#ethnography

[songs-of-the-east]

Postcard from Kalocsa, Hungary

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The online community trilemma

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/16/fast-good-cheap/#getting-up

The digital humanities are one of the true delights of this era. Anthropologists are counting things like sociologists, sociologists are grappling with qualitative data like ethnographers, computational linguists are scraping and making sense of vast corpora of informal speech:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/07/24/because-internet-the-new-linguistics-of-informal-english/

I follow a bunch of these digital humanities types: danah boyd, of course, but also Benjamin "Mako" Hill, whose work on the true meaning of the "free software"/"open source" debate is one of my daily touchpoints for making sense of the world we live in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBknF2yUZZ8

Mako just published a new ACM HCI paper co-authored with his U Washington colleagues Nathan TeBlunthuis, Charles Kiene, Isabella Brown, and Laura Levi, "No Community Can Do Everything: Why People Participate in Similar Online Communities":

https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/3512908

The paper is a great example of this quantitative ethnography/qualitative statistical analysis hybrid. The authors are trying to figure out why there are so many similar, overlapping online communities, particularly on platforms like Reddit. Why would r/bouldering, r/climbharder, r/climbing, and r/climbingcirclejerk all emerge?

This is a really old question/debate in online community design. The original internet community space, Usenet, was founded on strict hierarchical principles, using a taxonomy to produce a single canonical group for every kind of discussion. Sure, there was specialization (rec.pets.cats begat rec.pets.cats.siamese), but by design, there weren't supposed to be competing groups laying claim to the same turf, and indeed, unwary Usenet users were often scolded for misfiling their comments in the wrong newsgroup.

The first major Usenet schism arose out of this tension: the alt. hierarchy. Though alt. later became known for warez, porn, and other subjects that were banned by Usenet's founding "backbone cabal," the inciting incident that sparked alt.'s creation was a fight over whether "gourmand" should be classified as "rec.gourmand" or "talk.gourmand":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/altinteroperabilityadversarial

Community managers design their services with strongly held beliefs about the features that make a community good. These beliefs, grounded in designers' personal experience, are assumed to be global and universal. Generally, this assumption is wrong, something that is only revealed later when more people arrive with different needs.

Think of Friendster's "fakester" problem, driven by its designers' beliefs about how people should organize their affinities:

https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2003/08/17/the_fakester_manifesto.html

Or Mastodon's initial, self-limiting ban on "quote" posts as a way to encourage civility:

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/02/bringing-quote-posts-to-mastodon/

And, as the paper's authors note, Stack Overflow has a strict prohibition on overlapping new communities, echoing Usenet's original design dispute.

On its face, this hierarchical principle for conversational spaces makes sense. Viewed through a naive economic lens of "reputation capital," having one place where all the people interested in your subject can be reached is optimal. The more people there are in a group, the greater the maximum "engagement" – likes, comments, reposts. If you're thinking about communities from an informational perspective, it's easy to assume that bigger groups are better, too: the more users there are in a topical group, the greater the likelihood that a user who knows the answer to your question will show up when you ask it.

But this isn't how online communities work. On every platform, and across platforms, overlapping, "redundant" groups emerge quickly and stick around over long timescales. Why is this?

That's the question the paper seeks to answer. The authors used data-analysis techniques to identify overlapping clusters of Reddit communities and then conducted lengthy, qualitative interviews with participants to discover why and how users participated in some or all of these seemingly redundant groups.

They conclude that there's a community-member's "trilemma": a set of three priorities that can never be fully satisfied by any group. The trilemma consists of users' need to find:

a) A community of like-minded people;

b) Useful information; and

c) The largest possible audience.

The thing that puts the "lemma" in this "trilemma" is that any given group can only satisfy two of these three needs. It's hard to establish the kinds of intimate, high-trust bonds with the members of a giant, high-traffic group, but your small, chummy circle of pals might not be big enough to include people who have the information you're seeking. Users can't get everything they need from any one group, so they join multiple groups that prioritize different paired corners of this people-information-scale triangle.

The interview excerpts put some very interesting meat on these analytical bones. For example, economists typically believe that online marketplaces rely on scale. Think of eBay: as the number of potential bidders increases, the likelihood that one will outbid another goes up. That drives more sellers to the platform, seeking the best price for their wares, which increases the diversity of offerings on eBay, bringing in more buyers.

