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Playfulness, like many social stances, sometimes undergoes a critical transition.
People hang out, someone does or says something a little playful, someone else responds playfully. Sometimes the response is a little *less* playful, and if that goes back-and-forth, then the playfulness dies out (left to its own devices). Other times the response is a little *more* playful, and if that goes back-and-forth, then silliness escalates until things get big and interesting.
When I think about recent times when I've brought some playfulness into my social environment, e.g. at parties, I notice that almost everyone responds in subcritical ways. So if I want to have a fun playful time, I can drive that by pumping in lots of playfulness myself (e.g. sitting on the roof at LessOnline tossing a big ball to passersby), but it feels like I'm pushing against a current. The silliness doesn't take on a life of its own.
Me at LessOnline
There are exceptions to this. For instance, a few months ago Garrett and I had some supercritical back-and-forth over a fire pit at Lighthaven. We ended up cooking a lasagna noodle and convincing a slightly-drunk Jesse Hoogland to put the noodle in his pocket for five minutes to test whether it turned into a sticky mess. But that sort of thing is the exception to the rule in the Berkeley rationalist/EA community, as far as I can tell.
I think this is one of the major things I want in a community, that I don't get from this one.
In John's ideal community, if someone is on a roof tossing a ball to passersby, other people naturally show up and are like "ooh fun" and decide to join in for a while, and then a little crowd grows in the courtyard/on the roof/on the opposite balcony, all hitting this ball around. And then eventually someone might e.g. run off and find a net, hang that up, and like ten or twenty people end up playing two-story volleyball with the blue ball in the courtyard. Or maybe someone shows up with squirt guns and those get added to the game. Or people start trying to keep the ball aloft by throwing things at it. Or [...] That would be supercritical playfulness.
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I would like to raise a counter-anecdote - on the last day of a recent conference at Lighthaven that I attended (ControlConf?) I observed Jenny Nitishinskaya and several others self organise into doing a flash mob in the courtyard
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This may be just me (I've barely interacted with you), but you create the impression of being intentional in your actions and busy. When I saw you carrying the ball around, I found it funny, but assumed you have a deliberate goal in mind, rather than simply looking for people to be playful (I wasn't at the area near the roof). That being said, improvisation is a skill a lot of people at lessonline (me included) could improve at.
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I had a great time playing with you then, and I would gladly have kept at it for hours and tried novel things as stuff got boring. But I was working and had to move on.
I think this obstacle comes up a lot when trying to make spontaneous playfulness happen in a way that keeps its momentum or grows, people have shit to do. When I was a kid I had all the time in the world, now… not so much. I’m reminded of Playing in the Creek