convenience kills community and thoughts [w/ transcript]

[hwarium]

I came across this fantastic interview of Brendan Lee Mulligan, who is one of my favourite creatives because of his talent in storytelling; he is an improv comedian that is also a gamemaster for Dimension 20, a Dungeons & Dragons live play show (hosted on Dropout, the successor of CollegeHumor). He's also one of my favourite cast members on the improv comedy show Make Some Noise for his insane monologues that have a dozen beats of worldbuilding in a dozen seconds.

Watch on YouTube

I loved the interview so much—I was listening to it over dinner and kept pausing to write notes. And afterwards I kept thinking, oh I want to share this part with this friend, or continue that conversation, or reflect on this quote, and so I just decided to prepare and post the full transcript (below) (might as well since the whole thing is gold). The interview dug up all these half-formed ideas that I've had recently about media and fandom and community, and so eloquently formed those ideas into a shape that I can examine more clearly.

success is incremental and secretive

0:43: success may not be made by a singular moment, but by doing good work consistently and building a reputation that is silently acknowledged until the day an opportunity arrives and you are the recommendation.

Everything goes back to Haikyuu Chapter 274:

俺を構築すんのは毎日の行動であって"結果"は副産物にすぎん

I am built upon the small things I do everyday, and the end results are no more than a byproduct of that.
— Kita Shinsuke, Chapter 274

I'm always thinking about quiet progress, and the intrinsic motivation to pursue a craft when the world isn't looking. I've written about that silent, humble persistence on dreamwidth before, and how lonely progress can be before that moment comes. Turning my mind to it now, at a part of my life where I've picked up drawing again, it's reinforcing a love for the process, for the art itself rather than the publication of it. And having recently seen the film Look Back, I remember the moment of self-reflection when Fujino steps into Kyomoto's house for the first time, and sees a corridor full of sketchbooks, signifying how much Kyomoto has practiced. (Aside: I highly recommend Look Back to any creative who have felt that surge of inspiration when another human expresses love for your work. The film captures and explores that emotion so well!)

Much of art is private practice in sketchbooks that only exist as a stepping stone, never to see another human face. It's contrary to writing, where I write most words with the intention of publication, always considering how a scene is perceived and received by a reader. A friend recently told me to be free and write for myself—I'm still trying to figure out how to step into that mindscape without guilt.

rest is about recharging

2:39: rather than rest, it's about finding the things that recharge you and fill up that creative cup inside you. Something I have been thinking about recently as I enforce my own controls around screentime, and in particular, exposure to algorithms designed to make me emotional.

It's not so much that I have to be productive, but I need to be aware of the activities look like 'rest', but actually cannibalise and degrade my motivation. Rest is not doomscrolling while melting into bed. Perhaps to rest is to read a cooking magazine in a local cafe or even to clean the house (brother urrrgh—BUT in seriousness, I did a deep clean & declutter recently and my mind felt so refreshed. I need to examine this emotion)

I want to write a dreamwidth post about my 'dopamine menu' but it will require self reflection first. For some reason, I think one answer is to do more svt archival work. Haha, the satisfaction of consolidating knowledge always feeds my soul (dorm room arrangements update incoming!)

community comes at the cost of convenience + don't let corporations take away the joy of doing favours for your friends

4:51 + 7:17

WHOO. This is the big one and the moment that made me sit up and go 'I need a transcript. The key points being, the closeness of a community is built by expending effort and by doing favours for your friends. You can't contribute to a community by freeloading.

Doing favours strengthens relationships. Startups capitalises those favours and steals those human moments. You can call an uber instead of picking a friend up from the airport! Yes it's more convenient, but you've just lost the opportunity to hug your friend at arrivals, carry their luggage and chat to them about their trip!! You've just paid money to lose a memory (brain tingle—klav was talking to me in September about my comment: 'a person who relies on the effort of others to simplify their life, does not end up living at all'.

