The Internet Used To Be A Place For People Like Us
A place where meaningful & weird human connections naturally emerge
There was a version of the Internet that felt alive.
Not the one we have now, the feed, the algorithm, the carefully curated self, but the earlier one. The one that felt like showing up somewhere. You’d dial in, find a forum or a chat room or a weird little website, and discover that some stranger on the other side of the world was into the exact same obscure thing you were. Not because an algorithm matched you. Because you both wandered there.
The Internet was a place to meet people. It had texture, accidents, and it had the specific electricity of genuine human surprise.
There was a term I came across recently that stopped me: psychic distance.
The idea is that physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. Two people can share a wall and feel miles apart. A stranger on the other side of the world can feel like home. What separates us isn’t geography; it’s something interior. A way of seeing each other. Whether we’re willing actually to show up, or whether we keep each other at arm’s length by treating everything, and everyone, as an object to be optimized, measured, consumed.
The Internet didn’t create psychic distance, but it got very good at scaling it.
Somewhere along the way, we traded that in. Connection became constant but thinner. The platforms got bigger, the feeds got faster, and somewhere in all that optimization, the humans got a little smaller.
That feeling, the loss of it, is actually what Eleven Dunbar is about.
Three months ago, Justin and I put up the bat signal. We wanted to know: are there people out there who, like us, dream of a pocket on the Internet that is human-only? Genuine, playful, creative, and a little wicked.
Not another productivity community, nor a network to grow your brand. Something closer to a treehouse, where you have to know the right knock to get in, and once you’re inside, nobody’s performing.
The response blew us away.
We exceeded our founding member target within the first month. And the two months since have been some of the most energizing of this whole journey, refining the mission and values with those early members, building out the programming and experiences, watching genuinely great people find genuine comfort with each other fast.
That last part still surprises me every time. When curious, weird, real people are in the right space together, trust doesn’t take years. It takes a few good conversations.
Today, we’re opening 20 spots for the first wave of non-founding members.
Here’s what I’ve come to believe: the things that made you weird as a kid are the things that can make you great as an adult.
Not the curated, LinkedIn-optimized version of you. The actual you, the one who got way too into something for no good reason, who asked questions that made adults uncomfortable, who made stuff just because making it felt good.
Most of us spent years sanding that down. Learning to be legible, productive, and to appropriate.
11D is partly a reminder that you don’t have to stay sanded down.
The founding members who’ve grown the most in these three months aren’t the ones who came in with the best pitch or the most impressive background. They’re the ones who let themselves be a little weird again. Who followed a thread of curiosity without knowing where it led, who played.
Play is a superpower. Creativity is a superpower. Real human connection is a superpower.
And, we forget this constantly, they’re all the same superpower.
If any of this resonates, come check us out. We’re deliberate about who we bring in, not because we’re exclusive for exclusivity’s sake, but because a human-scale community only works if the people in it actually want to be in it.
Twenty spots, first wave.
👾 Apply here: elevendunbar.com
We’d love to meet you.
Love,
Gerhard & Justin
This is important, thanks for sharing.
What an amazing idea! 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