Why Overstory?

I have a hard time explaining Overstory. Sometimes I lead with the limitations, or the shape of what it is, without really talking about why. I need a good pitch. Here is is:

Overstory is a digital third space that treats it users as participants, instead of audience, performer, customer, or product.

Let's unpack that a little.

First of all, it is a third space. This is one of those terms that is a little hard to explain, and may sound a bit on the esoteric side, but is pretty important. A third space, as first defined by Ray Oldenburg in The Great Good Place, is a semi-public place that is neither your home (the first space) nor your work (the second space). Third spaces are physical, semi-public, and social like bars, barbershops, cafes, parks, libraries. They're places where people can gather and hang out. Lots of people have talked about social media being a third space, but that doesn't really work out for most classic social media. Social media like facebook, twitter, or bluesky all fail to provide a real third space because of how they treat their users (and how users interact with the platform and each other).

People who visit a (real-world) third space are not there to perform, or watch a performance. That's intrinsically not a participatory act. They may go to a library to see someone give a talk, sure, but the thing that makes this participatory is the discussion afterwards. The astronomy club hosted a speaker at the library: a combination of club members and the public all came to the library to share attention for a little while, and then participate in a discussion about modern digital telescopes making astrophotography a little more accessible to lay people and hobbyists. Movie theaters aren't really third spaces most of the time, because you just go there to observe, not participate.

That's why I feel hollow on Instagram. I scroll forever, watching videos of potters doing cool stuff or bluegrass performers covering NES era theme songs, but I'm not interacting. Even when I like, comment, and subscribe, I'm following the engagement pattern. People post there for engagement. I don't want engagement here (on Overstory), I want participation.