why closed communities die

all communities eventually die, and yours will too.

Estimated reading time: 25 minutes

"All communities eventually die, and yours is no exception.”

It’s a sobering truth that many once-vibrant online spaces now resemble the aftermath of a cosmic event—eerie silence, notifications collecting dust like forgotten relics, and a few valiant souls desperately trying to reignite the spark.

What starts as a bustling hub of interaction often collapses into a ghost town, haunted by lingering messages and a collective reluctance to hit that delete button.

Every so often, however, the silence is punctuated by a new message. Someone announces they've landed a new job, and suddenly, the air is filled with congratulatory texts, cheerful emojis, and a smattering of well wishes.

For a brief, fleeting moment, the community feels warm and inviting, akin to a cozy gathering around a virtual fireplace. The conversation hums with life, and you can almost hear the crickets cheering in approval—until, inevitably, the buzz fades. Within a day or two, the chat cools, and the familiar stillness returns, waiting for the next announcement to rekindle the flames of interaction.

In those early days, being part of an online community felt like a delightful house party where connections blossomed effortlessly. Fast forward to the present, and it's more like an uphill battle against entropy—struggling to keep conversations flowing, reviving engagement through events, polls, or the occasional giveaway.

One might wonder, why do so many online communities start with a bang reminiscent of a supernova but fizzle out like a dying ember? It's not merely poor management or lack of interest; burnout is a silent killer, particularly in small, tightly-knit groups where a few members bear the weight of engagement like Sisyphean boulders.

As time passes, even the most enthusiastic users begin to drift away, lured by the siren songs of new platforms or the allure of shiny distractions. This is the reality of modern digital life—it's a relentless cycle of engagement, and the constant influx of new options can be overwhelming.

But not every community is built to last. In fact, it's almost a universal truth that most communities are predisposed to wither away. Without a clear purpose, effective management, and a steady stream of new energy, even the most passionate enclaves can dissolve into nothingness.

This blog dives deep into the reasons why so many communities struggle to maintain engagement, explores the hidden challenges of community building, and examines how the very tools designed to foster connection can paradoxically accelerate burnout.

If every new group is destined to fade into the ether of inactivity, what’s the secret to keeping an online community alive? Or is the death of these digital spaces merely a foregone conclusion in an era plagued by endless notifications and digital fatigue?

In summary, it’s not just about creating a group; it’s about maintaining the physics of engagement. And as any good physicist knows, entropy always wins… unless, of course, you take proactive measures.

1. what is a “community”?

Is it food?

Is it an animal?

A TV show starring Donald Glover?

Probably, but no, let’s clarify something fundamental: a community is essentially a group of individuals connected by shared interests, values, goals, or geography who engage with one another in ways that are, dare I say, meaningful.

Communities are the delightful melting pots of belonging, support, and collaboration, whether through personal relationships, shared experiences, or common spaces—both physical (like your charming neighborhood) or virtual (like those ever-expanding online forums where chaos reigns supreme).

At its core, a community thrives on interaction, mutual support, and a collective identity. Today, we’re tossing around the term “community” for everything from a cozy book club to a meme-sharing group of friends.

It’s become so vague that it’s reminiscent of your brain after three hours of scrolling through TikTok—slightly mushy and unable to focus on anything substantial. More often than not, the term ends up subject to personal interpretation, leading us into treacherous waters where we risk lumping together things that really shouldn't share the same discussion.

For instance, your tight-knit childhood friend group could technically qualify as a community, given that you have shared rituals like gossiping about the latest drama or making questionable romantic choices. However, diving into the nuances of various community types might turn this post into a tome worthy of an academic lecture, which, quite frankly, I’m not prepared for.

So, for the purposes of this discussion, let's focus on closed communities—think online classes you reluctantly enroll in, hobby groups you join after a late-night internet binge, or fan clubs where collective enthusiasm reigns.

