Eighty-seven percent of digital interactions currently classified as “community engagement” are statistically indistinguishable from a one-way broadcast.

I learned this while squinting through a literal cloud of stinging chemicals. Ten minutes ago, I managed to get a significant amount of peppermint-infused shampoo directly into my left eye, and the resulting blur has turned my monitor into a shimmering, aggressive mess. It is amazing how a physical irritant changes your perception of “connection.”

Looking at a feed of people I don’t know, I realize that the word “community” has become a linguistic vanity project. It is a status upgrade for the word “audience,” a way of pretending that the stage we’ve built is actually a campfire.

The Performance of Fictive Kinship

Consider the case of Clara. Clara is a creator in Milan who produces exquisite videos about sustainable living. She has roughly 64,200 followers. In every caption, she refers to these people as “my tribe” or “our little family.” She asks them how their morning was, not because she can process 60,000 descriptions of breakfast, but because the algorithm demands a comment count.

In clinical terms, Clara is engaging in what sociologists call “fictive kinship.” This is the use of family-like terminology to describe relationships that lack the reciprocal obligations of actual blood or local ties. By calling her followers a “community,” Clara isn’t just describing a group; she is performing a status move.

It sounds more prestigious to lead a movement than to simply have a megaphone. The “audience” is a passive recipient of a product; the “community” is a co-conspirator in a dream. But if Clara stopped posting tomorrow, the “family” wouldn’t check on her health; they would simply find another source of sustainable living tips.

The Flourish and the Loneliness

Antonio J.P., a handwriting analyst who spends his days looking at the pressure and slant of physical ink, once told me during a particularly long dinner:

“The way a person crosses their ‘t’ in a digital signature tells you everything about their desire to be seen versus their desire to be known; the larger the flourish, the lonelier the writer.”

– Antonio J.P., Handwriting Analyst

He was talking about the performative nature of our digital identities. When we shout about “our community,” we are often just making a very large, very loud flourish with our digital pens. We are signaling a level of intimacy that doesn’t actually exist in the data.

I see this frequently when I look at how people approach visibility. There is a deep, almost frantic desire to bridge the gap between “zero” and “someone.” People want the social proof that comes with a large following, and rightfully so.

The Currency of Bella Figura

In the Italian market, where the “bella figura” or the public image is a significant cultural currency, having a visible presence on Instagram isn’t just vanity-it is a professional necessity. But we often confuse the stage for the performance.

A creator might choose to comprare follower instagram to establish that initial baseline of credibility. This is a tactical decision, a way of signaling to the world that “people are already here, so you should be too.”

However, the mistake happens when the creator starts believing that the “number” is the “relationship.” Visibility is a tool; community is an outcome. If you use a service to boost your visibility, you are buying time and attention. You are not buying a “family.”

The culture’s frustration stems from this exact confusion: we want the shortcuts to provide the soul, when the shortcuts are only meant to provide the structure.

The Shattering of the Illusion

Take the case of a local boutique I followed recently. They had incredible engagement numbers, yet when they held an “in-person community meetup,” three people showed up-and two of them were the owner’s cousins. This is the “parasocial gap.”

The brand had successfully built an audience that enjoyed the aesthetic, but they had marketed it as a community. When the audience was asked to perform a community-level task (showing up in the rain on a Tuesday), the illusion shattered. The followers were there for the broadcast, not the bond.

The technical term for this is “asymmetric intimacy.” In most digital “communities,” it is a hub-and-spoke model masquerading as a web. My eye still stings. I am typing this with one lid squeezed shut, which makes the world feel smaller, more focused, and slightly more honest.

There is no “community” in my office right now. There is just me, a keyboard, and the realization that I am shouting into a void that occasionally shouts back in the form of a like or a heart icon.

Reclaiming the Word “Audience”

We need to stop being afraid of the word “audience.” There is nothing wrong with having an audience. An audience is a group of people who find value in what you do. They are your customers, your fans, your critics. They are essential.

But they are not your “tribe.” By forcing the label of community onto them, we actually devalue the real communities we might have in our lives-the ones where people actually know our middle names and what we look like when we’ve had a bad day.

When a brand or an influencer uses “community” as a marketing term, it is a form of emotional over-leveraging. They are borrowing the trust associated with deep human connection to sell a shallower form of digital interaction. It’s like a bank using your childhood nickname to try and get you to sign up for a high-interest credit card. It feels “warm,” but the warmth is a heat lamp, not a sun.

The Italian creators I work with often struggle with this. They feel a massive pressure to be “authentic” and “connected” every second of the day. They are told that they must build a “family” to be successful. This leads to burnout and a strange kind of resentment toward the very people who follow them.

If you treat your audience like a family, you eventually start feeling like a parent who can never go to sleep. The solution is a return to honesty about what we are doing.

Most of the “communities” we see online are actually just well-managed audiences. They are people standing in a room together, all looking at the same person. They aren’t looking at each other. And that’s okay. We can admit that.

We can admit that we want followers because we want to be seen. We want to be influential. We want our message to travel further than our own backyard. As I sit here, finally feeling the sting in my eye begin to subside, I realize that the most “authentic” thing I can do is acknowledge the distance between us.

I am a writer. You are a reader. We are not a family.

We are two people engaged in a brief, silent exchange of ideas across a digital divide. There is a dignity in that. There is an honesty in it that “community” branding often tries to erase. The culture made community a word for an audience you can flatter because we are afraid of the transactional nature of our modern lives.

We want to believe that every click is a hug. But a click is just a click. If we stop trying to dress up our audiences in the costumes of community, we might actually have the energy to go find a real one.