Convenience kills community!!

Doing selfless work for the benefit of other people builds trust (who would have thought). I'm not sure if it's due to adulthood, or the absolute garbage that is 2020s social media, but my strongest communities were ones that I invested a lot of time into.

A few times this year I've thought about my past fandoms—'I miss those times', or 'it's not the same'—but then now I go, 'what have I done to build community?', 'what have I done for my friends?'. This will be something I will reflect on in my 2026 forecast. I want to be more deliberate about doing things for others, and figuring out how the things that I am working on, contribute towards community. Like a garden, beauty comes from consistent care.

(As an aside—I do too much for my real life relationships that for 2026, I actually should take a step back and think about whether I am over-investing, but ~that is another dreamwidth post~)

I think this is why AI art feels so grimy with the art community, or generative AI anything, it's the absence of effort and care. You can't build community without selflessness, and you can't join a community without investing time on your own growth.

There's a nuance here, because this sentiment can turn into gatekeeping or elitism—'you're not a true fan unless you're voting daily and bought 10 albums' / 'it's not real cosplay unless you've spent a month full time making it yourself' , aka the familiar variations of 'I've spent more time and money and therefore I am better'.

Those statements artificially enforce seniority, often sourced from an unconscious desire for respect.

But a beginner ballerina is still a ballerina, even if they do not have the bunions and callouses from years of practice.

But a Barcelona fan will never have the same relationship with soccer as Lionel Messi. They will never understand him like his teammates, who have turned up to practice with him for decades and shared the high of a victory.

I think the statement 'convenience kills community' / 'inconvenience is the cost of community' is meant to be descriptive. It's an observation about how trust is fostered and how communities develop organically. It's not a prescriptive statement about what people should do in order to join a community.

It reminds me of the common NYT ethics column answer; you can't force people to become your friends. Just because you do 'X', does not mean 'Y' will happen, or that 'Y' should happen, or even that 'X' was the most correct and blameless thing to do. You can't ask a flower to grow just because you've watered it correctly for months. The only thing you can control are your own actions.

In an echo of my September dreamwidth post, I am once again reflecting on the parts of my life where I am choosing convenience, and recognising what I am losing by that choice. I now understand that one thing I am losing, is the opportunity to build community. I want to improve for 2026.

favourite way that fans express their fandom

9:52 this part moved me <3 BLM's favourite thing is fans (1) creating their own things and (2) finding their community through his work. Creation and Community. Hwa is having thoughts (especially about how 17hols does both, I will treasure this duty!!)

pay for journalism

16:06 you have to think about the incentives of mass media if it's not profitable to tell the truth anymore. Pay for journalism so that the people with the proper training, skill, and motivation, can do good journalism while having a roof over their head. Prioritise direct to subscriber models.

If it's free, then you're the product. This is something I knew, but Brendan just puts it into the words that make me go oh right, I should do something about this because these are the consequences if I don't change.

And once you start to say that everything's a lie, you actually become the most gullible person on the planet because you can no longer recognise truth.

Bleem!! The man you are!!

One thing I've been thinking about this year is whether the news making me emotional or informing me about the news. I've seen discourse this month about how tiktok/shorts/reels are designed to provoke emotion quickly in order to maintain engagement, and how this emotional response (which connects with hormonal responses) completely fries our dopamine circuits and de-calibrates us for real-life interactions. I think it's true for any algorithm-driven content (long-form youtube, twitter, facebook ads). The longer you spend online, the less empathetic you are to your fellow humans, and the smaller cup that holds joy.

I will think about my subscriptions when I do my financial review for 2025. More long-form journalism, and more journals.

interview with junkee, 22 October 2025 in Sydney

Initials

BLM: Brendan Lee Mulligan

LK: Lia Kim, interviewer from junkee

Transcript

BLM: Hello, I'm Brennan Lee Mulligan. I'm a dungeon master from the internet. I play tabletop role playing games—for fun and profit—and I am here at South By South West (SXSW) talking to Lia from junkee.