These spaces restrict access, revolve around a shared interest or practice, and, at least at some point, possess clear management. And yes, even the realm of pornography has its own dedicated communities for sharing and discussing various cOnTeNt. (That subject is ripe for exploration in an upcoming post.)

Think of it as these other communities and other ones like the difference between a public party and a secret club that requires a password to enter: both are gatherings, but one has a lot more rules, bots, and scheduled announcements.

The focus is on creating a controlled environment where members share specific goals or interests, contributing to higher engagement by filtering out noise.

Community engagement is constantly constrained by the force of gravity. And most communities are not rockets.

No matter the type of community—a Sunday church group or a hamster-loving subreddit—they’re all governed by the same law: churn. Just as gravity pulls objects down, disinterest pulls communities apart. People disengage, participation drops, and sooner or later, everyone bails. It doesn’t matter if it’s a place where people pray together or swap cute rodent pics—at the end of the day, every group faces the same existential threat: boredom.

Online communities have it even worse. Thanks to the beautiful chaos of the internet, anonymity makes it all too easy for anyone to pop in, make a mess, and disappear without consequences.

Trolls, bullies, and the classic lurkers—those silent spectators who ghost through conversations without contributing anything—abound.

In fact, lurking is the default behavior for most people online. And let’s not forget the bad apples who enter communities for the wrong reasons, sucking the joy and quality out of everyone else’s experience. It's like a digital version of inviting someone to your dinner party, only for them to eat all the food and leave without saying a word.

What do people actually want from communities? To have fun, to learn, and to connect with like-minded peers. No one logs onto a niche forum about succulents thinking, “I hope I get harassed today.”

People join groups hoping for good vibes and valuable conversations. Naturally, this desire for meaningful engagement means that people try to keep their communities pure. And what’s the solution to maintaining quality? The velvet rope of exclusivity—make sure only the “right” people get in. Welcome to the walled garden, my friend.

Research confirms that exclusivity boosts engagement by making participation feel like a privilege. When people believe they have special access—whether to a community, event, or resource—they are more likely to engage actively.

This aligns with participatory research frameworks, where exclusivity fosters commitment by signaling that members' contributions are not only valuable but also essential. It’s the “I’m special because I got in” effect—suddenly, showing up becomes a lot more appealing when you know others were left outside.

Exclusivity gives members a sense of importance, reinforcing their belief that they belong to something worth preserving. It’s like joining an elite book club where the wine is expensive, the discussions are thoughtful, and the guest list is small enough to make you feel like royalty.

But just like every high-society club risks losing its allure the moment people get bored or annoyed by the rules, closed communities also face stagnation if they aren't actively maintained.

Over time, if nothing exciting happens, even the most carefully curated communities start to feel like ghost towns. The exclusivity that once made participation thrilling can quickly turn into a gilded cage—beautiful but suffocating. A once-thriving subreddit turns into an echo chamber. The high-energy group chat becomes a dry trickle of “Seen” messages.

People start drifting away, chasing new dopamine highs in fresh communities, leaving behind nothing but digital tumbleweeds.

2. the life cycle of a community

a. the rise

Closed communities don’t just fling open their doors and hope the right people wander in—they recruit with precision.

One tried-and-true method is the invitation-only approach, where current members personally invite individuals they think will contribute positively. Think of it as the equivalent of the Omakase referral system—you need a referral to get in, which not only builds trust but also reinforces the exclusivity that keeps members feeling like they’re part of something special.

Some communities prefer the challenge route, asking applicants to jump through a series of hoops before being allowed inside. This includes pre-join questionnaires, detailed surveys, or even full-blown interviews to assess whether a person’s goals and values align with the community’s ethos.

Other groups take a more proactive approach, scouring niche spaces—whether that’s forums, online subcultures, or targeted social media communities—to find people who are already active in their areas of interest. This sort of recruitment isn’t about casting a wide net; it’s about finding that perfect fish and bringing them into the fold.

Then there’s event-based recruitment, where communities lure in new members by hosting webinars, workshops, or meet-ups.

