I’ve been a bit distracted lately. I’ve also been working on new content that will be coming out on Monday, but my focus hasn’t been on politics lately.

This may seem silly, at least my fiancé thinks it does, but I’ve been investing a bunch of time and energy in a great American holiday tradition – shopping for the hottest item during the Christmas season. This item happens the be a next generation console gaming system – the Playstation 5 – which is extremely difficult to get your hands on this year.

I don’t think I can consider myself a ‘gamer’. I don’t have time to play a lot, and I almost exclusively stick to one genre of game – simulation sports. I think this has a lot to do with me growing up as an athlete, but the older I get, the harder it is to play real sports. I was always big into playing football, baseball and other sports, but reoccurring injuries ended my baseball playing days in high school and my football playing days in college. I think this is why I love playing the newest Madden (NFL football), The Show (MLB baseball), NBA 2K, FIFA (soccer), and NHL games – because I can no longer play in real life. But my gaming interests are not why I’m posting this.

As I briefly mentioned before, the PS5 is the hottest item this year and the demand has greatly surpassed the supply making it hard to find stock in stores or online. Since its preorder availability in September to its official release on November 12th, as soon as units become available online, it’s gone within seconds. I’m not sure if the pandemic has had an effect on the manufacture and stock of this game system, but I know it has made online shopping one of the only options during the holiday shopping madness. This drives up virtual shopping traffic, and therefore, makes online shopping a matter of the quickest draw (and even a full-on bidding war in some cases). Many of these online retailers are battling bots buying up all the stock whenever they release it and then selling at 3-4x the retail price to desperate shoppers willing to pay the premium. There are some reports of scalpers who use these bots making $20K in a few days using the scalper method. The new Xbox Series X/S are having similar issues, but to a lesser degree since the system does not seem as popular as Sony’s PS5. This makes it a frustrating challenge to purchase these systems, but there is a weird saving grace that is coming from an unlikely source that’s helping people like me – hold on to your butts – Twitter.

Online communities are popping up all over Twitter (in conjunction with YouTube) acting as support groups and stock alert systems for people who can’t get their hands on a next gen gaming console. These Twitter personalities and YouTubers didn’t start out with massive followings, but because of their diligence watching and reporting on new stock drops and inside information from employees of these large retailers (Walmart, Best Buy, Target, etc.), their following has grown exponentially (passing my 100 followers in a blink of an eye). Then these personalities collaborate together, taking shifts on watching for new stock drops and researching shipping movements, to make sure everyone following them gets the best chance at successfully ordering their new game system. When stock drops (meaning when it becomes available on a website or in-store), they quickly alert their following with url links and efficient purchasing instructions. When the stock runs out (normally in the first minute), they retweet the success stories and encourage the unsuccessful shoppers (about 95%) to keep their heads up and don’t give up. This has been an ongoing effort for weeks.

The reason I bring this up is I found myself using Twitter in a useful and productive manner. Yes, I understand it isn’t for a worthwhile or important cause, but the fact that Twitter can be used for anything positive is something we should look at. Twitter has the advantage of being quick, which is perfect for this application, but it’s the community building aspect that has me drawn in. I guess I can assume that these communities and following will greatly decrease after the supply and demand come to more of an equilibrium, making these very temporary communities. But is that a bad thing?

Locals is a great application for building strong communities. You can build a large following on Twitter, but I would hardly consider it a community building application except for specific short-term cases like this. Twitter is the temporary tent city to Locals thriving suburb. Both serve a community. Twitter is not a platform known for its positive utility and sustainability, so what makes these communities different?

Diversity is our strength. This is the same empty phrase repeated on marketing material for every large corporation, but is it true? No, not really… but kinda… maybe. If I run a business and form a team to enter a new market segment, a diverse team will always be less effective than a homogeneous team. For example, if I want to start manufacturing chairs for the first time, creating a team with an engineer, an HR rep, and an interpretive dance major will not be as effective as a team made up of three engineers of the same discipline. This proves the ‘diversity is our strength’ rule wrong, but there is a case where it is correct. A diverse team, meaning, a team whose members think in a diverse way, is more effective than a homogenous team if they all (truthfully) agree to the same objective. I believe an effective Twitter community works the same way.

This is a large group of people who don’t know each other coming together for one single purpose and have the same objective. It formed in a matter of days. It is more effective than any small group or grassroots movement I have ever seen. It would be easy for these different personalities who act as the leaders of the group to push their own material and promote their own personal brand, but, for the most part, they don’t. Most of these ‘leaders’ are more concerned with getting other people their game systems than getting it themselves, considering most of them weren’t able to successfully purchase their own system yet. For the ‘leaders’ who were successful, I’ve seen them give their new systems away to parents trying their best to get a system for their kids before Christmas. I’ve seen kids sick with cancer and other serious diseases in the group get a new system gifted to them because of large sub-groups of people saying, “If I get lucky during the next drop, I will add you as the shipping address.” Again, and I can’t stress this enough, this group was formed in a matter of weeks, and it will probably disband in a few more weeks – after it serves its purpose.

I’m not making this post to talk about next gen game consoles. I’m making this post because we’ve lost faith in our own ability to come together as a community. To rely on ourselves and our ability to work with one another for a common goal. We often look to government first to take care of our problems. There is no doubt in my mind that if AOC was a gamer, she would try to make next gen consoles a human right. We need to stop thinking this way. We have the tools to solve our own problems. Twitter is an example of this tool. People like to say that social media platforms, like Twitter, are only there to create division, fake news, and sell our data. That isn’t social media – that’s us. Social media is just an efficient vehicle to amplify our flaws as a society. Blaming social media for our problems is just like blaming a gun for killing someone. It’s a convenient excuse.

If a bunch of lonely gamers, stressed out parents, and Fortnite children can put together a problem solving taskforce on a platform most well-known for hashtag virtue signaling, we should be able to recognize we don’t need a centralized power to solve our problems and give us stuff. #HitMeUpIfYouGotAnExtraPS5 #HashtagVirtueSignaling #RememberWhenHashtagWasCalledPound #MeToo #ThatsWhatSheSaid