Hooray for the Brooklyn Luddites!
And Two Reluctant Cheers for the "Zoom-Space" my Great Books Club Has Fallen Into
I do hope you saw the recent heart-warming story on the small group of Brooklyn high school students who, in reaction to the way their addictions to cell-phone and internet-use ramped-up during the Lockdowns, bought flip-phones and founded a new club called the Luddites.
They meet every Sunday! (Hmm…around church time?) In a hidden spot of Prospect Park! They… read! …talk! ….draw! …make goofy decals! No cell-phones allowed, baby. God bless ‘em. There is a fuller story in the NYT if you can get past the paywall, and this version, which I believe is cut a bit from the orginal.
It won’t last forever, but, it will leave a mark on them, and could lead to a bigger movement.
It is certainly a signpost of what many are feeling.
And of course it is not strictly Luddite. These kids seem have the Lawler-like (Pomo-con) common-sense about the fact that most of them aren’t prepared to go Amish, or back to “Berryville,” or what-have-you. You can keep your cell-phone and join—just don’t bring it, and make sure you come, and in the flesh. Are you gonna be there? At the Luddite-In! The point is to cut-down on screen-time, and to provide an alternative, a place for connection.
I think it was only reported in the longer version of the story, but of course, it started due to a friendship made at an all-ages punk-show. The kind of thing the Lockdowns squelched. The vibe of the group reminds me of some of the straight-edge punks I knew back in my college days.
Meanwhile here where I live in Provo, Utah, the Provo Great Books Club—I have been the chief facilitator for five years—is now defacto Zoom-only. Oh, a few of us might gather in person for one of the meetings soon-enough, maybe to kick-off our starting Conrad’s Lord Jim this January, but the Zoom cameras will be there too, and most of our meetings now are all-Zoom. Two regulars moved out of town, and wanted to still be a part of our discussions, and we had some members from San Diego and LA join in for a while. But best of all, now my own mother, who taught English at the community college level for years, is a weekly attender, despite being a good day’s drive away! (Yes, some would not want their Mom joining. But that hasn’t at all been the dynamic for myself.)
In any case, what drove the group away from the organic meeting, and to Zoom? Well, while the Covid/Vax disaster was the thing that got us all used to Zoom, our group had an in-person masks-optional option pretty early on—by about July of ‘20 Covid-fear wasn’t much of an issue for most members. What did it more was the sheer convenience of Zoom, and the fact of people moving out of town, altogether, or just far enough to make it more than a twenty-minute drive.
We do have a facebook page still-up which we hardly use anymore due to my just getting fed-up with that organization in general. But if you wanted to learn more about us, going there would show you some of what we were up to; I’ll likely in another post share what we’ve read, and maybe a few tips on getting your own book-club of this kind going.
The truth is, we would have ceased to meet without Zoom—we haven’t been the greatest at recruiting new members. Of existing ones, some just get too busy for it or, again, move out of the area. (The format is we meet once a week for a two-hour discussion of the boot at hand.) So now, it’s actually a misnomer to call it the Provo Great Books Club. It’s as much the Kamas, the St. George, and the San Diego Great Books Club as it is the Provo one. Certain semi-regulars have joined us from Oregon and Indiana. I have not (yet) sought to promote it with just anyone I meet in the internet world—so far, everyone involved has either, lived near Provo, or, has closely known one of the members who attended in person.
Is this what Zoom is going to do all across the world? I dunno… We did notice that the convenience of not driving ten or fifteen minutes (or in my case, of not having to clean my home as much), became a real factor in our behavior.
I do know that in late 2021 and for much of 2022, I was trying to encourage members to attend in person more often, with inadequate success, but…it turned out not to matter, since a couple of key members moved out of town. Our choice was essentially, Zoom or die.
A hard-core localist or luddite book-club would say, “Well, you move to far away—that’s that—given the temptation of Zoom, we have to be strict about in-person attendance. Start your own…” We were just too much friends by the time a person moved to stick by that if they were willing to join via Zoom.
No definite answers here—just reporting.
But 100% cheering on and cheered by the Brooklyn Luddites!
Great to see kids waking up to their cellphone addiction and getting out in Nature to get creative! Thank you for sharing this; it gives me hope for the younger generations. Here's hoping your book club can transition back to in-person meetings too, since so much is missed in Zoom.
A very heartwarming NYT story. I participated in a Zoom Bible study during Covid, and ended up really learning a lot from the other participants. But I imagine the experience would have been richer had we been meeting in person. I agree that there are no hard and fast answers to this increasing tendency to go remote, except that to some extent it's healthy to push back against it and establish strong in-person connections and local economies.