It’s a strategy—participants show up for the event, realize they vibe with the group, and suddenly they’re hooked. Bonus points if the group offers exclusive perks like sneak peeks, early access, or discounts, adding an extra layer of temptation to join.

Combining these methods helps ensure the community doesn’t just get new bodies but people who are engaged, aligned with the group's goals, and likely to stick around long-term.

Once the group is formed, members start to naturally gravitate toward specific roles, with or without being asked. Some step into leadership positions, taking on duties like moderating discussions, organizing events, or running community initiatives. Others become reliable contributors, adding value by sharing resources, participating in debates, or lending a hand to help newcomers settle in.

Over time, these roles create a sense of structure, helping the community feel more cohesive and purposeful.

As the community evolves, norms, traditions, and even inside jokes emerge, building a shared language that strengthens members’ sense of belonging.

At this point, engagement is no longer driven by the initial excitement of joining something new but by the relationships and sense of purpose cultivated within the group. Communities that thrive long-term often introduce recognition systems—whether through shoutouts, achievement badges, or leadership roles—to acknowledge active members and encourage continued involvement.

Of course, no group survives without some form of moderation. A solid moderation framework ensures that discussions stay on track, interactions remain respectful, and the vibe aligns with the community’s values.

Moderators aren’t just rule enforcers; they’re also peacekeepers, stepping in to mediate conflicts and ensure no one’s voice gets drowned out.

When members start to lose interest or drift away, smart communities act quickly, sending out personal check-ins or sharing exclusive content to reignite engagement and remind people why they joined in the first place. But not all communities can save themselves.

b. the free fall

People have lives—jobs, relationships, hobbies, existential crises. Eventually, those things take priority, and the community they once cared about fades into the background. Either life gets in the way, or the community stops offering enough value to make showing up worth it. And just like a business, if a community isn’t growing, it’s dying.

It’s pretty straightforward: a healthy community grows at the same rate (or faster) than people leave.

But when the math stops adding up, things get grim. First, some members stop talking as much. Posts become infrequent. The feed goes quiet. Eventually, people don’t even bother to check in anymore, and what was once a vibrant little online town becomes a ghost town—an empty shell where echoes of past conversations haunt the forums.

For most communities, new members keep the gears turning, replacing those who inevitably drift away. But closed communities? They face a bigger challenge. The more restrictive the entry, the faster they wither. Ultra-exclusive communities, where getting in feels like applying for a secret cult, die even faster because fresh faces are rare. Semi-permeable ones—those with some entry requirements but still flexible—last a bit longer, but even they aren’t immune to decline.

Now, before you think open communities have it all figured out, they don’t. Open doors don’t guarantee success. If a community doesn’t offer value, no one’s going to stick around.

It’s like running a restaurant—just because it’s open doesn’t mean people will line up to eat. The food, service, and atmosphere still have to be good. Communities, closed or not, are no different. If the value proposition—what members get out of participating—is strong, people will stay. If it isn’t, they won’t.

In online spaces, that value can come in different forms: an endless stream of entertaining content (cue the infinite scroll of cat videos), virtual events like webinars with industry experts or influencers, or spaces where members can have meaningful conversations about important issues. The trick is making sure that people see a reason to keep coming back.

This is why closed communities need active management—you can’t just lock the doors, sit back, and expect things to thrive on their own. Without consistent effort, the rust sets in, and the wheels stop turning.

As Amy Jo Kim, a community expert and social game designer, highlights in her 9 Timeless Principles for Building Community, there needs to be a rhythm—cyclical events or activities that re-engage members and create a sense of anticipation. Without that rhythm, even the best communities lose steam.

Communities can absolutely generate their own buzz and activities, but they still need a spark to get things moving. More often than not, someone has to nudge that feedback loop along, like greasing a creaky wheel. Leave it untouched for too long, and the whole thing grinds to a halt. But if you keep the machine well-oiled—pushing along with events, content drops, and initiatives—you’ll have a thriving community full of life.