LK: So like I’ve said before, I’ve got kind of two parts of this interview.

One, we're going to chat about your career and what you're doing here and how you got here, and any points of advice or inspiration that you might want to share, because we always want to hear that.

And two, junkee does a lot of work in the pop culture internet discussion space. And now that I've got you here, I almost selfishly want your take on a couple things that I've seen being talked about, and I'd love to hear.

BLM: I can't imagine that I have any wisdom to share—

(Off camera: Oh stop.)

BLM: —but we'll but we'll try. We'll try.

LK: First up, what was a moment in your career that didn't necessarily feel like anything at the time, but when you're looking back on it, you realise there was something, like it was a shift that was happening.

BLM: Wow, that's an amazing question. I think those shifts are so special because they are imperceptible. Like to this day, I'm not exactly sure who recommended me for the job at CollegeHumor, right?

Like there's a fascinating part of this that is—I was doing improv in New York City for many, many years and performing all the time, and you're doing shows in basements, you're doing shows on a stage at 3:00 a.m. at the Del Close Marathon, you're shooting the breeze with somebody at a bar after a show, and you have no way of knowing which of those connections or relationships will, five years later down the road, be someone saying, ‘Oh, you know who we should ask for to submit a packet, is this guy Brennan who just moved to LA.’

And I think that bizarrely, all those little aggregate moments lead up, of being someone who's reliable, being someone who's easy to work with, being someone who takes your work seriously. Because I can't exactly point to the make-or-break instances in my career where it was like 'that was effort well spent', 'that was not'. Instead, it's like this aggregate of all these little moments of trying to do your best work that you can, that I think, add up to a reputation, and add up to someone in a network somewhere being willing to take a chance on you.

LK: So, it's like the good version of death by a thousand paper cuts.

BLM: Yes.

LK: The positive version.

BLM: Yeah, absolutely. You're just putting all these little—you're trying—I guess like there's a camel and you want to break its back?

This metaphor is struggling.

LK: I know. I can't think of the positive one. I don't know why.

BLM: Death by a thousand cuts. We're killing a camel with paper cuts. Leave this poor camel alone. But you get what I'm saying. Yeah, it's little efforts. A lot of little efforts.

LK: You have just got so many notches under your belt this year and in the past couple years. Do you rest? And what do you like to do when you rest?

BLM: (firmly) No. Next question.

(Laughter)

BLM: No. I don't rest too terribly much? Is that uh—I don't know if that's bad or not to say? Let me see. I'm trying to think how to—Let me if I can answer the question. Um.

LK: What do you do for rest?

BLM: What do I do for rest?

LK: Yeah.

BLM: You know, it's funny, I think that the best things you can do for rest, at least for me, are finding—it's not so much that I ever spend a lot of time loafing around—I sort of don't. But I think you find things that recharge you.

The reality is, even though it's very exhausting, all of the time that I can get with my family is the time that I most look forward to. And making sure that you make time for that, making sure that you go, 'hey', when you know, Sunday rolls around and I don't have work, I'm not going to just sort of like ooze down the stairs and be in a vegetative state after a long work week.

LK: Which is very tempting, all the time.

BLM: It's very tempting. It's very very tempting.

I think that the things that I look at in terms of rest, there are like very different kinds of rest for me. And I think that the more than rest, it's about recharging or getting back in touch with something that fills up that inner cup, that creative sensibility you have. Right now, I'm making a point not only to spend family time where I can, but getting to the end of the day and trying to read a book rather than otherwise zone out or do something.

So I think that those activities, even though they're active, are actually extremely important for me to feel like I am not just, pure output.

LK: People have been—there's a lot of trends on social media to almost try and combat that. There's like 'My 5-to-9 after my 9-to-5' or there's like 'my dopamine menu'.

BLM: I have not heard of those specific terms but I immediately tap into what they mean and that's awesome.

