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@limburger – that video is absolutely spot on! About ten years ago (maybe more) we accidentally set up one of the first hackspaces in he UK, here in Brighton. It came about because one of the local girls wanted to make cool stuff. She tried approaching engineers and programmers, but they were all “gatekeepers of information”. When asked what she wanted to make, and – to them, more importantly – why, she was told there was “no need to invest time and effort in nonsense”.
She set up a robot group to make silly, pointless robots and from there, we evolved into a “make any sort of crazy shit” kind of group (going on to set up a community workshop with laser cutters, cnc machines, welding gear and all kinds of stuff). It came about because someone wanted to make something, not for a commercial purpose, not even for art, but just for the hell of it. And along the way, accidentally created a community of over a hundred geeks and nerds who all learned a lot from it.
I kept my tabletop minis hobby to myself for a while – even among geeks and nerds, it felt like it was something even they could look down on. But slowly, as I turned up at “nerd night” with ever more miniatures-based pointless junk – albeit in the guise of “tiny little electronics projects” we tabletop nerds (there were more of us than we realised – like the “specials” in the TV show Heroes, who live their lives thinking they’re alone in the world!) stopped hiding our little plastic men and produced some of the coolest projects in the club!
Joy is the opposite of cool. Cool relies on looking down on something, to become “elitist” and exclusive. If everyone were cool, nobody is cool. It’s not cool to be one of many. Joy is the opposite – to love what you’re doing, irrespective of what anyone else thinks about it. One of the things I love about Brighton is that, although there are plenty of trendy young cool types, the city is filled with some of the most joyful people I’ve met. Together we make joyful things.
When I joined this online community, I felt the same. A bunch of people, making amazing things for no reason other than the joy of doing it. And that’s pretty cool 😉