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I’ve been part of plenty of communities—some thriving, some doomed to fail.

One particular Discord community stands out. It had promise: exclusivity, interesting conversations, and a dash of real-world connections. But, like so many others, it slowly faded into oblivion.

The entry process wasn’t as intense as a job interview, but there was a vetting form. We had to fill it out, explaining why we’d fit in and linking some of our social media profiles.

If you made it through, things were great—at least for a while. People introduced themselves, we had fun discussions, and the occasional live events and speaker sessions kept things interesting. There weren’t a ton of events, but the ones we had were solid. Plus, people who lived in the same cities got to meet up in person, which gave the community an added layer of value.

But the spark didn’t last. Conversations slowed. Posts became rare. The creators stopped hosting events. Eventually, the community just… stopped. It still technically exists—a ghost town of empty channels and forgotten threads—but its life is over.

Here’s what went wrong:

First, the churn rate was higher than the join rate. If you divided the total active days by the number of members, you’d see the math didn’t work in its favor.

While the community wasn’t completely closed—new people could join if they passed the form—it was semi-permeable. That layer of vetting filtered people out and discouraged some from even applying. And when you’re losing members faster than you can replace them, the end is just a matter of time.

What really sealed the deal was the lack of built-in growth loops. There were no mechanisms to encourage members to bring others in—no referral programs, no "invite-a-friend" challenges, nothing to counteract the steady churn. The creators missed an opportunity to create a self-sustaining cycle. Imagine if every member had to refer someone else to join—something like that could have kept the momentum going.

The community was also niche, which is not inherently a problem. There are plenty of niche communities that thrive. But when a community is built around a narrow interest, the pool of potential members shrinks fast. Not only that, but the value the community offered only resonated with a subset of those already-interested people. From there, everything depended on how well the creators promoted the group—and, unfortunately, the marketing wasn’t enough to attract enough new members.

Lastly, the fatal flaw: no active management. A community needs constant care and feeding—new events, discussions, and engagement initiatives to keep people interested. It’s not enough to build a space and expect people to show up forever. Without fresh activities or leadership pushing things forward, the community dried up.

Communities die not just from inactivity but from neglect. This Discord group was no exception. What started as a promising space eventually crumbled under its own weight, a perfect example of what happens when growth doesn’t keep up with churn, and management takes a backseat.

3. can we turn the ship around?

a. how to tell it was dying

Imagine a community is like the Titanic ship. It is pretty clear when the community is dead. The ship has hit the iceberg! Nobody bothers to talk to them anymore. These are beyond saving; you might as well make a new one. When a community is dying, however, it is not always clear, but it can be saved. The ship is seeing the iceberg, but there is time to steer it out of the way. And knowing when it is dying is essential to deciding when to take drastic measures. Or, in boat terms, to bear away.

Fine

probably not fine

Thus, quantifying churn and engagement is essential for maintaining a healthy community, especially online.

For tight-knit communities like those on Discord, quantifying churn and engagement becomes even more critical due to the smaller, more intimate nature of the group. Metrics such as Monthly Active Users (MAU), retention rate, and engagement frequency offer insights that can determine whether the community is thriving or quietly decaying.

Since smaller communities lack the sheer volume of users that open platforms rely on, every interaction counts. Tracking MAU helps moderators see how many members are still active each month, while the retention rate reveals whether the group is keeping its core members or losing them over time.

Engagement frequency—how often members participate in chats, events, or share resources—becomes a key metric for detecting early warning signs. A sudden drop in participation frequency is often an indicator of disengagement, signaling that members may be on the verge of becoming inactive.

In smaller groups, it’s often not enough to rely solely on numbers; pulse surveys and sentiment analysis provide valuable qualitative feedback to complement the metrics.

