About Disappearing Moment’s Perpetual August
Welcome to Disappearing Moment's Perpetual August! This is where Disappearing Moment readers communicate with each other.
Why Perpetual August Exists
Disappearing Moment reflects its founder, Brett Bonfield's need to keep things simple. We can be mindful about how we spend our time and money. We can practice empathy and kindness. We can treat others the way they want to be treated ("The Platinum Rule"). Neither reading Disappearing Moment nor writing it should feel like an obligation.
The monthly newsletter is a way for Brett to share his ideas and experiences. Sometimes its readers respond to something he has written. Disappearing Moment’s small band of readers includes many of Brett’s favorite people. Their observations are keen and well stated. Brett wanted a way for these conversations to include more than one other person. For them to occur without his intervention. Without dopamine or reinforcement. With care and acknowledgment and cadence.
Perpetual August is a digital analog to Beth and Brett's potlucks. They invite their friends and ask them not to respond. That way no one feels any pressure. Accepting responses would create an obligation. If you say you're attending, you feel bad if you don't, and Beth and Brett feel disappointed. The lack of obligation frees Beth and Brett’s friends to make decisions that feel right to them. No matter which or how many friends attend, Beth and Brett are elated.
Perpetual August is an opt-in community. Do not feel bad if you choose not to join, or join and choose not to take part. Or if you join and don't have much to say. Obligation is asphyxiation.
"Perpetual August"?
Many of us have been part of emergent, intimate, fulfilling online groups. Text threads. Mailing lists. Classes. Peer mentoring. Editorial boards. Tilde Clubs. MetaFilter. Mastadon. For the first two years of the pandemic, Beth and Brett chanted with friends, via Zoom, every weekday from 7 –7:15 a.m.
In its early days, many areas of the Internet felt intimate and fulfilling. Each September, a fresh batch of college students invaded these areas. Over the next few months, the newbies would acculturate. Then the process would repeat itself. Later on, the Internet's floodgates opened. People like Brett joined these communities. Longtime participants dubbed it "Eternal September".
Dross like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Zhang Yiming make our spaces harmful. Their rent-seeking endangers our independence, privacy, and safety. “The paradigmatic 21st century business model is probably giving a product away for free, or at least below cost, in order to collect data that can be used for lucrative targeted advertising. This is how most email works, and basically all of social media....”
One alternative is Perpetual August.
