If you’re an American living in a modern urban or high-suburban atomized environment, then the closest thing you’ll ever experience to an actual tightly-knit chthonic community is probably…high school.  That’s what things look like, when you have a bunch of randomly-selected people bound to each other for years on end.  You have a world completely dominated by small-scale social politics.

Do you want that?  Are you sure?

Hint: if you feel sad and alone and low-status, think about what it would be like for a lot of people who knew you personally to be invested in keeping you that way.  Say what you want about the atomized hordes on the other side of the computer screen, it’s not that hard to blow them off.  Finding sympathetic souls is a genuine trial, I wish to God that it were easier, but…things could be so much worse.

(In fairness, some of high school’s weirdness comes from the fact that there are no real stakes to anything, apart from academic success, for anyone.  Obviously, in a more “normal” tight-knit chthonic society, lots of things have real stakes.  In some ways that’s a real improvement.  In other ways it’s pure horror fuel.)