Many communities use pulse surveys—quick polls or questionnaires shared directly in a chat channel—to gauge how members feel about their involvement and the direction of the group. Regular check-ins, such as asking members about their experience or what activities they find valuable, can uncover frustrations or areas of improvement before members begin to disengage.

Establishing benchmarks for engagement tailored to closed groups is crucial, as these communities rely more heavily on a committed core of participants. For Discord communities, a monthly churn rate of 5% or lower is generally ideal, as even a slight uptick in departures can significantly impact the group’s cohesion.

Maintaining a participation benchmark of at least 20-30% of members actively posting or chatting monthly helps ensure that the community retains its sense of closeness and activity. In niche communities, having around 10-15% of members join or engage in events regularly can keep the group’s momentum going, even during quieter periods.

By tracking these benchmarks and combining them with surveys and sentiment analysis, moderators can build a sustainable rhythm of engagement that prevents stagnation and ensures long-term success.

In tight-knit groups, the small size makes it easy for disengagement to snowball—if even a few key members drop off, it can ripple through the rest of the group, creating an atmosphere of inactivity. Therefore, these communities need to focus not just on retaining members but also on cultivating organic interactions and strong social bonds.

Regular events like movie nights, book clubs, or voice chat sessions give members a shared experience, fostering relationships that go beyond the community’s original purpose. For communities to survive over the long term, active management is essential.

Simply letting a Discord server run on autopilot will inevitably lead to inactivity, so moderators should consistently spark conversations, introduce new content, and encourage member-led activities. Creating a rhythm of participation—through scheduled events or even light, playful interactions—helps maintain momentum and prevents the community from becoming just another ghost town.

b. the role of moderators and community leaders

The role of moderators is essential in maintaining the health and direction of any closed-knit community, particularly on platforms like Discord. Active moderators are responsible for guiding conversations, ensuring discussions stay on track, and curating the overall tone of the community.

Without effective moderation, communities can become chaotic, or worse, toxic, as unchecked conversations may lead to misunderstandings, conflicts, or misinformation. Communities with active moderators tend to foster more meaningful engagement and better member retention because they create an environment where members feel safe and valued.

In contrast, unmoderated or poorly managed groups are prone to inactivity or becoming dominated by a handful of voices, leading to disengagement among quieter members who may feel alienated. Moderators act as the glue that keeps conversations flowing and ensures that every member has a chance to participate without the fear of being overwhelmed or ignored.

However, volunteer burnout is a real challenge in community management. Many communities rely on unpaid moderators or community leaders who eventually experience fatigue from the continuous effort of maintaining order and activity.

The emotional and time investment required to manage conflicts, respond to members, and organize events can be draining, especially in smaller communities where a few individuals carry most of the burden.

To prevent burnout, communities need to implement incentive structures—whether through recognition, exclusive perks, or rewards like custom roles and badges—to make the work of moderators feel appreciated. In other words, the moderators must have in return something they deem valuable. Moderators should always be fairly compensated for a sustainable commitment. It is essentially a job.

Additionally, distributed leadership models can help spread responsibility across multiple people, reducing the pressure on any one individual. For example, assigning different moderators to handle specific areas, such as events, onboarding, or member engagement, helps divide the workload and ensures the group runs smoothly without exhausting a single leader.

Another important element in sustainable community management is understanding the various roles members play and how each contributes to the group’s health.

Members typically fall into categories such as lurkers, contributors, and organizers.

Lurkers may not engage publicly but still play a valuable role by consuming content and being part of the community’s silent majority. They contribute to the group’s visibility and perceived size, which encourages new members to join.

A sub-species of lurkers are parasites, those who contribute absolutely shit to a community but will pop up to promote their stuff. Fucking disgusting.

Contributors, on the other hand, actively participate in conversations, events, and activities, serving as the heart of the community by keeping discussions lively and relevant.

Finally, organizers—often moderators or trusted members—take on leadership roles by planning events, starting discussions, and helping guide the community’s growth.

