Can we draw a relational angle to the âquiet quittingâ conversation going on and compare it to âquiet community quittingâ?
Letâs cut the shit: the real reason this entire conversation is happening is that companies are not loyal to their workers. If workers become upset with their working conditions, the most common refrain from those in power is to ask why they arenât more grateful for what theyâve got. â Ed Zitron
Iâve yet to see any TikToks that explicitly connect the dots between âquiet quittingâ and whatâs long been known within labor activism as âwork to rule,â which is when a group of workers collectively decide to really do the bare minimum of their job descriptions. (If youâve seen them, please post in the comments!) The gears of production â in a factory or a fast food kitchen or an office â never grind to a halt, as they would in a work stoppage. They just become sluggish and intolerable. The goal: communicate just how much employers depend on motivated, engaged workers who feel adequately and fairly compensated for the work that they do. That communication only actually produces change, though, when there are enough people doing it together that it becomes impossible to ignore.
As is the âis community poppingâ discussion, with a specific emphasis from @Kaelon:
I mean, of course, community members will (quiet) quit if there isnât respect for them, there isnât enough value and where companies seek to calculate ROI that excludes the exact things communities are supposed to value.
Iâve noticed my own in-community behaviour changing over the past year. Iâve become significantly more âtransactionalâ and less of a âmemberâ.
That is to say, I take something, then give something, then leave. I go to a community when I need something from it, I give as much as I get, and then I carry on with my life until some moment causes me to need that community again.
I donât know what the root cause is though. Iâm significantly more time poor this year compared to last (thanks, offspring ) and Iâm also much more aware of my time and energy as finite resources nowadays.
So am I quiet quitting those communities? I donât think the intention is ever to quit, I think Iâm just changing my relationship with online social spaces to make sure itâs worth the precious time and energy I put into them.
I think we try and see patterns and make sense of things we observe but I think people just drift in and out of communities over time. I donât think itâs often strategic or intentional.
I can think of several communities Iâve become transient in through no fault of the community. Habits, hobbies and interests wax and wane and it is normal for communities to experience tides that swell and recede. This is especially true of transactional communities where members primarily seek something they can take away from someone else.
I was an intensely active member of an electric vehicle forum while I was researching and buying one, but as the collection day gets closer, my needs have changed so I visit the community less.
Likewise in a running community I absorbed a lot of knowledge and then I was full enough to go out on my own.
Iâm sure thereâs a lot of reasons but Iâll be the grump and say: I think most communities arenât providing enough value to members. Theyâre too broad (âjoin our community for marketersâ), theyâre too noisy (so many prompts, so little value), theyâre not building habits, theyâre measuring conversations instead of outcomes, theyâre using noisy out of the box gamification and notifications, etc etc.
I think with the increase in the number of communities out there and the general online noise, we have to up our game. Checking the boxes is no longer enough.
) and Iâm also much more aware of my time and energy as finite resources nowadays.