Jen
After I had met Jen at TWS I had the idea of making a short documentary about her, as part of a film module I was taking at UCL. She had recently come out of a relationship which had completely taken over her life, and even gained some media coverage. I won’t go into this in detail; however, we did end up spending a lot of time talking and eventually made the film, with the intention of it being somewhat therapeutic for her. During these interviews, we also talked about TWS, which had become a reasonably big part of her life. The field notes I cite from here were taken during a non-directive interview at Kata Kata in Brixton on 29th November. Jen felt she had been a little in her partner’s shadow, and while she had not originally thought of TWS as a means for putting her past behind and being seen as her own person outside of the relationship, after some thought she acknowledged that it had really helped to regain her sense of who she was as an individual. Below is a very short extract from the film.
What became very apparent in our conversation was that TWS was very much made up of two communities. There was the community of TWS “strangers” who would turn up to teatimes, regularly or perhaps only once, maybe making connections and friendships that they would pursue separately. However, there was also an inner circle of sorts, the TWS hosts, an ever increasing number of individuals who chair the teatimes and choose the locations. These hosts formed a very tightknit community in themselves. Whereas the concept of TWS promotes a kind of passing conversation between strangers, where you come into contact with lots of different people, but never necessarily the same ones, the community of hosts were a close circle of friends. Hosts would go on camping trips together and have other regular host-only meet-ups.
The hosts were all signed up to Slack, a collaborative-working, social media platform which I had come across in my time interning at a production company but had never truly heard of before then. Slack essentially offers communication for large groups, perhaps better explained in the video below.
The hosts were all signed up to Slack, a collaborative-working, social media platform which I had come across in my time interning at a production company but had never truly heard of before then. Slack essentially offers communication for large groups, perhaps better explained in the video below.
While Jen, at our teatime a few weeks earlier, had been adamant that she did not use any social media other than facebook, here was an exception which had not been mentioned. Jen told me the TWS Slack was always busy, people were regularly talking, asking for advice on dates and keeping in touch with each other. Constantly connecting online. Therefore, this community of people associated with a website which critiqued Londoners' incessant online communication as not being truly fulfilling, were also engaged in a similar form of chatting among themselves. Again, it did not truly surprise me considering TWS itself was a successful form of social media, although with the added integration of facilitating in-person interaction. The fact TWS now has a facebook page and organises larger scale events through this, does not defeat the site’s stated purpose, it merely expands on the idea already represented by the website of utilising the possibilities of online communication to encourage people to meet in person.
To me it seemed that TWS was following a line of thought perhaps currently going out of fashion, but put forward articulately by Michael Stephen Lopato, “One major project for those of us who have experienced life both prior to and after the rise of the Internet is to determine how the Internet has impacted our culture and way of life—and to share with those who are native to the Internet the features of life which were more fulfilling in their pre-Internet form” (Lopato, 2016, p. 209). Perhaps TWS was born from a yearning for the past – albeit the site’s global founder, Ankit, is only in his mid-20s – yet whether one agrees or disagrees with it being a necessity, it has certainly been a successful endeavour and found many subscribers.
To me it seemed that TWS was following a line of thought perhaps currently going out of fashion, but put forward articulately by Michael Stephen Lopato, “One major project for those of us who have experienced life both prior to and after the rise of the Internet is to determine how the Internet has impacted our culture and way of life—and to share with those who are native to the Internet the features of life which were more fulfilling in their pre-Internet form” (Lopato, 2016, p. 209). Perhaps TWS was born from a yearning for the past – albeit the site’s global founder, Ankit, is only in his mid-20s – yet whether one agrees or disagrees with it being a necessity, it has certainly been a successful endeavour and found many subscribers.