Recognizing and nurturing each role is essential to maintaining balance. For instance, lurkers shouldn’t be pressured to participate, but the community can encourage them to contribute gradually through low-pressure activities like polls or reaction-based events. Meanwhile, contributors should feel empowered to take ownership of conversations, and organizers need to receive ongoing support to prevent burnout.

When these roles are understood and nurtured, a community becomes more resilient, with a diverse ecosystem that keeps it vibrant and active over the long term.

more than the occasional events

Building sustainable engagement in closed communities requires more than sporadic events and half-hearted interactions—it demands an architecture of ongoing rituals and commitment structures. Without this, communities risk becoming digital ghost towns, where members drift in and out like particles in Brownian motion, aimlessly colliding before disappearing forever.

One effective strategy is the creation of rituals and predictable habits. Think of it as Pavlovian conditioning, but with fewer drooling dogs and more humans showing up for their weekly book discussions or daily fitness check-ins.

These recurring activities act as psychological anchors, embedding community participation into members' routines. In behavioral terms, regularity transforms participation into automaticity—the more a behavior is repeated in the same context, the less conscious effort it requires. Essentially, we trick people into showing up not because they have to, but because they no longer remember a time when they didn’t.

Establishing these habits is particularly useful for reducing churn, which—if left unchecked—can turn a thriving community into an online mausoleum. By creating rituals that members anticipate, participation stops feeling like yet another bullet point on a to-do list. Instead, it becomes a familiar rhythm—an enjoyable pattern that subtly cultivates loyalty without coercion. After all, nobody abandons a ritual that feels as natural as brushing their teeth.

Then there’s badging and recognition systems, the digital equivalent of gold stars and Scout merit badges. Platforms like Stack Overflow and GitHub have perfected the art of gamifying contributions with badges, achievements, and roles.

These social proof mechanisms tap into intrinsic motivators—because, let’s be honest, humans (even highly evolved ones) crave acknowledgment. A badge isn’t just a PNG graphic on your profile like an NFT; it’s proof that you’ve achieved something others have not. Publicly recognizing contributions transforms passive participants into eager overachievers, driven by the irresistible urge to show off their digital trophies.

Smaller communities—such as Discord servers—can employ custom roles, flair, and leaderboards to achieve similar results. It’s essentially a hierarchical micro-society—people love climbing the ranks, even if the highest honor is just a neon-colored username. Recognition fosters belonging, and nothing quite sparks motivation like the opportunity to display your superiority over others—it's human nature, thinly veiled as community spirit.

For those communities aiming to separate the casual lurkers from the truly committed, financial incentives—such as subscription models or paid memberships—are highly effective.

Consider platforms like Patreon or Substack, which use paywalls to filter out half-hearted participants. When members invest financially, they’re more likely to engage because sunk-cost bias kicks in—once you’ve paid for access, participation feels mandatory. The result? A dedicated core group of individuals willing to engage deeply, not just skim the surface.

Financial incentives also motivate community leaders to maintain high standards. When money is involved, there’s an implicit value exchange that demands quality. In other words, if you expect people to pay, you’d better deliver something more compelling than a sporadic newsletter or lazy group chat.

Some critics argue that paywalls undermine inclusivity, but in practice, they tend to cultivate a more focused, high-quality membership. As the Vulcans say: The needs of the many who don’t care outweigh the needs of the few who pay.

Integrating tiered subscription models adds yet another layer of motivation. Offering exclusive perks or enhanced privileges to top-tier members appeals to our innate desire for status—think airport lounges, but for online communities.

This system ensures that those who demonstrate the highest level of commitment are appropriately rewarded while also nudging others to aspire toward greater involvement. It's a win-win: the community thrives, and members feel validated—assuming they survive the social competition, of course.

In the end, community building is about designing for both structure and spontaneity, balancing habits with rewards, and ensuring that every participant feels they belong—even if that belonging comes with a paywall.