But the authors discuss a community where vintage vinyl records are bought and sold that benefits from being smaller, because the members all know each other well enough to have a mutually trusting environment that makes transactions far more reliable. Actually knowing someone – and understanding that they don't want to be expelled from the community you both belong to – makes for a better selling and buying experience than consulting their eBay reputation score. The fact that buyers don't have as many sellers and sellers don't have as many buyers is trumped by the human connection in a community of just the right size.

That's another theme that arises in the paper: a "just right" size for a community. As one interviewee says:

I think there’s this weird bell curve where the community needs to be big enough where people want to post content. But it can’t get too big where people are drowning each other out for attention.

This explains why groups sometimes schism: they've gone from being "just big enough" to being "too big" for the needs they filled for some users. But another reason for schism is the desire by some members to operate with different conversational norms. Many of Reddit's topical clusters include a group with the "jerk" suffix (like r/climbingcirclejerk), where aggressive and dramatic forms of discourse that might intimidate newcomers are welcome. Newbies go to the main group, while "crusties" talk shit in the -jerk group. The authors liken this to "regulatory arbitrage" – community members seeking spaces with rules that are favorable to their needs.

And of course, there's the original source of community schism: specialization, the force that turns rec.pets.cats into rec.pets.cats.siamese, rec.pets.cats.mainecoons, etc. Though the authors don't discuss it, this kind of specialization is something that recommendation algorithms are really good at generating. At its best, this algorithmic specialization is a great way to discover new communities that enrich your life; at its worst, we call this "radicalization."

I devote a chapter of my 2023 book The Internet Con, "What about Algorithmic Radicalization?" to exploring this phenomenon:

https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/3035-the-internet-con

The question I grapple with there is whether "engagement-maximizing" algorithms shape our interests, or whether they help us discover our interests. Here's the thought-experiment I propose: imagine you've spent the day shopping for kitchen cabinets and you're curious about the specialized carpentry that's used to build them. You go home and do a search that leads you to a video called "How All-­Wood Cabinets Are Made."

The video is interesting, but even more interesting is the fact that the creator uses the word "joinery" to describe the processes the video illustrates. So now you do a search for "joinery" and find yourself watching a wordless, eight-minute video about Japanese joinery, a thing you never even knew existed. The title of the video contains the transliterated Japanese phrase "Kane Tsugi," which refers to a "three-­way pinned corner miter" joint. Even better, the video description contains the Japanese characters: "面代留め差しほぞ接ぎ."

So now you're searching for "面代留め差しほぞ接ぎ" and boy are there a lot of interesting results. One of them is an NHK documentary about Sashimoto woodworking, which is the school that Kane Tsugi belongs to. Another joint from Sashimoto joinery is a kind of tongue-and-groove called "hashibame," but that comes up blank on Youtube.

However, searching on that term brings you to a bunch of message boards where Japanese carpenters are discussing hashibame, and Google Translate lets you dig into this, and before you know it, you've become something of an expert on this one form of Japanese joinery. In just a few steps, you've gone from knowing nothing about cabinetry to having a specific, esoteric favorite kind of Japanese joint that you're seriously obsessed with.

If this subject was political rather than practical, we'd call this process "radicalization," and we'd call the outcome – you sorting yourself into a narrow niche interest, to the exclusion of others – "polarization."

But if we confine our examples to things like literature, TV shows, flowers, or glassware, this phenomenon is viewed as benign. No one accuses an algorithm of brainwashing you into being obsessed with hashibame tongue-and-groove corners. We treat your algorithm-aided traversal of carpentry techniques as one of discovery, not persuasion. You've discovered something about the world – and about yourself.

Which brings me back to that original, Usenet-era schism over "redundant" groups. The person who wants to talk about being a "gourmand" in the "rec." hierarchy wants to participate in a specific set of conversational norms that are different from those in the "talk." hierarchy. Their interest isn't just being a "gourmand," it's in being a "rec.gourmand," something that is qualitatively different from being a "talk.gourmand."

The conversational trilemma – the unresolvable need for scale, trust and information – has been with us since the earliest days of online socializing. It's lovely to have it formalized in such a crisp, sprightly work of scholarship.

