Born in 1990, I grew up on the middle internet. It was the time of AOL, DeadAIM, and forums. My time was spent playing Ultima Online on free servers and Monster Hunter on PSP with my brothers. I lived in South Texas. I have no advanced education or training.
I have always struggled to make friends, both online and irl. I leaned into roleplaying and opened a tavern in Ultima Online. It was there that I forged my vision for what community could be. I discovered that, even in an MMORPG with thousands of concurrent players, it only takes 10 people, who are organized towards a particular purpose, to entirely change your experience. The game could be whatever we wanted it to be.
We played permadeath. We had gear quality limits. We ran quests and hosted other people's guild meetings in a special room. I experienced Ultima Online (and video games in general) in a way that very few ever will. It was more than scheduling a tavern night or event. It was truly drop in / drop out roleplay community.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I really can't stress enough how formative this experience was. I would be organizing our shelf of player-written books, when a new face would arrive. An old man by the name of Dolbin. He would speak in-character, order food, and tell me about his travels. He even had this great macro where he would stumble and drop a bunch of gold on the floor.
It was immersive and emergent. Neither of us had planned the interaction and neither of us knew where it was going. To this day, I have no idea who played that character. He managed to gather a whole crowd to watch his antics, got whacked by a wandering Orc, and that was the last anyone ever saw of him. This is but one of thousands of stories I could tell about my time there.
These sorts of things cannot happen in a world where people are unwilling to both contribute and cede control. This kind of experience is the direct result of trying to make fun for others and letting them make fun for you. Participation is the highest virtue. Without people willing to participate, any venture is doomed.
I believe that what I've experienced doesn't need to stop at the boundary of cyberspace. I believe that cultivating a culture of instant participation and mournless loss can go a long way to improving the world at large. I believe that if anyone can seamlessly slide into the activity, nobody needs to be left out. If we can acclimate to the bittersweet taste of transience, we can surely stop fighting over the hoard.
Everything I do is towards reclaiming the feeling of true community that we had. I endeavor always to find friends of shared interest who are able to operate freely within a drop in / drop out, contextless space. So far, no luck.
Perhaps you'll be the one?