't" to indicate that playing up that aspect of things is really bad PR. In America, everyone is special and elitism is terrible.

pascalxus 9y ago

Try LinkedIn and Tinder?

gkoberger 9y ago

Doesn't that already exist? It's not a technology problem. There's everything from Meetup.com to Facebook groups/events to private Slack channels to Tinder for dates to Reddit to so many other things. Silicon Valley already does have its version of frats: companies. Alumni networks are the equivalent of a frat; working at Google or Facebook or another big company all have their own culture and opens up a lot of doors when you're job hunting. At the end of the day, though, it's not a problem tech can solve. It's a people problem.

danblick 9y ago
> Silicon Valley already does have its version of frats: companies. Ew, no. Work-life balance?

aqsalose 9y ago

Problem is that the useful societal networks as described by e.g. the other comment below [0] are naturally scarce resources. A fraternity (and the associated wider friends-of-friends social network) that consists of dozens or even hundreds of people doing favors to each other over the non-frat people, that's still manageable and self-sustainable. However, the world has billions of people. A network of million already is useless, and would leave the market open for another exclusive social club. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15316723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15316723

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

defen 9y ago

Who wants to join a group that will let anybody in? It's a very basic aspect of human psychology that shared sacrifice (real or perceived) leads to stronger social bonds.

MagnumOpus 9y ago
Who wants to join a group that will let anybody in? The majority of the human species that participates in organised religious groups that let anybody in who can recite a credo or a shahada... (Of course there is still sacrifice - they all have arbitrary rules and constraints to lead to shared hardship and to create the essential us-vs-them.)

SeeDave 9y ago

Hey Baron, I think Vive Church [1] offers exactly what you're looking for! [1] https://vivechurch.org/ https://vivechurch.org/ -David

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

dragonwriter 9y ago

> Please start something (company or otherwise) that will make it easy for adults (young and old) to become part of a large, real world social network. Churches are real-world social networks that are generally easy to join (the degree to which they provide large or strong networls vary considerably, of course.) There are lots of other examples. I'm not sure what the opportunity for Silicon Valley is here.

davidw 9y ago
"Silicon Valley disrupts religion" sounds like a gold mine for parodies.
- SeeDave 9y ago
  Hey David, It's actually a thing that I'm a part of! Check out Vive Church [1], formerly known as C3 Silicon Valley [2] [1] https://vivechurch.org/ https://vivechurch.org/ [2] https://www.buzzfeed.com/nitashatiku/c3-silicon-valley-church?utm_term=.se8vaW12a#.rgM70ljE0 https://www.buzzfeed.com/nitashatiku/c3-silicon-valley-churc... -David
tdb7893 9y ago
I miss church but not religion, sometimes it's nice to just eat some donuts and chat with random people. Sadly I can't do a startup where people just eat donuts and chill

xienze 9y ago

In all seriousness, that's called "church."

crush-n-spread 9y ago

It should be hard. That's why networks are valuable.

danieltillett 9y ago

I actually have a rather good idea on how to do this. I was looking to solve the problem of religion, not frats, but in many ways frats and religions are very similar problems. While I don’t want to go into details, the basic idea is to use technology to track and bank reciprocation as well as the problem of in-group identification. I thought it was clever, but it just got added to my ever expanding good idea list :)

austenallred 9y ago

It's called Y Combinator ;) I'm only somewhat kidding.

psyc 9y ago

This has been near the top of my "app ideas" notebook for 10 years, and I've never found any serious attempt out there. I view this as a game theory problem, whose solution would be facilitated by a social network that modeled whatever the problem is. If it ever succeeded, it would probably be in continual hazard of turning into that Black Mirror episode about reputation scores.

beager 9y ago

http://facebook.com http://facebook.com http://linkedin.com http://linkedin.com Now that I'm done being flippant, there are other things like IVY which purport to be exclusive networks that give you access to events and networks that will help your career and social stature, but at their core any and all of these things will be businesses that will extract as much money as they can from all parts of their client base. Contrast that to a fraternity, which seems much less like a business, at least in the sense that the proprietors are separated from the consumers of the product. All I'm saying is that SV's motivations in creating something like this may necessarily not provide folks with the same authentic experience that a fraternity would.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

JamesBarney 9y ago

I always thought a group based around the giving pledge would be great. You filter yourself to high value people because they're more likely to be able to afford 10%. You have a sacrifice these people are making, and a reason to help others. If you help some random guy land a job where he's making good money it further your goal of increasing donations to charity.

tomcam 9y ago

Houses of worship often serve these purposes.

archagon 9y ago

I think projects like Latitude[1] and Kalu Yala[2], while easy to poke fun of as examples of Silicon Valley out-of-touchness, also reveal the deep longing many of us have for genuine, spontaneous community interaction. I lived in a student co-op in college and it was the most significant social event of my life; how I wish there were more avenues in the “real” world to live, laugh, and love in a community of equals under the same roof! (One major issue from the SV side, I think, is that the business models don’t align with the goals. A startup aiming to tackle this problem would probably need to be organized as a cooperative. See “Jungletown” for an example of what happens when community thinking butts up against top-down, profit-driven leadership.) [1]: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xygykj/my-year-in-san-franciscos-2-million-secret-society-startup https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xygykj/my-year-in... [2]: https://www.viceland.com/en_us/show/jungletown https://www.viceland.com/en_us/show/jungletown

mitchellst 9y ago

So many replies to this comment, and none have yet acknowledged the high probability that Baron's request is sarcastic. When frat guys with names like "Baron" claim they have superior social awareness, this is what they mean.