{"id":52870,"date":"2025-11-10T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/?p=52870"},"modified":"2025-11-11T13:35:45","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T16:35:45","slug":"the-return-of-minimal-bonds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/the-return-of-minimal-bonds\/","title":{"rendered":"The return of minimal bonds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The internet was born as a promise of connection. Two decades later, it seems more like a battlefield: a space of conflicting discourses, clashing identities, and constant polarization. Yet, amid the noise and the algorithm, small communities are beginning to emerge, bringing back something we thought was lost: the capacity to be together \u2014 even if only in minimal, ironic, or ritualistic ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amid the fatigue of exposure and fragmentation, certain digital spaces function as symbolic refuges. They are not ideological or activist groups, yet they have unintentionally become niches of affection, humor, and mutual recognition. Places where presence \u2014 that simple act of appearing, commenting, participating \u2014 becomes a form of micropolitics of affection, a minimal practice of resistance against digital loneliness and polarization.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The return of the ritual in the digital age<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Byung-Chul Han argues that late modernity has eliminated rituals: those repetitive gestures essential for giving stability to life, binding communities, and transmitting shared values. \u201cDespite social networks, we are lonelier than ever.\u201d The rise of nonstop digital communication has enabled many to connect, but without creating lasting relationships; the individual is left disoriented and inhibited, always under the latent threat of being reprimanded or canceled online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But perhaps rituals haven\u2019t disappeared entirely \u2014 they may be reinventing themselves in the most unexpected places. Algorithms, with their insistence on repetition, cycles, and waiting, seem to have generated new digital liturgies. Each reel, each comment, each repeated presence acts as a small contemporary rite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Algorithmic laboratories: Two Argentine cases<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

From Rosario, a young woman showcases footwear models on her Instagram account, @cofco.shoes. At first glance, it\u2019s just another commercial display. But something unusual happens beneath each video. A community of men comments using a unique \u2014 absurd, endearing, poetic \u2014 code: \u201cLeaving you the Formula 1 schedule.\u201d \u201cHey guys, there\u2019s a card game at Jorgito\u2019s tomorrow.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m going to be a dad again.\u201d There\u2019s no harassment or sarcasm, but a shared game. A tender humor that works as an emotional password. No one talks about the products, but everyone understands why they\u2019re there: they wait to show up, to offer their presence, in a tacit and ironic solidarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Buenos Aires, @bacaraok, a small family-run alfajor business, mirrors the phenomenon. Two brothers present their products with simple charm. This time, however, it\u2019s women who comment \u2014 boldly and playfully. \u201cI couldn\u2019t hear well; my eyes got overwhelmed.\u201d \u201cI need to try the product to see if I like the alfajor.\u201d The tone is humorous, playful, choral \u2014 an irony that, if it came from a male community, would likely be censored. There\u2019s no competition among them; they celebrate one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Cofco, men soften desire; at Bacar\u00e1, women celebrate it. In both cases, an affective community is built \u2014 one that subverts the usual logics of consumption and gender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Language, desire, and performance<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Digital platforms have become stages for performative communities. They\u2019re not just spaces for symbolic exchange but laboratories for experimenting with possible forms of connection. If, as Erving Goffman<\/a> warned, all social life requires a performance, then networks amplify that dramaturgy until it often becomes a primary mode of communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goffman notes that every social interaction is a performance. It\u2019s not just about transmitting information \u2014 it\u2019s about playing a role, sustaining an image. In the digital ecosystem, this daily dramaturgy takes another form: each comment, each emoji is a small performance. Repetitions, ironies, brief interventions \u2014 all imply a kind of presence on the www stage, but not face to face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roland Barthes observed that the language of love is not transparent but elliptical: made of silences, detours, and floating signs. The repeated presence \u2014 that \u201cI\u2019m here, like every Monday\u201d \u2014 works as a disguised declaration, a form of emotional continuity in an age of fleetingness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Affection as infrastructure<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Lauren Berlant speaks of spaces of attachment and identification, where belonging is built through affection rather than ideology. Digital communities often function this way: they are neither organizations nor collectives, yet they allow for a sense of belonging and a diffuse, affective kind of care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In these cases, affection unfolds through waiting. At Cofco, men await each video as one waits for a beloved visit. At Bacar\u00e1, women call each other together in laughter. These are ephemeral presences, yet repeated over time. It is precisely in repetition that the bond is formed: the algorithm, without intending to, finds patterns no one can explain and connects people through a shared sensibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The micropolitics of affection<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As the global digital conversation polarizes, gray zones of affective coexistence emerge. Instead of debate or confrontation, there is play. Instead of solemnity, complicity. In these spaces, humor functions as a micropolitics of escape \u2014 a move toward shared complicity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nancy Fraser reminded us that struggles for recognition are as political as struggles for redistribution. From that perspective, what happens in Cofco or Bacar\u00e1 is not trivial: they are scenes of mutual recognition in times of collective disillusionment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an environment saturated with empty \u201clikes\u201d and hostile, polarizing discourse, these small rituals of commentary and presence are gestures of gentle resistance. They seek neither consensus nor grandeur \u2014 only to sustain a minimal community. And therein lies their power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps, in the continuous flow of the digital, the internet is unknowingly creating new spaces for sociability \u2014 ones that don\u2019t depend on ideological agreement or the need to persuade, but simply to be.<\/em> A sociability founded not on reason, but on affection<\/a>.
In the margins of consumption, in the hidden corners of networks, the impulses of encounter, empathy, and community persist \u2014 those that continue to sustain the fabric of social bonds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amid digital polarization, small communities on social networks reinvent rituals and create minimal emotional bonds that challenge contemporary loneliness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":487,"featured_media":52831,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17029,17162],"tags":[15635],"gps":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-52870","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-redes-sociales-es-en","8":"category-sociedad-en","9":"tag-debates"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52870"},{"taxonomy":"gps","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gps?post=52870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}