Signals for what’s next – and what matters
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Hey Reader,
Power and influence now harbors in shadows in elite group chats.
Group chats, not Instagram or the TikTok, are the central social architecture of the day.
They are the modern day campfire, boardroom, and barbershop. They are vibey – intimate, ephemeral, and conspiratorial – and influential.
For a society that is more transparent, group chats are the ultimate retreat to opacity.
We are talking about private networks and public power.
Think shadow media and micro-publics. We are a society shifting from consensus to cults.
Understanding the group chat isn’t just about tech trends—it’s about decoding where power, trust, and identity are being reorganized in our world.
Who’s In, Who’s Out
The ultimate scene isn’t New York’s hottest club, Davos or sunbathing at St Barts with the uber wealthy.
It is being in the most curated and exclusive group chats.
What was initially a way for teenagers to comment about prom dresses and if Susie likes likes Brad now is a way for the titans of industry to move power, profits and politics.
As Jerry Seinfeld points out, texting has always been weird.
But now its powerful.
Public discourse used to revolve around broadcast authority: who had the mic? In the early social media era, it was who had the most likes and followers.
Now, it revolves around relational trust: who do I believe in my chat group?
Group chats are where information is:
- Vetted (trusted or debunked)
- Emotionalized (turned into felt truth)
- Weaponized (turned into coordinated action)
This is no longer truth as consensus or truth as evidence—it’s truth as tribe.
With capital, we’ve moved from influencer economy → intimacy economy → inner-circle economy.
Attention still remains paramount but we are shifting to a hybrid model of both broadcasting (mass market appeal) and retailing (one to one or one to few). Group chats are both downstream and upstream from larger social trends.
The new social operating system is a entirely a group chat stack:
- WhatsApp + Telegram (social/personal)
- Signal (elite coordination)
- Slack/Discord (professional tribes)
- Patreon + Substack + Circle (monetized micro-publics)
Power at the Speed of Chat
The persistent scandal over the Trump administration’s war planning leaked to Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic was not just a catastrophic error that could have risked American lives.
It lifted the veil on just how deep power concentrates in the hands of a few. Prior political era were, at its worst, characterized by figures like Boss Tweed and smoke filled backroom deals.
In the current moment, military plans in extreme detail were characterized with sarcasm, jingoism and emojis with the speed and efficiency of disappearing text. Well not all are disappearing:
Group chats are echo chambers, insider bubbles, and whisper networks. At their best, some argue thei are the novel versions of European salons of the 18th century (except without the hallucinatory absinthe).
The implications are profound:
- Decentralization of Communication: Information dissemination is moving away from centralized platforms to fragmented, private networks.
- Redefinition of Public and Private: The lines between public discourse and private conversation are blurring, altering how opinions are formed and shared. What is online now dictates what happens offline (aka the real world).
In a recent profile of a popular elite group chat Chatham House, Andreseen is an obsessive texter bordering on the pathologic:
The political journalist Mark Halperin, who now runs 2WAY and has a show on Megyn Kelly’s network, said it was remarkable that “the left seems largely unaware that some of the smartest and most sophisticated Trump supporters in the nation from coast to coast are part of an overlapping set of text chains that allow their members to share links, intel, tactics, strategy, and ad hoc assignments. Also: clever and invigorating jokes. And they do this (not kidding) like 20 hours a day, including on weekends.” He called their influence “substantial.”
The Group Chat Will See You Now
During the early days of COVID, I was seeing horror stories in from Europe and China of hospitals overflown with the sick and dying. During that time, I was on then Twitter and Facebook groups trying to get access to pre-print articles, real time updates and best practices from on the ground doctors and nurses.
It occurred to me that in a fast moving crisis there was no time to wait for peer reviewed journals and how health information was being disseminated by patients and providers was fundamentally changing.
- Peer-Led Learning > CME: Medical knowledge is already moving from journals to WhatsApp. Expect more cases, innovations, and job leads to originate in group chats than in traditional forums. The smartphone is already the most important medical instrument most doctors use because of its texting features. Just ask any hospitalist.
- Trust Migration: Patients may begin to form group chats themselves—to discuss treatments, vet providers, or trade health hacks. Doctors not attuned to these “parallel conversations” risk losing influence.
- Network-Based Referrals: Your real “brand” as a physician may be shaped more by how you’re talked about in a closed doctor group or a patient WhatsApp group than on LinkedIn or Zocdoc. When I was academic doctor, I saw the Facebook group threads of patients with complex GI conditions seeking advice on healthcare. The detailed insight on care practices of specific doctors in major cities across the country was astounding.
The Lean Startup 2.0
Businesses have to adapt to the group chat era.
Founder as Host: Entrepreneurs may need to become hosts of high-trust spaces, not just builders of products. Think dinner host or cocktail party not just factory.
Now
- Distribution is Tribal: In an attention economy where ads are ignored and public feeds are noisy, group chats become distribution engines. A startup doesn’t need mass appeal—just the right 10 chats talking. This is the 1000 true fans theory taken to the next level.
- Product-Market-Vibe Fit: Is it viral = “Is this chat worthy?” is the new metric of clout.
Group chats particularly appeal to the freewheeling, risk taking nature of entrepreneurship precisely because there are few rules, speed is everything and there no gatekeepers. Power abhors process.
Right and Left
The Obama era represented a sort of ascendancy of institutional – code traditional power – by the left including finance, government, academia, media and even medicine.
By definition, however, that made Democrats the standard bearer of norms – which Trump and the new MAGA infused GOP have successfully pilloried. They have created a mythic enemy.
Institutions and norms do not thrive in group chats—they die by a thousand leaks.
If the left is fragmented by language (pronouns, acronyms like BIPOC, etc) the right is united around (weaponized) myth.
The right, thus, has developed a parallel power and influence network that leverages social media (X and now Meta), podcasts (manosphere) and group chats. They have evaded institutional gatekeeping and created a new power structure based on influence and elite group think.
They understand that the medium is the message. Narrative is everything.
Just as the left is scrambling to find their own “Joe Rogan” in the wake of last fall’s election, they are now desperate to create their own Signal groups.
This is mimetic culture as it’s most extreme.
Monkey see, monkey do.
Postscript
The internet is now changing. The infinite public feed is now over.
In its stead we have a poly micro-communities that are semi-public hybrid spaces.
This is the new social DNA.
Group chats reflect a mass exodus of trust from institutions to intimate, decentralized, self-curated networks
Soft power is the new hard power.
Time to get those thumbs working.
Tomorrow Can’t Wait,
