Squad Culture
Contextual Quote
- Group collaboration is now the strong default, putting squads at the center of social, cultural, and economic life. To paraphrase K-HOLE: today people are born as individuals, and have to find their squad."
- Sam Hart, Toby Shorin, Laura Lotti [1]
Description
Sam Hart, Toby Shorin, Laura Lotti:
"Today's emerging culture of group cohesion is driven equally by the social and financial precarity of urban life. Family are those we share space and rent with. Priced out of tier-1 cities, individuals have banded together to survive a jobless market with no social safety net.
Squads are both a product of—and a response to—contemporary social atomization. The trope of "getting a place upstate" signifies young city-dwellers' desire for new kinds of squad-based homesteading. HOMESQUADING is a modern day back-to-the-land movement—swap Whole Earth-inspired post-war communes with post-internet surf clubs microblogging the virtues of cooperative housing, permaculture gardening, and solar-powered mesh networks.
Squad culture is the antithesis of neoliberal individualism. Millennials are healing from decades of irony poisoning, rediscovering what it's like to have generative, exploratory relationships with one another. Younger generations are already imbued with extremely powerful squad energy, equipped with formative experiences in Minecraft, DOTA 2, and Fortnite parties."