Chapter 7: Recruit Like Crazy (Plus Thoughts on Social Media) | Building YIMBYs of NoVA
Touch grass, friends
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Welcome to Chapter 7 of the Building YIMBYs of NoVA series, which covers:
Chapter 7: Recruit Like Crazy (Plus Thoughts on Social Media)
Chapter 8: Think And Talk About Opponents As Little As Possible
I find the contemporary experiential advice of traveling widely a little funny. Even on the cheap, international travel presupposes a certain level of disposable income and free time, or a willingness and ability to adopt a semi-nomadic lifestyle, which is admirable but not for everyone. U.S. regions are so culturally different, with unique natural beauty, that I also think road trips are a bit underrated. This is a story I tell myself partially because I have not traveled very much, and recognize how enriching and meaningful my few voyages have been. The international trip I can hang my hat was to Krakow some years ago, to visit a close college friend and his Polish partner.
The most interesting moment of my trip was noticing the defiant smile on Jesus’s face, on the unusually expressive crucifix in The Lord’s Ark Church. It stands in Nowa Huta, a Soviet industrial zone. The story goes that after moving into the area, residents insisted on building a church. After a back-and-forth struggle of considerable violence, the Soviets uncharacteristically relented, granting permission. Except that no materials would be provided. The people were despondent, but their bishop reassured them. Poland has a proud tradition of outdoorsmanship. When you go into the mountains with your families on holiday, the bishop counseled, collect river pebbles and bring them home. The faithful did as they were told. Bit by bit, the materials for a church were pieced together. It almost seemed miraculous. The pebbles became part of the façade. The people had their church, and Jesus smiled.
Building a movement, especially one that draws its power from large numbers of people, is a grind. It is incremental and requires a basic belief. It also demands perseverance and grit. Anyone who talks about shortcuts and hacks is lying or clueless. For more than a year, our Facebook group grew by about two and a half people per day. A non-trivial part of that was me personally seeing a pro-housing post or comment or like on Facebook or Twitter and me messaging them. ‘Hi, you might be interested in our grassroots pro-housing group. Here is the URL.’ If 30 people liked a pro-housing comment, I would message all of them. I would figure out if a Twitter user might live in Northern Virginia. Three yards and a cloud of dust, again and again and again. This is how we grew so quickly early on.
My biggest mistake—honestly of any kind—was not focusing on email list growth from the beginning of YIMBYs of NoVA. I had a baseless, ignorant belief that email is “annoying,” but email makes the world go ‘round, in this context as in others. If someone gives you their email address, use it.
Because housing is an issue for everyone except for the truly wealthy, it is always easy to strike up a conversation with someone about it, mention that you are involved in a YIMBY group, explain what that means, etc. I share my approach in the video below.
But for my own sanity I now generally avoid chatting up each new acquaintance I meet while out and about. That would also be a bit too weird. It is probably healthy that many or most of my neighbors still have no idea that I do housing advocacy.
Now we are going to talk about the false promise of social media, but first:
YIMBYs of Northern Virginia does not have official social media other than our original Facebook group. The group now has 1,173 members, which is ridiculous even granting that a few of them are NIMBY spies and my random friend and my wonderful stepfather-in-law who lives in Maryland. We have a few local group chats too, some with dozens of members. But even now, trying to get people on those chats to engage in actual advocacy in the real world can be difficult, and is certainly lower-yield than email alerts and newsletters.
There is a YIMBY Facebook group for the closest Maryland County that is a few years older and a bit smaller, operating pretty effectively as an online space where people coordinate real-world action. But as far as I know, and from my own team’s experience, Facebook is not a good activism platform. That old meme about a click on a Facebook like button turning into water flowing from a well in a poor African village is pretty shrewd satire, it turns out.
Members of our leadership team including myself are active on Twitter, but I notice how few link clicks tweets generate, even if they are viewed many thousands of times. One of my recent tweets got almost a million impressions and the resulting engagement was still comically low. We decided not to create a Twitter account for our group because the platform has limited reach, requires a large time commitment and constant interaction, favors personalities over brands, and carries downside risk. I have had tweets blow up in my face and would not want that to happen to our group.
A YIMBY friend with tens of thousands of followers adamantly disagrees with me on this, insisting that Twitter affects policy discourse and the people on it tend to be more influential. It is great for networking, but I think my friend’s assertion mostly applies to big accounts like his own. As your account gets bigger, you run into more trolls or reply guys trying to get you to punch down and give them attention. I bet journalists experience that more, and it affects their perception of Twitter’s toxicity. In fairness, Twitter can be a toxic place. It rewards dunking and negativity, which is tough because I would rather stay positive. My most viewed tweets have been about NIMBY bad behavior, which has diminishing returns. NIMBY bad? Tell me a new one.
Instagram may be a better time investment. I have heard of a few YIMBYs getting one or two-dozen responses to a call to action there. TikTok might be the only way to reliably reach Gen Z, if they have not moved on to something else, though I would rather not get involved with a platform exposed to the CCP.
In addition to consuming a lot of time, social media can easily put you in a negative or unproductive headspace. Especially early on, there are so many things to spend your time on building up a new organization. Almost all of them are more productive than tweeting, especially if you are starting a new account from nothing. You need to build relationships in the real world.
More broadly speaking, Twitter can easily feel exciting and productive, when in fact you are accomplishing nothing meaningful. Twitter is not real life. Use social media, if you want to, in ways that serve your best interests. And do not let it use you.
If you enjoy this series or want to work together, I would love to hear from you at lucagattonicelli@substack.com. I am glad to answer questions from readers, ideally in future blog posts. Visit YIMBYs of Northern Virginia at yimbysofnova.org.