> It was sort of like claustrophobia combined with the sense of multiple people touching me or something. Really bizarre.

I think there's many layers to it, but the super sweet ambient music with suspiciously-happy people also made me very uneasy. One aspect of why could be because video fails to capture the actual atmosphere: for example we have no smells. Another one is because such scenery immediately reminds me of cult clichés: in mainstream media and movies when we're presented which something that looks so nice there's usually a plot twist coming up :)

I visited a cohousing project in Leeds, UK[0], a couple of years ago. I experienced first-hand the “cult-like” and “suspiciously happy” vibes.

My most generous interpretation (and the one I cling to because I hope to live in cohousing one day) is this: cults and many religions answer big questions for you, meaning you’re not background-level concerned with those things any more. Your stress goes down. They help you sync up your behaviours and world-views in a way that typically many of us struggle with in the “urban West”. I guess/intuit/hope that cohousing does the same. You’re (mostly) out of the housing market; you have (likely) had a hand in planning how you live; you know most of your neighbours and likely have built (or designed and managed) roads, drains houses and gardens with them; you have met or helped set guidelines about the neighbours who weren’t involved with the build; your outgoings are (hopefully) lower; your daily surroundings are (hopefully) nicer and you’re a (part-)owner of them, and have a rota for helping manage them.

[0]: https://www.lilac.coop/

Good observations here. And if we're honest about this, the Amish in Pennsylvania (and a few other states) have had this nailed a lot longer than these folks.

Right.

The “suspiciously happy” thing is (I hope) a tell that the current defaults are off.

Same here, and that lady gives me the heebie-jeebies, and the way she speaks gives me cult vibes. I don't get the point of this either, it's just reinventing a village, only more cramped. Seems like she just used her political connections and this eco branding to "raise money" for her own house

She looks and sounds like Noam Chomsky. It's like watching a clip from a parallel universe where he's a woman and more "hands-on" than academic.

The woman showed her hand early on when she "flexed" to tell us that the solar panels were installed on the commons building 20 years ago.

I was hoping she would be without ego, cast off any elitist appearances but as I say I saw cracks.

I still like the idea though.

I see myself as the curmudgeonly old man that doesn't greet anyone, or at least the village idiot.

Man I identify with this feeling so much.

Most of this is things I am really interested in, living off the land, renewable power, etc. 99% of the concepts are right down my alley.

But the overall feeling of just.. more people than I am used to? Just found it really off putting and couldn't watch without sort of skipping through to see the bits I wanted to see.

I am somewhat planning to start building my own full off-grid setup soon but I'm planning to go it alone. I'm not a hermit but I think I need space to myself more so than others.

> I am somewhat planning to start building my own full off-grid setup soon but I'm planning to go it alone. I'm not a hermit but I think I need space to myself more so than others.

You can live in a commune and have personal space. Not all communes have dormitories (it's really an anti-soviet cliché)... most have individual or small collective (consented) housing with strong collective infrastructure.

Anarchist ideals have been instrumental in building free communes over the past two centuries, and they refuse a false dichotomy between individual welfare and community building. We can have the two at the same time, as long as we choose carefully who to live with, and properly define what our collective project is.

It’s just two women talking in the video (assuming we watched the same video). Is your feeling really about the video or the content they are talking about?

I have absolutely no idea, I mentioned phobia because it’s not rational and I don’t know what the source is. I debated even posting because it comes off as negativity towards the video, which isn’t my intent. For me it was such an oddly powerful visceral experience that I was curious if anyone else had it I guess.

Edit: I tried watching it again to see if I can figure out the triggers

- We seemingly start mid-conversation which invokes a fleeting feeling of information deficit.

- The tree on the left and the short setback of the house on the right makes it feel extremely crowded. There's greenery but the overly landscaped setting makes it feel unnatural. It looks like a production set instead of a place to live.

- The entire first sentence and unnatural cadence and facial expression feels like a sales pitch. It's a community, nothing is 'perfect', its all tradeoffs.

- Co-housing evokes roommates (i'm sure it has other meanings but that's what it meant to me) and the tethering connotation in the word 'connection' just sealed the deal. We're 7 seconds in and I'm on full alert by this point lol. I want to run away.

- Queue nursing home music and more crowded shots with obscured views.

It feels performative. Not even necessarily just the video but living in that world it seems like you’d need to basically play along with how great and perfect everything is.

I’m with you where this is my impression from the video while I have nothing theoretically against the idea itself.

I skimmed through the video and did not pay attention to what they were talking about at all. The thing feels strange to me is that there was almost nobody else appeared in the video. Nobody was doing anything in the garden or just walking in the fields to enjoy the nature. The images taken from the sky also showed no sign of human activity. Again, I just skimmed through the video and I may have missed them.

