Why the Future Belongs to Micro-Communities
Why I believe we will see a revival of micro-digital third spaces that foster in-person experiences and relationships.
Small Room, Big Meaning
Last Sunday, I facilitated an event called “Quantum Relaxation” with my dear friend Moritz.
We combined kundalini yoga, breathwork, and live sound meditation. A winning combo.
I was sitting on the floor of the yoga studio, harmonica in my hand, watching a circle of people slowly emerge from deep breathwork.
Two hours earlier, they had walked in with the usual armor: shoulders tight; minds racing; phones buzzing.
Not quite connected to themselves.
Now their eyes were clear again.
Awake, present, and open in that unmistakable way people look when they finally return to themselves.
The way the sky looks after a storm passes.
Simple, bright, honest.
We’d gone through kundalini yoga, followed by 30 minutes of breathwork, then live music, with me playing harmonica, and Moritz playing the Zither, and finally a sharing circle.
People actually spoke. About grief. About joy. About feeling themselves again.
They felt safe, warm, and connected.
In that moment, it hit me very clearly:
No app can do this. And I don’t think AI ever will.
That’s the magic of being human, connected, and there for each other.
Holding space, breathing, sharing, hearing the vibration of voices that speak truth and embodied intelligence.
The power of community.
The Digital Third Place I Grew Up In
When I was a teenager, I knew this feeling, but in a different form.
I didn’t have a yoga studio or breathwork circles back then.
My third space lived online, in a tiny corner of the internet called TeamSpeak.
“Third places refer to informal, social gathering places outside of home (first space) and work (second space) that foster community and civic engagement.” - Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place
After school, I’d log on, jump into our clan channel, and there they were: the same voices, the same jokes, the same shared obsession with whatever game we were playing.
We’d chat, laugh, flame each other, strategize, and stay up way too late.
It wasn’t just about the game.
It was a digital living room - a place where misfits came together, did weird things, and somehow made it feel normal.
It was a community.
And the beautiful thing: it didn’t stop online.
Those connections spilled into real life. We met up. We travelled to LAN parties.
We made actual memories together, not just usernames and likes.
That’s what a third space does, whether it’s a bar, a skatepark, a church, or a random TeamSpeak server.
It’s the place that’s not home, not work, where you just are with people who get your weirdness.
It’s a place where you walk with people sharing the same interests, values, and passions.
You grow together.
Somewhere along the way, a lot of that disappeared.
COVID definitely accelerated it: third spaces shut down, people retreated into their apartments, and “connection” got reduced to Zoom squares and endless feeds.
Yes, we still have bars, gyms, and coworking spaces… but many people are quietly starving for something more emotionally and spiritually nourishing than small talk over drinks.
Especially once you’re past 30, it becomes harder and harder to build new, meaningful relationships.
The kind that are intellectually, creatively, and spiritually nourishing. Most of us are stuck in a loop between home, work, and maybe the gym.
It’s such a stark contrast to how we grew up.
As teenagers or students, we were constantly in motion, constantly bumping into people who shared our weirdness.
Proximity did half the work for us.
As adults, belonging becomes a geographical problem.
Where you were born. Where you live.
Whether your city leans towards tradition or creativity.
Whether your “people” accidentally ended up in Berlin, Lisbon, or New York, while you stayed somewhere else without even knowing it.
Some people find their peers by pure luck.
Others spend years feeling slightly misplaced.
It can take a whole lifetime to find your place, if at all.
But what if “place” isn’t a location anymore?
What if it’s a community?
And what if digital micro-communities could become the modern third space, not a replacement for real life, but an ignition point for it?
Small circles of people who share your curiosity, your pace, your obsessions.
Spaces that start online, but naturally spill into dinners, retreats, workshops, and real-life friendships.
Not the algorithmic feed.
A tiny digital living room as an ignition point for real-life adventures and experiences.
The algorithm is an awful host
Social media is an incredible tool to find “your people.” And also…it’s a mess.
Rage bait works.
Bots are everywhere.
AI slop is filling the feeds.
You’re nudged to post for virality, not for honesty.
You compare yourself without noticing.
Your brain chemistry gets pulled into loops that were never designed for your well-being.
Your attention becomes the product, and the host (Google, Meta, TikTok, …) captures the profit while you lose a little energy each day.
Half the time, you forget why you opened the app.
You feel one of millions, just another data point.
Even on platforms I genuinely like (Substack included), you still feel it: your voice is at the mercy of an algorithm.
Whether people see you, whether the right people find you, it’s partly out of your hands.
You’re not in a community.
You’re in a feed.
You’re replaceable.
It doesn’t feel like that old TeamSpeak channel where you knew every voice.
It doesn’t feel like lying on the floor of a yoga studio, breathing next to strangers who suddenly don’t feel like strangers.
It does not feel like your presence matters, or that it feeds a healthy human ecosystem.
Something feels oddly off, and there is a sense of enough is enough.
Social media platforms promised to bring the world closer together.
I think it is fair to say that this form of social networks failed in doing so.
The quiet return of micro-communities
I think we’re about to see a big swing back.
Not “throw away your phone and move to a cabin” energy.
More like: smaller, human-curated pockets of the internet that naturally spill into real life.
Micro-communities.
100–200 people.
Curated by humans for humans, not algorithms.
They’ll feel more like clans, guilds, circles, clubs, not “audiences.”
Some of them will look like:
Cohort-based memberships for very specific people with very specific goals
New-era leisure spaces where nightlife isn’t centered around alcohol but around lectures, sauna concerts, intimate salons, and weird, creative little experiments.
Digital will still be there, but as the bridge, not the final destination.
The “TeamSpeak channel” that nudges you into an in-person circle to start a real conversation with familiar voices, not a black hole that keeps you scrolling alone at 2 a.m.
Tending the garden
These micro-communities will still use technology. They might even utilise AI to automate logistics, handle tedious administrative tasks, and keep things organized.
But the core will be very old-school:
A human host.
A small garden of people.
Clear edges around who’s in and why.
A shared purpose.
Not an algorithm trying to maximize your screen time, but a gardener ensuring the space stays alive and nourishing.
That’s what last Sunday felt like with my dear friend Moritz.
I’m betting on small rooms held by humans, not big feeds defined by algorithms.
Thanks for reading!
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AI has been used to refine structure, grammar, and flow, but every idea, sentence, and story originates from human experience and intuition.
I really liked this piece and title... I wonder when we are stretched thin for time how is the best way to go about participating in communities?
Can’t agree more!!!