abigail phoebe

a socialite of socialites

a socialite, in this instance, is someone who for one reason or another has a disproportional number of friends or acquaintances compared to the average person.

due to my long history with community management, and the discord network i ran during the pandemic that had over 10 million members and 200 staff, i disproportionately know more people than the average person, and of those people, they are more likely to be a socialite themselves, furthering my 2nd-degree-of-connection network. one could call me a socialite of socialites.

this leads to a positive feedback loop, especially on platforms that display mutual knowing, such as discord. whereas on platforms such as xenforo forums, your reach is limited to the forum you use, and mutual knowing is not displayed - you will find that discord is quite the opposite.

one can be friends with a large array of people, from all walks of life in all sorts of communities, and the mutual knowing is there to be seen by all. this leads to people who do not know you to ask how you mutually know someone, or vice versa, where you ask.

these small interactions inevitably grow your standing as a socialite, and it turns into a self-reinforcing feedback loop. i miss when such socialites were only known to me in media or through friends, rather than it being my lived reality, but the adventures of being one do somewhat make up for it.

something that i find unique about being a socialite of socialites- which other people in my position have also described -is falling short of being understood. not because those around us do not put in the effort to know us, but because we spread ourselves so thin that we ourselves do not understand our own being. i find that those close to me typically know me better than i know myself.

so it would be logical to say that the goal of a socialite of socialites is to learn about their own friends - as through the eyes of their friends, they would be able to better understand their own being.

importantly though, i do not believe being a socialite of socialites is a sustainable lifestyle. for me, it was very much something i stumbled into while bored during the pandemic, and i have made significant efforts to step back from the environment that produced it and connect more with the people who matter most to me.

regardless of these struggles though, i remain very lucky to know so many wonderful people. it is thanks to those late nights during the pandemic that i now live where i do and am on the career path i chose. while it was not exactly an idealistic path, it has led to a lot of wonderful experiences and i have met so many amazing people.