[ivoryblackarts]

нашестя жаб // plague of frogs

(refurbished drawing from 2023)

[koshercosplay]

so I've been going down a hyperfixation rabbit hole about pre-war ashkenazi folk medicine so now all of you get to hear about it

this gets VERY long so proceed with caution!

so firstly between 1500s to 1800 the major practitioners of ashkenazi medicine were the ba'alei shem, literally translated as "the people of the name," (referring to God.) these men (bc this was almost entirely a male profession) combined religious mysticism and kabbalah with medicine and herbalism.

ever heard of the baal shem tov? yeah he was called that because he was a baal shem! after his death, most people stopped using that title, because it became so closely associated with him.

so anyway the baalei shem would do things like offer cures, perform rituals, and create amulets for those struggling with mystic issues like demonic possession, or spiritual difficulties such as needing someone to remove a curse. they typically traveled around from town to town, instead of settling to practice in one place.

they carried with them a huge amount of herbal medicinal knowledge, and would often be asked to treat more mundane things too, like coughs, colds, injuries, etc. baalei shem were nearly always extremely secretive about their methods, and would keep a special book in which they'd record these methods that nobody else could read. occasionally, a baal shem would take on an apprentice, and begrudgingly pass down some of his knowledge. sadly though, this meant that a lot of this knowledge was lost over time.

as the baalei shem were phasing out, a new kind of jewish medical practitioner was gaining popularity: the feldsher.

originally the word meant a barber-surgeon in the Russian military, but the feldsher became a position that a huge number of Jews flocked to. Ironically, Jews were not allowed to shave in the Russian army, so they ended up focusing a lot more on the medical side of things.

with this training, and assuming they survived the army, many of these jews went back home to serve as an early kind of physician to their local communities. the feldshers combined local knowledge of folk medicine and herbalism with their military medical training.

here's where things can get kind of muddy - it got to the point where a lot of people called their local healer by the term "feldsher" even if they didn't have any military training whatsoever! so the term is super widespread and ended up being used to describe a lot of local early physicians despite their individual backgrounds.

the point is, feldshers had more medical training than baalei shem, and were called upon to provide more medicinal healing than spiritual healing.

this is a rare photo of a feldsher, taken in 1931 Poland. His name is Nekhemia, and he's posing with his daughter, Sonia, who often accompanied him on his visits as his assistant. she ended up becoming a pharmacist!

don't think that just because the official positions were held by men that women didn't participate in medicine! it was quite the opposite in fact. midwives were predominantly women, and they didn't just focus on pregnancy and birth, they handled everything about women's health. they were called bobehs, because they were considered the grandmother to the entire town!

bobehs were also available at all hours, even in the middle of the night, unlike the official doctors who held professional hours during the day, so they were often called to assist in urgent medical issues that couldn't wait until the morning regardless of gender.

there used to be a common practice that when a midwife died, every single person she brought into this world would come to her funeral and escort the casket to the cemetery while holding a candle. this is considered a lost custom of the old world which is no longer practiced.

these are photos of two bobehs. on the left is Esther Khaye di Bobe from modern-day Belarus, and on the right is Gitl di Bobe from modern-day Ukraine. both women were described as bringing half of their entire towns into the world, and reportedly had hundreds of people at their funerals.

there were also the babske refuos, literally "women's cures." everyone knew some of them, and it was considered part of a wife's job to learn some medicine and have a cabinet stocked with medicinal items. and it was considered part of a mother's job to pass down this knowledge as well.

the woman's equivalent to the baalei shem were called, get ready for this one, opshprekherin. they were who you went to for exorcisms, spiritual help, amulets, etc. Since the opshprekherin were local, as opposed to the traveling baalei shem, it was fairly common for a woman to be called upon for these issues if there were no baalei shem nearby.

according to the literature on the subject, these bobehs and opshprekherin were quite the respected matriarchs of their communities. everyone in the shtetl regardless of gender knew their names and their medical experience.

there's a lot more I could talk about, like specific remedies and plants used, and also other common positions that women held in the shtetl during this time period that no longer exist in today's communities. so uh if this ridiculously long post somehow makes you want more, let me know lmao.

