I think your discussion needs to address the utility aspect a little more as a part of the main argument. I was struck by that when you got to the Woke section in particular, as I think a lot of the Jack D's of the world who suddenly backed away from Wokism did so when they realized the actual implications. Not all, but many hadn't really grasped where things were going, and backed away when they couldn't miss it anymore. So we want to be careful to keep in mind that communities or other groups are not just about pure signaling but also have real, fundamental utility aspects to their existence cycles. The ratio of signaling to utility is going to change depending on the community, of course.
Also, I am not sure if you are familiar with the literature in economics on religions as club goods with weird rituals or restrictions as a barrier to entry to the non-serious (the mops), but it immediately came to mind reading this. I can't think of the relevant authors at the moment though, sorry. If one or two come to me later I will post it. The general thrust is almost identical to your last few paragraphs though.
I think your discussion needs to address the utility aspect a little more as a part of the main argument. I was struck by that when you got to the Woke section in particular, as I think a lot of the Jack D's of the world who suddenly backed away from Wokism did so when they realized the actual implications. Not all, but many hadn't really grasped where things were going, and backed away when they couldn't miss it anymore. So we want to be careful to keep in mind that communities or other groups are not just about pure signaling but also have real, fundamental utility aspects to their existence cycles. The ratio of signaling to utility is going to change depending on the community, of course.
Also, I am not sure if you are familiar with the literature in economics on religions as club goods with weird rituals or restrictions as a barrier to entry to the non-serious (the mops), but it immediately came to mind reading this. I can't think of the relevant authors at the moment though, sorry. If one or two come to me later I will post it. The general thrust is almost identical to your last few paragraphs though.
Crypto didn't have a good enough use case for real scale.
EA thinks that the Gates Foundation didn't know about METRICS in charity.
There just isn't a lot of meat on those bones.
you might have already read it, but this feels similar to the evaporative cooling effect
https://web.archive.org/web/20160305190814/http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software-sundays-2-the-evaporative-cooling-effect/
This is too legible; the mops might understand it.
Super interesting! Thanks for sharing. I've bookmarked this.