The Chainlink

Showing Up: Fight the Internet for the Soul of Critical Mass!

After holding out I finally joined The Chainlink last week (I'm a Facebook & Twitter avoider too).  Yeah!  I get an email about events this week.  Yeah!!  After a bad run-in with a car yesterday, I decide to cheer myself up by going to Wicker Park Critical Mass. Yeah!!!

...only to find a 20+ strong crowd of mostly hipsters (and Chopper Carl), the vast majority of whom:
  • heard about the ride from the Chainlink
  • have never been on a Critical Mass
These kids are standing around waiting, no, begging for someone to follow.  I make an impromptu map and we set off 40 minutes late... and it's clear from the start this is not a usual Mass.  No cohesion, no corking, no sense of direction, no parade pace (Carl's buddy with a sound system bike could barely keep up).  And then one kid yells "Let's stop at the grocery store!" and 3/4 of the ride follows him across oncoming traffic and then sits confusedly in a parking lot.  After we get going again, I decide leading is too much work and slip in at the very back of the ride... only to find that folks thought they were following me.  I bailed a few blocks later.

This was not a Critical Mass - it was clueless mob.

I don't blame the kids involved (how could they know any better?  they've never done this before) but the the veteran riders who promoted WPCM and didn't show up.  Last night, The Chainlink showed me that we have an amazing tool for recruiting and organizing - but when we plan events like this and then don't follow through, we put our culture at risk. 

You can't ride your bike on the Internet.  As Alex said: "If you don't show up, you don't get to vote. If you don't vote, you don't get to complain."  Drivers and pedestrians and the public are not on this site - the righteous fury of our keyboards and screens is not going to get us more bike lanes or reduce dooring or show the world how much fun they could have.

Unplug, people.  Your bike misses you.

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Replies to This Discussion

M.A.R.K. said:
Wait.. Last nights ride occurred cause of the net? Hasn't WPCM been going on for sometime now, if not a couple of years?

When 15 of 20 people haven't been on a Critical Mass before and heard about WPCM through The Chainlink, yes, I'd say it occurred because of the Net.
M.A.R.K. said:
If it has been an ongoing ride, then I would say Fridays ride was not because of the net, no matter how people found out about it..

While I appreciated your original post, where is this going exactly?

To bed. ;-)
Rik, I never appointed myself leader in the first place, and actively tried for many months to try and identify "a new leader." Someone else posted the event with my name on it -- not I.
Tough beans. If your name is on it you have to be there.
Probably a good idea to have your secretary check the various calendars 2-3 times a week and enter all of your obligations in your schedule.

payton said:
Rik, I never appointed myself leader in the first place, and actively tried for many months to try and identify "a new leader." Someone else posted the event with my name on it -- not I.
WPCM has been happening for a long time (and from what I understand it's always been very.... casual...), but Chainlink is growing constantly (last month I was the only person out of... all 7 of us? actually even from Wicker Park, and even I didn't know about the ride until I got on this site a couple of months ago) and if that combined with the nicest day in ages brings out a ton of people who've never massed, well... awesome! I certainly understand the various safety issues but everything else? I thought getting people (even hipsters!) on bikes was a big part of the whole point...

And thanks to this site, I ride way more than I would otherwise, in large part because it's helped me immensely to feel like a useful part of an active and welcoming (even to hipsters!) cycling community. So I'm gonna stay plugged in.
payton said:
Rik, I never appointed myself leader in the first place, and actively tried for many months to try and identify "a new leader." Someone else posted the event with my name on it -- not I.

That's bullshit. Clobber 'em.
Michelle Green said:
And thanks to this site, I ride way more than I would otherwise, in large part because it's helped me immensely to feel like a useful part of an active and welcoming (even to hipsters!) cycling community. So I'm gonna stay plugged in.

Oh come on... what else should we call them? Look, hipster is often a term of derision, but it doesn't have to be... we ride bikes, we're all a little hipster sometimes. ;-) (really not looking to start a new fight here).

And I'll concede that my comment about unplugging was unfair and didn't do much to further my argument. Sorry. But I still think Friday's right highlighted some real problems.