LK: Yeah.

BLM: I think that's huge. (Directly looking at camera, voice raising) I would say there's some pretty nefarious cultural and perhaps financial forces looking to monopolise your attention. And I think that setting boundaries and finding independent ways to connect with maybe your real life community is probably healthier in the long run. So I love that.

LK: I might skip ahead. That that relates to a question that I would love your take on because the idea of community is a convo I've seen kicking around online and there was a line that I saw that was like 'community comes at the cost of convenience'. ¹

BLM: HOO, say it again.

LK: Community, comes, at the cost, of ... ?

BLM: CONVENIENCE.

YEAH, that's really true. I don't know. I don't know if there's a big—do you guys have a lot of summer camps in Australia? Is that a big part of your culture?

LK: No, that's I think that's, I the only thing I know about that is like Friday the 13th, unfortunately.

BLM: Okay. So, there's way less murder happening in real life summer camps than our media might have led you to believe.

LK: (Laughing) Oh good.

BLM: They're disturbing for different reasons.

LK: Did you have a camp counsellor name? Is that a thing?

BLM: A camp counsellor name?

LK: Is that—I feel like I've seen that in a show—

BLM:(incredulously) like a superhero?

LK: Well, like you're (jauntily) 'It's summer and I'm going to go by!' like—

BLM: Oh! Yeah. Oh, (airily) nooo? No?

LK:I don't know what I'm watching.

BLM: I love that. I'm suddenly in my head like, did I miss something in Friday—I'm looking back at the old Jason slasher movies and it's like, (murder voice) 'before I kill you, what's your nickname?'

The summer camp is great. It's a big part–not all over the US—but at least in the Northeast where I'm from, summer camp's a big big deal.

I worked at a place called the Wayfinder Experience for a very long time. And I went as a little kid and you walk up into this place—I remember the first week I was there as this little 11-year-old and it was like, ‘Okay, that's dinner. You've been signed up for dishwashing.’

And I remember being this little sort of bratty 11-year-old and I was like, (brattily) ‘But I'm a paying customer. Why would I—‘

And someone went, (gravely) ‘It's a community.’

And you had this moment of being like, (pompously) ‘well, whatever this community thing I'm hearing about is, I detest it! Why am I being made to wash a dish?’

And then you go, ah, this is actually the entire thing. This is the whole deal. Learning to–that closeness, meaning, community and—there's this weird trend I think that you see people sometimes do, that I think people are kind of over, or pushing back against, which is this idea of, there was someone who was like 'hey you shouldn't feel bad if you never do a favour for a friend'.

LK: Favour! Yes!

BLM: Favours!

LK: —favours and and picking up a friend from the airport—

BLM: the airport!

LK: or move—

BLM: (yelling at the camera) pick up your goddamn friends from the airport! What's wrong with you?

LK: Yeah. And I've noticed—I remember thinking, there was the intersection with capitalism as well where, a lot of startups are taking that favour and making money out of it by—

BLM: This is a big thing that happens where people, I think, it's not like the pendulum's overcorrected, like the pendulum swings out in a weird third direction.

There's a weird thing that happens where it's like, corporations take advantage of the trust and meaning that we are imparted in terms of family and community and they'll go 'We're a family. That's why you need to work on proprietary company property until midnight', you know. And you're like 'ah that's pretty malevolent'. ‘Hate that’.

And then what happens is people react to that and they're like 'Yeah! I hate the concept of family!' and you're like 'Whoa, I don't think that's what's going on.

LK: Yeah, yeah yeah.

BLM: I saw this a lot where I taught improv for a long time and there was a thing where people would—we would be doing stuff in the in classes and we'd do like a fun warm-up, or we'd all have a fun game that we play run around a circle, and someone would be like (jock voice) ‘hah, feels like we're in a cult’.

