Groups without gravity: The emotional hollow of digital belonging

Ding!

Your old school WhatsApp group stirs to life at 11:03 pm A blurred photo of your decaying alma mater appears, captioned: “Still remember those golden days?” Soon, the digital chatter explodes with declarations of nostalgia and urgent, yet never-happening, reunion plans. You scroll. You smile. You feel a gentle tug at something deep. Then you lock your phone and return to reality. Welcome to the world of Nostalgia-Driven Digital Tribes, where affection is projected not onto people, but onto time capsules. These aren’t relationships. They’re rituals of collective memory.

As Carl Jung said, “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” In these groups, there is no chemical reaction—only emojis. The attachment is to who we were, not who they are. And when these long-lost friends meet in person—at a farmhouse reunion with loud and raunchy bollywood music —the illusion shatters. Conversations drift from warm memories to cold assessments: cholesterol levels, real estate portfolios, parenting styles.

From Campus Legends to Credit Ratings: The Alumni Status Games

Alumni groups are hallowed spaces of selective remembering—equal parts romanticism and resume-swapping. Pride here isn’t about the coursework or library hours but about things like sneaking into hostels or getting suspended for hosting unauthorized DJ nights. But beneath this gleeful immaturity lies a deeper Jungian shadow—the repressed, carefree self now smothered by adult life’s conformity. Within the group, members momentarily reinhabit their younger, sillier selves—free of performance reviews and cholesterol medication.

Yet when these banters spill offline, they fracture. Interactions become silent comparisons:

Who’s done better? Who owns more? Who aged worse?. A group that once thrived on shared rebellion now subtly aligns along income brackets and job titles. The intimacy of shared mediocrity gives way to the awkward choreography of curated adulthood.

The Ideologue’s Echo Chamber: Identity as Performance

Enter the Ideology Groups—Telegram forums, Signal sanctuaries, Twitter spaces filled with armchair revolutionaries, meme warriors, and purveyors of unsolicited wisdom. These are not communities but collectives of self-affirmation. Members don’t gather to listen; they assemble to be seen saying the right thing. Political identity is not a belief system—it’s a survival strategy in a world where certainty feels safer than ambiguity. In Jungian terms, these groups revolve around identification with the collective archetype. Their cause is not about justice or change, but about emotional scaffolding. Strip away the ideology, and the psychic void gapes open. Meet in person, and the tribe crumbles. Everyone speaks, no one listens. Their conviction is sincere, but inward-facing. It’s less a manifesto and more a mirror.

The Local Surveillance Unit: Society WhatsApp Groups

Perhaps the most absurdly entertaining (and psychologically revealing) digital collective is the Housing Society Group. Originally created for water tank notifications and Ganesh Chaturthi

Planning, these groups quickly devolve into digital HOA (Home Owners Association) dictatorships:

“Who left the gate open?, 

“Why is your dog barking?”

“Tell your maid not to wear jeans!”

These are less about civic order and more about projecting repressed frustration under the guise of community concern. Carl Jung noted, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” But he probably never encountered Flat 403’s drying underwear on a shared balcony. In person, these passive-aggressive warriors shrink into pleasant small talk in the elevator, whispering “Namaste” like nothing ever happened.

Green But Superficial: The Climate Alarmist Collective

Meet the Green Alarmists—digital eco-warriors who forward melting glacier videos and whale cries with the speed of light, but casually leave their single-use coffee cup on a park bench. Their behavior is not hypocrisy, but a psychological coping mechanism. It’s called anxiety displacement—sharing the emotional burden of the climate crisis by posting it, rather than facing it. Jung would label this as projection: a way to distance oneself from inner paralysis by over-identifying with an external cause. They are not devoid of care. They’re overwhelmed by doom, and forwarding a penguin reel feels like doing something. It’s activism in the age of overwhelm.

Spiritual Surrender: The Guru Devotees

The Devotion-First Groups are flooded with floral-framed images of ever-smiling gurus—Sri Sri, Amma, Sadhguru—and testimonials like, “My headache vanished during Guruji’s reel!”

To be fair, the love here is real. But so is the escapism. These communities represent a Jungian over-identification with the divine archetype, often serving as a retreat from worldly discomfort. Life’s chaos is dismissed as maya. Job loss? Illusion. Divorce? Karma. National budget crisis? Breathe through your crown chakra. Spirituality here becomes emotional sedation, cloaked in bhajans and bliss.

The Rational Mystics: Faith with Footnotes

At the other end are the Science-Backed Spiritualists. They won’t meditate unless a Harvard study confirms it enhances neural plasticity. For them, mantras are vibrational technologies, not invocations. Jung would interpret this as a compensatory mechanism—using logic to guard against vulnerability. Emotional experience must be translated into data to feel legitimate. Tell them you feel peaceful, and they’ll respond with a podcast link. Their world is sacred only if it’s footnoted.

The Great Mirage: Digital Mobilizations and Their Discontents

Zooming out, the myth of collective power in digital spaces is now visibly cracked. The Arab Spring began with hashtags and ended in authoritarian whiplash. The Aam Aadmi Party rose from tweetstorms and now grapples with the same corruption it once fought. Digital collectives promise unity but often deliver performance. Movements collapse under the weight of projected idealism and unexamined ego. The revolution rarely survives the group chat.

Conclusion: The Depthless Depth of Modern Belonging

The paradox of our times is this: we belong everywhere, yet connect nowhere. These groups offer memory without vulnerability, ideology without disagreement, activism without sacrifice, and spirituality without transformation. Carl Jung warned us that true enlightenment comes not from light alone, but from making the darkness conscious. And our collective darkness? We crave intimacy but fear exposure. We seek identity, but reject integration. So we stay in our digital sanctuaries—reacting, forwarding, posturing—mistaking activity for intimacy. Maybe someday, we’ll meet each other for real. Without the filters. Without the personas. Without forwarding anything. Until then… there’s always the group chat.

Author’s Note: If this reminded you of your school group, alumni circle, or your chanting circle, go ahead—share it there. Just remember, if someone replies “OMG soooo true” followed by a quote from Rumi, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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