It's a very common pattern when videotaping communities. Not everyone is happy to have a camera around, and there's usually agreements that the camera will stay in a certain corner and that only people who consent to be filmed will be on tape.

That's actually an amazing point. I didn't pick up on it at first but now that you mention it clearly was part of the uncanny feel of the whole thing.

I don't know what time of day it was filmed. Maybe most people were working? There definitely were people around, at various points in the video.

If I look outside my home at any random time of the day, you typically don't see many people either. Perhaps a few children if its the right time of day and weather, but on most days there really aren't that many people around. The video had more people.

Looked fairly normal to me. This isn't a Holywood movie where they have to show you the life in 30 seconds or so.

I have a theory on what your reaction could be, and that's because I've expected your kind of reaction in the past and don't do much anymore.

When I watched the video I didn't really perceive the people to be "fake" or "ungenuine". I think what's happening is that the vibes these people are giving off are just so radically different to what we're used to in society and our upbringing. For better or for worse, we've grown up to be mistrustful of others as a means of self-protection e.g. to prevent ourselves from being conned, scammed, or taken advantage of. This constant mistrust causes physiological effects on us over time, you could definitely intrepret it as causing elevated levels of cortisol, but I simply interpret it as causing uncomfortable feelings and physical tension.

So what I think is happening is that the nature of these people as very open and trusting and relaxed is conflicting with and almost triggering the latent mistrust that lies within us. Our mind does its best to interpret the situation and lands on the hypothesis that these people are the causes of the physiological and psychological reactions we're having. You know, because maybe they're scammers, con-artists or just putting on a facade. They can't possibly actually be like that, can they?

But I don't think they are mistrustworthy at all in fact I feel it's actually the opposite. Just my 2 cents :)

I’m going to hang on to this idea, i really like it. thank you.

It feels a bit Black Mirror like to be honest. It kind of reminds me of the episode where people are dating each other. And in the end the dating turned out to be a simulation of many simulations so that a score could be determined between the real people. That episode (forgot the title) has a neighborhood that feels a bit like this (though more high tech).

I wonder if our popular culture has basically conditioned us to distrust community in general, and so we automatically have a visceral reaction whenever it’s portrayed in a highly positive light. Or really, portraying almost anything in a highly positive light is viewed with distrust. We’re a culture of jaded cynics now. An attitude probably incompatible with community.

> "popular culture has basically conditioned us to distrust community in general"

Or maybe people reach those conclusions on their own! Does it have to be that they were "conditioned" to them, or can they have agency?

Well, what other people alluded to was the performant part. That's also salient in some Black Mirror episodes now that I think about it.

While it is a first impression, it's just a first impression.

I would hope that one of the benefits of an eco village is less people would be comparing things to tv shows all the time.

They aren't Amish, I'm sure they still have TVs.

Yeah, but many of these types of people (like Waldorf schools) try not to see the world through the lens of media you consume.

“Hang the DJ” - named after the song played in the bar scene. Great episode.

I sped through the video, looking for details on who does building maintenance and construction, who grows the food and does the actual labor. Not seeing any of that gave me bad vibes. It makes me think that this is more of a stylish residence than an actual self-sustaining commune. My father is a radical boomer environmental activist, and the whole video made me think of when he'd invite like 30 PETA and EarthFirst activists to our land after we had finally built a house on it. They all had that same kind of regionless accent, with the slow intonations and the cult-y, faux profoundness. Based on my experience with these folks, they are basically evangelical fundamentalists wearing turquoise and Patagonia, and should be avoided at all costs.

Somebody is fixing the buildings and growing the food, and I strongly suspect it's nobody living in these houses.

That type of people have been taking over Vermont. Walk into any food co-op in Vermont and at least half the people will look and act like the older lady in the video.

They pretend to be all peaceful and kind, but if anyone disagrees with them they turn vicious. They think bigger government can solve everything, just gotta keep spending money. Most grew up very privileged and have no idea how to actually build or repair anything.

> self-sustaining commune

They specifically said they are not trying to be an independent self-sustaining commune, but rather integrate into the wider community.

The farms are rented out (at the price of the annual taxes, so very low rent) and the community can become part of a group or whatever (didn't go into details on how it worked) to be able to get food from the farms. The community center seemed to be volunteer based, but again, she didn't go into details, I'm sure their website would have more information. Overall, it seemed to be more about living closely with people in with co-op style ownership and governance, but you still work your normal job and live relatively independent lives, not a "commune" where everyone is working together as almost one household in a self-sustaining somewhat isolated manner.

Their website is here, but I did not read through it: https://ecovillageithaca.org/

'Midsommar' vibes for sure.

I really like that these places exist but I wish there were regular municipal variations that didn't involve such a 'full in'.

Could it be the architecture of the houses? For me it reminds me of oppressive and claustrophobic places like Svalbard.