On Community and Shrek
we need to fight for connection esp when it's not easy
Shrek is such a beautiful fucking movie.
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It teaches us such an incredibly relevant and important lesson about what community means. Shrek, like many of us in the digital age, isolates himself in his swamp. He convinces himself he is happy, indulging in mundane pleasures such as swamp baths, chowing down on slugs, and more ogre delights. Similarly, door-to-door delivery, streaming services, and social media allow us to take straight hits of dopamine and build a false sense of a livelihood without having to interact with anyone or even step foot outside our houses. Our house/swamp becomes a prison. It's easy to slip into this neatly packaged hermitism as an escape from the real world, especially amidst the neoliberal hyper-individualist propaganda relaying that "you need to prioritize yourself” or “you don't owe anybody anything.” WRONG! You owe everyone everything. “You” are nothing except what other people gave you, taught you, and made you. Drill that into your skull. The truth is—no matter how much we try to avoid it—we will always crave connection, true human connection. This is why we've tried so hard to artificially recreate it in our uber-convenient digital landscape through the likes of Discord servers, dating apps, hell, even Omegle. (RIP best sleepover activity ever.) Yet these attempts only seem to exacerbate the pervasive loneliness. You can't neatly package and sell human connection, much to the dismay of Big Tech. It's not a coincidence that Gen Z and Millennials are opting out of things like clubbing, raves, and partying compared to previous years (and its not just about price), and why there's so much propaganda on TikTok about not wanting to go out and getting in bed by 9:30 while binging some treacherous fucking show like Love Island. It is in companies’ best interest to lure you in with convenience and break you from other sources of fulfillment beyond adding shit to your Amazon shopping cart. Look at the development of Starbucks’ business model: initially an area designed for long study sessions, catching up with friends for hours, or honestly just chilling with a low barrier to entry (a 6 dollar cup of coffee), it nowadays feels like it's trying to do whatever it can to get you in and out of the store as fast as possible. Why? Because it makes way more money, duh. The need for convenience at all costs gave birth to the model of drive-thrus, in-app pre-orders, and delivery, all at the cost of third places. Because there are little to no places with a low barrier to entry and which fosters an environment where you can make connections, people are forced to look inwards. There has been a rise in content centering around home improvement, aesthetic snack restocks, interior design perfection, home movie theaters, and anything else to satiate our desire for life beyond the confines of a consumer, but none of it will ever satisfy our need for community.
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So, where do we go from here? Although the issue is top-down and begins with advocating for third spaces along with people-focused infrastructure, there is still a way to shift the paradigm via individual action. It's imperative we recognize how prickly interaction can be and embrace it, especially in a world where every interaction is overengineered to be as frictionless as possible. When Shrek meets Donkey, he is seen as a nuisance, an unwelcome upset in his meticulously executed daily routine. Donkey is annoying, loud, and seemingly invasive in the eyes of Shrek. Like many of us today, Shrek tries to push Donkey away, but, unlike most people today, Donkey is ever persistent and slowly peels away Shrek’s defensive layers, eventually forming an inseparable bond. One cannot expect every interaction to cater to them, to always gratify or provide net utility to them. True interaction must be kept far, far away from transaction. No relationship will ever be 50/50. There is no proportional formula that can be applied to the lengths we can go to help each other out. We need to get comfortable with discomfort. Letting people stay at your place, giving someone a ride, or spotting someone when they're short on cash, isn't a chore—it's what bears the fruit of connection. (Ik this sounds like unemployed licenseless hg propaganda, but js hear me out.) This doesn't make you a good person; it just makes you “a” person. I think I got to experience that growing up in a pretty tight-knit brown neighborhood. Would aunties comment about my weight, skin tone, and grades? Yes. But when my mom sprained her ankle, did they coordinate a schedule to send home-cooked food to our house until she healed, unannounced? Yes, no questions asked.
-A.A 7.18.25
thank you for the licenseless unemployed propaganda ❤️ cui family needed that
tuff