On that note, I'm going to celebrate Critical Mass today by going to a homemade brunch at a friend's. See y'all the last Friday, flyers in hand.
As opposed to all the losers who peruse chainlink who have no real life friends and never go anywhere. Condescend much?

Pete Fein said:
On that note, I'm going to celebrate Critical Mass today by going to a homemade brunch at a friend's. See y'all the last Friday, flyers in hand.
I'm really not trying to nitpick or drag this out way past its logical(?) conclusion, it just rubs me the wrong way when people use social classifications that, in their context, do seem to be genuinely derisive and not like a self-deprecating joke, especially when it's about something like biking, and even more then when it's about a ride like CM. I just think exclusionary parameters aren't helpful to the cause and are one (of many) things we just don't need when trying to imagine "the world as it could be"...

But that's it! I should say I really do understand your frustration with the whole thing as I've felt similarly on (non-WPCM) rides in the past, but I just usually shake it off and enjoy being on my bike with other people who enjoy being on their bikes, or I make up my own ride (which I hope wasn't the one Laura was referencing before! If so, we'll do better in April, darlin'!) :)

Pete Fein said:
Michelle Green said:
And thanks to this site, I ride way more than I would otherwise, in large part because it's helped me immensely to feel like a useful part of an active and welcoming (even to hipsters!) cycling community. So I'm gonna stay plugged in.

Oh come on... what else should we call them? Look, hipster is often a term of derision, but it doesn't have to be... we ride bikes, we're all a little hipster sometimes. ;-) (really not looking to start a new fight here).

And I'll concede that my comment about unplugging was unfair and didn't do much to further my argument. Sorry. But I still think Friday's right highlighted some real problems.

On that note, I'm going to celebrate Critical Mass today by going to a homemade brunch at a friend's. See y'all the last Friday, flyers in hand.
No Michelle it certainly was not your ride! Your ride was a blast. So many people bitch and complain about rides that are not going where they want to go or doing what they want to do (ex- to much drinking, socializing and bar stops, or not enough dancing) More people need to take after your example and make a ride that they want to go on.
the ride that this happened with had anothing to do with the ride itself, just some dumbass deciding to ride in the middle of the road when cars were trying to pass by, just because he wanted to piss them off.

Michelle Green said:
I'm really not trying to nitpick or drag this out way past its logical(?) conclusion, it just rubs me the wrong way when people use social classifications that, in their context, do seem to be genuinely derisive and not like a self-deprecating joke, especially when it's about something like biking, and even more then when it's about a ride like CM. I just think exclusionary parameters aren't helpful to the cause and are one (of many) things we just don't need when trying to imagine "the world as it could be"...

But that's it! I should say I really do understand your frustration with the whole thing as I've felt similarly on (non-WPCM) rides in the past, but I just usually shake it off and enjoy being on my bike with other people who enjoy being on their bikes, or I make up my own ride (which I hope wasn't the one Laura was referencing before! If so, we'll do better in April, darlin'!) :)

Pete Fein said:
Michelle Green said:
And thanks to this site, I ride way more than I would otherwise, in large part because it's helped me immensely to feel like a useful part of an active and welcoming (even to hipsters!) cycling community. So I'm gonna stay plugged in.

Oh come on... what else should we call them? Look, hipster is often a term of derision, but it doesn't have to be... we ride bikes, we're all a little hipster sometimes. ;-) (really not looking to start a new fight here).

And I'll concede that my comment about unplugging was unfair and didn't do much to further my argument. Sorry. But I still think Friday's right highlighted some real problems.

On that note, I'm going to celebrate Critical Mass today by going to a homemade brunch at a friend's. See y'all the last Friday, flyers in hand.
Laura said: "And this said man who tried to molest Gabe, well I paid him to do it, and want my money back because he obviously failed." ;-)

Damnit! I knew soemthing was up! ;-)

Pete has a stick stuck somewhere. ;-)

love,
gabe
Winking smiley abuse. Account suspended for 24 hours.

Gabe said:
Laura said: "And this said man who tried to molest Gabe, well I paid him to do it, and want my money back because he obviously failed." ;-)

Damnit! I knew soemthing was up! ;-)

Pete has a stick stuck somewhere. ;-)

love,
gabe

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