And someone would be like 'what do you mean by that?' and they're like, 'well we're all being nice,' and you're like, 'oh that's the saddest thing I've ever heard'

But you understand what people mean, because the thing that is presented, is sometimes you either need to be in the most soulless corporate sterility where our lives are totally governed by a professional chill that includes no human connection or meaning. And in the creation of that corporate sterility, there are predatory organisations that come along and say, (seductively) 'We can give you meaning. Come say a chant. Come be with us. Come do this thing and we'll—"

So I think it's tough because neither of these extremes are good, but what you're trying to do, is to find genuine community where you are actually, you know.

I think about the favours you do in a partnership. Like the times that my wife will be like 'can you go, there's a treat downstairs. Can you go get it for me?’.

And the feeling of joy that rushes through my body as I leap out of the chair and go—‘in a world with often very few answers I know exactly what I need to be doing for the next 30 seconds’.

LK: I can do that.

BLM: I can get a treat! For my wife! Okay!

Yeah. What you can do for other people is the meaning of life.

LK: Yeah. Yeah.

Let's go back to, what is your favourite way that fans have interacted or reacted or expressed their excitement and fandom and stuff.

BLM: Making their own stuff.

The coolest thing that fans do, I think, is especially—not only the cosplay and fan art and all this incredible stuff, fan fiction, great, all this amazing stuff, but also like for me, when someone says 'I met my gaming group through the show'. That's the best. I mean that's the best possible outcome.

LK: Creating community!

BLM: Creating community.

We've been doing a lot of live shows these last few years and it's very funny ‘cause they're a ball. It's me playing with all my friends. We're traveling around. We're going to we're going to places. We're going to the UK. Someone's deep frying a Mars bar. I go, 'it's absolutely wild that we don't have this in the US. This seems like something we could really get behind. Why isn't this taking off?’.

And you go to—it's really, really fun, but the absolute highlight is peeking out through the curtains during intermission when the lights go up and seeing people recognise someone wearing the same cosplay as them, and they exchange numbers, and someone else comes over and there's a dice swap and there's other stuff going on.

That I really think is the—especially too at a time where, people can feel there's lots of forces in the world that are trying to make people feel alone and outnumbered and maybe like things are not going their way and there's no one on their side, and when you come to these live shows and you get to see a million people cheer because a libertarian crypto dragon gets defeated or a same-sex couple of young wizard-bard-sorcerer, magic casters comes together, like, you see those moments where 20,000 people scream in unison at this thing that we all agree rules.

And I think that to me—the highlight of the work is seeing the other people that come together on this little hinge of a shared interest, and then they make a community or a relationship that spins off from that.

LK: That's I feel like is one of the coolest aspects of what you do is—it's real because everyone agrees it's real. Like it's and everyone feels real emotions even though they're not seeing anything happen. Like it's just people talking.

BLM: It's incredible. I mean, like that's the thing, is there's a in my little moments of trying to like think about what the social good of what we do is. 'Cause it's fun, and that's justification enough on its own. Hey, if it makes people happy, then it's got to be it's got to be fun, right? It's got to be at least good for that reason.

But I do think about this study that was conducted a long time ago.

An ethical survey ² was given to people that were shown—exposed to a couple different stimuli. There was a control group that got exposed to nothing. There was a group that was given a philosophical tract. There was people that were given a religious commandment against immoral behaviour. There were people that were given a legal statute.

The people that scored absolutely highest on the ethical survey afterwards were people that had read a short story. And this little piece of fiction—the findings of this of the study were essentially, nothing was as potent as a piece of fiction to remind people that other people are real. A little thing that makes you go, 'Oh’.

LK: 'I remember empathy'.

BLM: 'I remember empathy! Oh, an experience communicated from another person's perspective. Damn.'

So, I think, that to me is something really special about—like you're saying, telling these stories and doing these voices and all of a sudden we're feeling some feelings at the depth of human experience.

