I recently attended Vibecamp, an annual event wherein ~500 loosely coordinated internet acquaintances engage in hijinks at a campground in rural Maryland. It was kind of like adult summer camp, but if adult summer camp required you to believe at least one of the following three statements in order to attend:
AI might kill us.
Tarot is a legitimately useful tool.
Women are scary.
While there, I asked a member of the kitchen staff what he thought brought this particular group of people together. He lowered his voice a little and told me how the venue had always been accepting, how they hosted LGBTQ+ retreats before it was cool and never minded when teens wanted to indulge in a bit of marijuana. I think this was his covert way of saying, “Though it is hard to deduce exactly which weird thing bridges you all, it is not difficult to deduce that the thing that bridges you all is weird.”
As is the case with any conglomeration of zany, inebriated people, Vibecamp was replete with interesting interactions. Some of my favorite instances:
[Redacted, for legal reasons]
[Redacted, for personal reasons]
Getting blasted in the face with a power hose while passionately smooching Luke in front of an audience of a hundred or so, complete with shameless straddling and a self-defense umbrella countermeasure, all underscored by Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” (thanks, Bashu)
Maeby’s dancehole set, where the music selection was questionable, the DJing ability was slight, and guests were encouraged to dance as badly as they could. I growled and clawed like a werewolf, gyrated cathartically and pounded my fists on the floor in unison with a stranger, and even managed to twerk for ~3 seconds until my self-awareness kicked in and I was reminded of my deep fear of looking stupid.
“Wail and Gnash” hosted by bayesian asian, an all-emotions-welcome pity party for incompetents having a less good time than expected and desiring a venue at which to grind their teeth in like-minded company. Also a stellar phrase that has since re-entered my vocabulary.
Grappling 101, which mostly involved being shrimp-shaped and doing somersault-esque things, but also afforded me the chance to exert my full strength, make animalistic exertion noises, bite my opponent (apparently “against the rules”), and obtain cool-looking scratches from hurling my body into the sharp grass one hundred times in a row.
A random dude, who, on the way to “Speed Rejection”, apparently wanted to get started early and asked me point-blank if I wanted to sleep with him that night. I said “no thanks”; he said “okay, no problem”; we both got metaphorical high-fives from the divine keepers of establishing and respecting boundaries.
But though I enjoyed this smattering of entertaining, hard-to-recreate-elsewhere moments, I felt melancholic for large swaths of the weekend. I arrived itching for something spicy: hedonic, connective revelry, or if not that, then at least easy conversation to fuel a much-needed reset. At Wail & Gnash, I explained it as such: “I desire either rapture or peace and am experiencing neither.”
My discontent was rooted in narcissism. I’m embarrassed to own up to it, but I think I was expecting to feel a bit more…sought out?
Vibecamp made me think a lot about my relationship to the internet, and — as pompous as it sounds — the internet’s relationship to me. I have 7,000 followers, which has gifted me a void that talks back, a dozen or so mutuals who I’m legitimate homies with, and a small handful of “fans” who formed adulatory parasocial relationships with the veneer of my personality that I parade online.
Because of the internet, I know someone in practically every major city who is willing to house me or feed me or allow me to integrate into their social scene for a night just because I once tweeted something they liked. I regularly receive heartwarming messages that bolster my decision to never log off (and once or twice have received a heinous, effortful death threat that made me question that decision). Best of all, every few months, I’m contacted by a random man from a Midwestern city who is dying to know what my toes look like, which is a distinct honor.
I’ve invested a lot into the internet, and the internet has invested back in me. For some reason, I thought this might win me some points at Vibecamp. But it didn't, not really. Or at least not enough to overcome the “not super approachable or receptive to making new friends” vibes I was sending by hovering near-exclusively around the person I arrived with.
For a specific subsection of attendees, Vibecamp seems to be the event of the season: an indispensable chance to cement one’s worth, claw out of lowbie-dom, find love, meet God, win friends and influence people. Thankfully, it was not that high-stakes for me. Disappointingly, my lack of eagerness to please might’ve actually backfired.
It turns out that in real life, status is still obtained through normal methods like being nice and asking questions and listening when they’re answered. Nobody cares if you’re sort of witty when they have no way of knowing unless you tell them, which would be an absurd thing to open a conversation with. My problem was that I expected people to like me by default (the way they sometimes do online), forgetting that I first needed to earn their interest.
I assumed that Vibecamp would be an incredible time because everyone would know me and I would know everyone and we would all circle-jerk to our being worth knowing. But Vibecamp ended up being a useful, reflective time because it helped me realize that even when presented with a gazillion fun events curated specifically for my subculture and a few hundred people I’d hypothetically get along with really well, there was very little I wanted to do besides sit in the grass with my boyfriend and talk about our small life 3,000 miles away.
My big takeaway is this: when it comes to feeling connected — feeling known — it doesn’t matter if you have a thousand followers, or once shared a smoothie with so-and-so microcelebrity, or founded a Web3 collective that we totally all agree is revolutionizing capitalism and not a scam or whatever. What matters is having 1-5 people who are really excited to spend time with you in the physical world, where there is no number affixed to your lapel proclaiming your rank or webpage detailing all the triumphs you’ve triumphed. 1-5 people who interact with you as unrehearsed flesh and grunts and still ask for more.
Optimize for finding those 1-5 people. The rest is noise masquerading as music.