also this entire subject is hugely difficult to research properly. for one thing, the languages issue. due to the diaspora being widespread, sources could be in any number of languages, including German, Russian, Hungarian, Romanian, Lithuanian, Hebrew, Yiddish, etc. I could go on lol. this makes it exceedingly difficult to find anything other than piecemeal information.

also, you know. the holocaust happened and wiped entire towns off the map, so like. all of that generational information was lost completely, with no way of getting it back.

that being said, there are some incredible researchers out there who have done amazing work in this field. I highly recommend the following if you're interested in reading more:

Ashkenazi Herbalism by Deatra Cohen and Adam Siegel

A Frog Under the Tongue by Marek Tuszewicki, translated by Jessica Taylor-Kucia

Ancient Jewish Medicine by Rabbi Chaim Fuchs and Dr. Isaac Madeb

if anyone is interested in me writing more of this kind of thing, I will HAPPILY write more on the subject! there's so much I had to leave out of this post so that it wouldn't end up spanning the circumference of the earth

[useless-catalanfacts]

Did you see the Mike Hatsune trend on twitter? So many Catalan Mikus!!!

I hadn't seen it! They're so cool!!

(And by the way, Miku is already Catalan 😉 the software used for her voice —Vocaloid— was created by the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona)

Say in the comments which one is your favourite!

Miku dancing sardanes wearing traditional clothes (pubilla outfit). By @/itsnailasart

Miku in a calçotada! By @/miden808

Miku castellera and pubilla Miku. By @/SpaceSpheal (also on Tumblr @spacespheal!)

Modern girl Miku who is a monitora de cau. By @/enosst

Miku castellera!! By @/TaySokka

Miku dancing sardanes. By @/NoddlsChikk

Miku with a Tió de Nadal. By @/gatomonogordo

Miku with the dragon, Mic and a calçot. By @/mewvy_y.

Miku dressed as castanyera! By @/lau_artwork

I've reached the photo limit for a Tumblr post but there's more! Say which one is your favourite in the tags. I can't choose just one but I'd say the 1st one, SpaceSpheal's, and the castanyera.

[fragrantblossoms]

Antonie Brandeis. Untitled, Jaluit, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Oceania (Location/Origin), 1898 - 1900.

[softie-draws]

Hi! I have recently gotten back into drawing and close to two.months ago I started learning ukrainian and I really want to draw (more) things related to ukrainian culture but I am always worried about accidentaly using a reference of something related to russian culture etc..

Do you have a tip.on how I can make sure?

Hello and thank you for your question!

First of all, I'd love to hug you (if you'd like that) because seeing people learning Ukrainian language and culture and drawing things related to Ukraine always warms my silly little heart🤧💜

Idyll, 1908

Here's a nice old Mykola Pymonenko painting for you to look at (cause look how peaceful and pretty it is!)

Now, let's talk a little bit about searching for references.

Luckily, when it comes to clothes, Ukrainian and russian folk clothing is actually pretty damn different (yet another stone at the "brotherly nations" narrative). You are much more likely to confuse a Ukrainian costume with, say, a Romanian or Polish one than a russian one.

(Ukrainian (on the left) vs russian (on the right) clothing on historical photography. I'm just saying that they're pretty darn different)

The problem is, of course, that russia is constantly trying to appropriate the Ukrainian costume (as they do with anything else), so you are likely to see misguiding descriptions or comments (as shown here).

So our goal today is to learn how to tell apart Ukrainian and russian costumes (trust me, it is not that hard), talk about certain traditions that are more likely to be either one or the other, and then I'll list some foolproof tips for anyone out there looking for references 💜

Here is the thing: the most iconic thing in Ukrainian traditional clothing is most likely the vyshyvanka — a traditional embroidered shirt. That's an element you won't see in russian clothing. Period. As I've said, it's much easier to confuse Ukrainian clothing with our other neighbours.

The elements you will probably not find in Ukrainian clothing are the kosovorotka (a shirt with the collar that's kinda off-centred) and the kokoshnik (a piece of headwear that's usually attributed specifically to russia). Also, traditionally, you aren't likely to see a Ukrainian woman wear a sarafan (a type of upper dress without sleeves), since most women in Ukraine wore long shirts as a base with a variety of types of skirts and upper pieces on top separately, depending on the region, weather and status. We also have to keep in mind that the people from the cities and the villages dressed differently for different purposes, and that the financial status determined the amount of accessories and the type of materials one could wear. For example, Ukrainian girls "invested" and wore a lot of necklaces, one of which could cost a lot, like, more than two bulls or something. Definitely a big status symbol and probably the reason I love layering necklaces so much.