LK: Yeah. I mean, at the most base reason of that, that's why I love watching movies and TV, like I will watch a movie or watch a show and the thoughts I have afterwards as if these people are real and me having like, 'oh, I disagree with what that person did or I understand why that person did things.'

Like, yeah, that's why I kind of do what I do and I love talking about movies and TV.

I wanted to chat to you about what I would say that you're known especially for like your incredibly quick chaotic wit, and your vocabulary, and the many tangents that you could go on. And I think you seem just so actively plugged into so many different aspects of human existence, let's say, or just—

BLM: It's working. The illusion the illusion is working.

LK: I just kind of want to pick your brain on what do you do to keep your mind and brain active? Like, how do you develop that kind of skill?

BLM: Wow. What a deeply flattering question with an assumption baked into it that I know what's going on even a little bit.

I think everyone who feels overwhelmed by the state of the world and everyone who feels perhaps inundated with information and struggling to figure out what they can do to help and and how to make sense of the world, please know that I am right by your side. I feel exactly the same way. You're not alone. It's hard to look at a world this vast and complex and enormous and try to get a handle on things.

I think the things that I keep coming back to, that let me feel some sense of direction are—there are points of light, like stars, that you can draw constellations between in information that exists on different time scales. You look at the oldest pieces of wisdom that our species has talked about in terms of the nature of right and wrong and good and evil and how to be a good person, and you map that to the study of history and trying to focus not just on what's happening today but what's happening as part of a broader cultural trend, and I think that you also connect that to what is actually happening in your real life, not only like listening to people who are in your community, listening to people who are not in your community, who very different from you and have another perspective on something that's going on in the world.

On a very tactical level, I think it's talk, read, listen.

LK: Talk, read, listen.

BLM: Talk, read, listen.

Talk to people, really listen to what they are saying. I think in terms of reading, I think something that is really interesting right now is—and this is maybe a very specific piece of advice I'll give if people are really looking for like 'how do you stay tapped into humanity?’, this is my little soap box I'm getting on these days.

LK: Oh, please do.

BLM: Pay for journalism. Go pay for journalism!

And the reason I say that is many forms of journalism that exist—there are some—and this is a problem I'm also speaking to specifically as an American—you have large ad-driven traditional media, legacy media, much of which have been bought up by billionaires who have a point of view that I would say is actually pretty starkly unified in terms of class interest. And then you also have people going to the source and social media which there's a lot of incredible—you can see like on-the-ground reporting especially from places, like, people that are going through the lived experience of surviving a war zone, people that are going through the lived experience of being on the ground in a community being affected.

Social media is still really relevant for that but social media also once again is often directed by algorithms that are set by that same owning class.

I think finding dedicated professional journalists who have the skill set of people who have studied and practice a craft, that have direct-to-subscriber business models. There's a million great ones out there, but find someone who went to school for this or has some other track record of honing these skills and find a way to give them your cash so that they can do the job of finding out what's going on in the world and telling you.

LK: Yeah. I think journalism used to be one of the most trusted careers and then probably it's gone to the biggest dip in the last 20/30 years.

BLM: Totally. Totally.

And I think that part of what it is too is—you don't want to look at the past through too rose-colored glasses. You know, there's the Hearsts of the world. ³ There's bad newspapers going back a long long time.

But I think like you're saying, one of the things is, we just seem to be in a moment where, I think there's some great talk about this about—when everybody gets to a point of cynicism, perhaps even like deserved cynicism in some ways, they start to go, 'everything's a lie'.

And once you start to say that everything's a lie, you actually become the most gullible person on the planet because you can no longer recognise truth, right? You just sort of dismiss with this broad brush everything that's going on.

So, I think the trick is consume journalism, consume information, consume it from people you do trust, keep an eye on the people you don't trust just to see what they're saying.

LK: One eye open.

BLM: Keep one eye open, friends close, enemies closer kind of stuff.