And if it takes a few badges, subscriptions, and cleverly timed rituals to keep people engaged, so be it. After all, humans are remarkably predictable creatures. Why fight it when you can harness it?

conclusion

A closed community without a consistent core activity is like Schrödinger’s cat—it exists and doesn’t exist at the same time. Sure, you may have people technically in the community, but without something meaningful to do, they’re just dormant particles waiting to decay into irrelevance

Communities need shared activities—whether it's education programs, speaker sessions, or even regular check-ins on a group chat. Without such rituals, there’s no shared experience. And without shared experience, there's no common language.

Trust me, if members don’t have at least one collective activity they can reference—like the time everyone cringed over a guest speaker who overshared their life story—they won’t form bonds.

The mere act of joining doesn’t magically create connections. No, people need something to do together or at least alongside each other. Humans are social creatures, and—let’s be real—they tend to bond best over shared suffering or mutual complaints.

Communities without shared activities are doomed. It’s just entropy at work. I've seen it before: they either stagnate into oblivion or become digital graveyards where old posts haunt the feed like relics of a bygone era. Why? Because if there’s no activity, there’s no glue. And if there’s no glue, people drift away faster than Sheldon when someone suggests karaoke night.

Managing churn is non-negotiable. The math is simple: if your growth rate doesn’t exceed your churn rate, your community is on the same trajectory as Blockbuster.

To survive, you need new members replacing the ones who ghost—or better yet, you build growth loops that turn existing members into ambassadors. Think about network effects: the more people in the community, the more valuable it becomes to everyone else, just like the annoying way Facebook got all of us stuck with it for a decade.

And let's not forget, marketing matters. If you’re not actively working to attract new members, you’re essentially inviting entropy to take the wheel.

Communities thrive on network effects, so it’s not just a nice idea to encourage promotion—it’s an absolute necessity. Either make promoting the community one of your members' core activities or at least make it laughably easy for them to invite their friends, family, or random strangers.

At the end of the day, communities need momentum. No activity means no shared moments. No shared moments means no relationships. And no relationships? Well, that means no community. It’s not rocket science—it’s basic social physics.

If you’re going to run a closed community, you need to treat it like a delicate ecosystem: nurture it, manage it, and make sure it has things to do. Otherwise, you’ll just end up with another abandoned Discord server, waiting for some future anthropologist to unearth it as evidence of early 21st-century digital decay.

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In the end, closed communities rarely die from sudden implosions—they wither slowly, drained by neglect, a lack of direction, and an unwillingness to evolve.

What starts as a thriving space bound by shared interests and mutual goals gradually becomes stagnant. Conversations turn repetitive, and participation dwindles, with only a handful of loyal members clinging to outdated rituals that no longer inspire. Rules that once maintained order become barriers to growth, innovation, and new perspectives. Leaders lose momentum or become too rigid, alienating newcomers while failing to rekindle the spark for long-term members.

Over time, the community's purpose becomes muddled—what was once a safe space for connection begins to feel like a closed loop, suffocating the same voices it was meant to amplify.

Eventually, members start to drift toward fresher, more open networks that better match their evolving interests and offer greater freedom to explore.

It’s not that they stop caring about the original community—they just find themselves caring about something else, somewhere else, a little more. And without active engagement or renewal, the community becomes a shadow of itself—a forgotten archive of old discussions, preserved only in the memories of those who’ve already moved on.

Communities don’t die all at once; they fade quietly as people outgrow them, leaving behind only the faint traces of what once was.

I wrote this in light of the possibility that two communities I’ve been a part of—HCH and VDVH—might be approaching their final days. A part of me deeply hopes that we’ll stay connected, continue supporting one another, and keep those meaningful interactions alive. 

That said, I’ve also come to realize that while it’s wonderful if a community endures, it doesn’t need to. What matters most is that it fulfills the intentions of those who built it and offers value to those who participated. When a community has served its purpose, it’s okay for it to transition into something different—a cherished memory. 

And hopefully, that memory will linger in each of us for a long time to come.