The more necklaces, the better! These girls get it!

Another thing — there are regions in russia that used to be overwhelmingly populated by Ukrainians, and so the costumes would be more similar to those from Ukraine, because they are of Ukrainian origin. Duh. Regions like belgorod, voronezh, kursk etc.

When it comes to traditions, it is a little more difficult, because during the Schism of the russian Church a lot of the old traditions originating in russia were forcibly replaced to match the canons from Greece and Kyiv(!). Since religion was a central part of a person's life back in the day, a lot of the traditions might be similar. Another reason they might be similar would be the process of russification in both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.

Some of the authentic Ukrainian traditions that did not exist in russia: vechornytsi (a tradition of young people's social gatherings (those were spicy as well 👀)); the tradition of Malanka (costumed NYE celebration, usually including a goat mask and the Christmas stars (zvizda), Christmas and New Year carols (literally don't exist in russia so they translate ours🤡). In general, Ukrainian traditions are more connected to agrarian life and are more individualistic and egalitarian in nature, the russian traditions are more collectivist hierarchical (a lot more patriarchal, too).

Ukrainians all over the world celebrating Christmas

Now for the foolproof (almost, because nothing in this world is a 100% guarantee, of course) method for finding references!

So, you may have noticed that Pinterest and Google search kind of suck in separating Ukrainian and russian culture overall. Here are a few more or less reliable sources you could use instead:

1. This Wikipedia article about Ukrainian traditional clothing (in Ukrainian, but it has the most information by region, and also provides evidence in historical photography, illustrations and paintings)

2. The internet pages for ethnographic museums: for example, National Museum of Ukrainian Folk Decorative Art or Ivan Honchar Museum. The Ukrainian museums from abroad can also be very helpful, since they may include heirlooms that would otherwise be destroyed or sold in the colonisation processes.

3. Historical literature, magazines and illustrations: for example, Striy can be very helpful here.

4. Historical paintings! The National Library of Ukraine has a great selection to start.

5. If you want something more modern, ethnic photographer Anna Senik has really interesting looks and perspective to offer!

Hope this helps! 💜

P.S.: I don't know what happened, but the post got recovered! I am super happy, since I put a lot of time and effort into this! Hope you enjoy it!

[lakariancityamusementcenteradult]

If I was an anthropologist doing my fieldwork on DS9 here are some of the research questions I think I would have about Bajoran communities on the station:

How do Bajorans living on DS9 conceptualise the station?

How do they navigate living on a structure that was designed by their oppressors for the purpose of genocidal colonial violence?

How do they synthesise that fact with the station's spiritual significance as a gateway to the celestial temple and home of the Emissary?

How do they take that contradiction and create a place they call 'home'?

In what ways do Bajorans transform, co-opt, conceal, or memorialize the Cardassian design, architecture, and computer systems of the station? How do you create a sacred space like the temple in a place designed for profanity?

How does the prospect of Bajor joining the Federation in the future impact interpersonal relations between Bajorans and Federation citizens? Do some Bajorans perceive it as just another form of colonialsim with a softer face?

How do Bajorans think about replicated food? From living through starvation to being in a situation where they can eat as much as they want whenever they want, how does affect things like diet, body image, what is considered a normal or healthy body?

What kinds of social norms and morals have formed around Bajoran vs alien cuisine? Around replicated vs non-replicated food?

How does the availability and diversity of food on DS9 affect the Bajoran community's relationships to Starfleet and the Federation?

What kinds of new fusion foods have popped up?

Do Bajoran communities on DS9 invent any unique dialects or lingo? They could get linguistically influenced by humans, Ferengi, Vulcans, Klingons etc.

How Does a Jumja Stick Taste? An Autoethnography

An ethnographic account of how Bajorans celebrate the gratitude festival on DS9, how are they influenced by Bajoran traditions and what kinds of new traditions have formed?