I really do think that there's there's something to be said for—a there's almost a part that gets infrastructural where you just want to dig down into the nitty-gritty and go 'what are the incentives here?' Like what does it mean if it's not profitable to tell the truth anymore?

And all of a sudden all that has to happen is some business models have to become defunct or irrelevant. And then all of a sudden we're in a very different ballgame. And so I think if you—nothing happens without effort and we happen to live in a world in which effort means someone needs to work on it while they're not starving. So paying people to do it is probably the best way.

LK: My last question just to wrap things up. You have been on the internet a long time and I mean, I don't know if you've noticed there's like more of a drop in this like sense of listlessness and like doom scrolling and this like ennui of people, just because of the onslaught of information and all this kind of stuff.

Something I've noticed as well, people are starting to be on the internet from a lot younger of an age, is like this idea of just not wanting to do anything that's going to embarrass themselves. This like cringe factor.

BLM: Yeah.

LK: And I've seen people push back and be like, 'to be cringe is to be free,’ or just like just to kind of let that freedom go. I'd just love your thoughts on cringe culture.

BLM: I guess I'm a 37 year-old man who plays a board game for a living. So I wouldn't know anything about being cringe (laughs). Fear of cringe is a prison. It's a prison of the mind. Liberate yourself. Remove yourself from carceral thinking about what limits your actions.

If something brings you joy, the disdain of people who never had your best interest in heart to begin with, is as irrelevant a thing as I can possibly imagine.

Focus instead on the people that love you and the things that bring you joy. And I would say too that, I think you're right there the sort of listlessness or the ennui.

First of all, I'll just say it this way. If you are experiencing it, is it—two things can be true at the same time. Sorry. (Pause)

There are things in the world that would take a rational person and fill them with despair because they are genuinely troubling. That can be true at the same time that you have to acknowledge that some of the smartest researchers in the world concluded that negative emotions kept people on platform longer than positive ones. And so the algorithms that control your media diet, if you're not examining them, you just need to know that things can be bad and they can be not as bad as some very effective researchers and coders want you to believe they are so you will stay glued to your phone.

LK: Whoa. Yep.

BLM: The things that give you hope and the things that will make the world better are growing in places you cannot see, and you should put the phone down and go join them because they need your help.

LK: I think that's a good place to end it then. Yeah.

BLM: (yelling while looking into the camera with a wagging finger) I said to you, on your phone, don't think about it too hard, okay? Don't think about it too hard, okay? It's not a contradiction. It's Walt Whitman. We contain multitudes. It's fine.

LK: Amazing. That's it from me. I'll stop these.

BLM: That was lovely.

LK: Thank you so much.

Transcription Notes

1. ‘Community comes at the cost of convenience’ is likely referring to the conversations around this viral tweet (20 August 2025). Covered by Dazed in the article, ‘Is inconvenience the cost of community?’ (2 October 2025).

The phrase “inconvenience is the cost of community” and variations on it – including “loneliness is the price you pay for a life of convenience” and “everyone wants a village, no one wants to be a villager” – have recently gained traction on social media, underpinning debates about personal sacrifice, what we actually ‘owe’ each other, and how often we should be putting other people’s needs before our own. But as is often the case on the internet, there’s a lot of contradictory advice flying around. After all, for the past few years, we’ve been told to say “no” more often, set boundaries, cut off people who ‘trauma-dump’ on us, and religiously practice self-care. Now we’re being told to go the extra mile for one another, or risk dying alone – so which one is it?

2. The ethical study that BLM is referring to may be: PM Bal and M Veltkamp, ‘How does fiction reading influence empathy? An experimental investigation on the role of emotional transportation’ (2013) 8(1) PloS one e55341.
3. ‘Hearst’ likely refers to Hearst Communications, a media conglomerate whose founder, William Hearst, used sensationalised journalism in violation of ethical standards to drive profit, prioritising emotional impact over facts. See also, United States Office of the Historian page on ‘Yellow Journalism’.