My Year in San Francisco’s $2M Secret Society Startup | Hacker News Reader

My Year in San Francisco’s $2M Secret Society Startup

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344 pointsdcschelt120 comments

What an interesting article. To me, it illuminates two things: the desire for that child-like sense of depth and mystery that many of us still look for in our everyday lives, and the tendency for Silicon Valley money to turn everything it touches into a slide-deck-laden commercial enterprise.

Sadly, as much as I love the idea, I see the same thing happening with venture-funded cooperative living arrangements.

When I was studying in Berkeley, I lived in a student-run co-op house. We were the wardens of our creaky 1920s manor: we did all the cleaning, made repairs, painted (and mural-ed) the walls, did some remodeling, picked out the furniture. Even membership was decided collectively. As a result, the community we had was an emergent property of our environment, and it created friendships that have lasted for the past decade. Sitting in the overgrown backyard garden or watching the glimmering city lights from the roof, I felt immersed in a world of beauty and mystery for the first time in many years.

Lately, I've been seeing a lot of co-living/"nomad house" startups being posted to HN. You see photos of beautiful houses all around the world; fancy toys in full-size entertainment dungeons; attractive young people all working on their latest business venture. But I can't escape the feeling that all of this exists in that same corporate Neverland described in the article. Venture capital runs through the blood of these communities. They exist to make money. They don't own the houses. They don't get to decide their own fate. It's all a petri dish carefully designed from an office building somewhere in the Financial District.

As a result, when a true community does manage to take hold in this sort of artificial ether, it becomes all the more agonizing when corporate decides to pull the plug on you. If only the incentives were aligned; if only corporate didn't "really needed to monetize" the venture...

Maybe these sorts of spiritually-significant projects (and I do include the Latitude Society in this) simply don't work when run as a conventional business. And yet, there's clearly a deep desire for them to exist.

Don't fool yourself, the student run co-ops are no different from the venture capital that runs any other co-living/"nomad house" you speak of.

Because, in a way, the student is the "start-up" and the money paid for tuition is "venture capital," put up in hopes to see an ROI, in terms of money or societal contribution, from the student.

Speaking as a former UC Berkeley Cloyne co-oper, I've seen a handful of former co-opers try to transition the "magic" of the USCA into normal life. They failed because the reality is that American society doesn't it lend itself well to collectivism and the lack of capital needed build a functioning co-op.

Sure the student co-ops ran great when everyone is unattached, uninhibited, young dumb, full of cum, and fueled by venture capital (e.g. student loans, scholarships, etc). But once you pull all that out, the wheels fall off the cart pretty quick.

I'm not holding up the co-ops as some sort of paragon, but I think they're clearly a stepping stone in the right direction. At the very least, the cooperative business model has allowed them to (more or less) self-govern and adapt to a rapidly changing populace over the course of many decades. In my experience, they also have a much more diverse population on campus than the dorms or greek houses. While it's true that the largely student constituency is what's currently funding the co-ops, the BSC has always been a separate institution from the university; were Cal to suddenly shut down, I have no doubt the BSC would still find plenty of people to fill their seats, if for no other reason than the alluring economic prospect. The institution itself, as it's currently structured, does not require an outside source of funding to prop it up: the business is a closed loop, and the incentives are aligned. (Correct me if I'm wrong... I don't know how much the BSC relies on donations, etc. to survive.)

> Speaking as a former UC Berkeley Cloyne co-oper, I've seen a handful of former co-opers try to transition the "magic" of the USCA into normal life. They failed because the reality is that American society doesn't it lend itself well to collectivism and the lack of capital needed build a functioning co-op.

True, but many others have succeeded. I know for a fact that there are a ton of graduate and post-graduate independent cooperatives in Berkeley. They're not exactly common in the US, but you can find them if you look around. (And it's not like the concept is new: the Rochdale Principles are almost 200 years old.) To be fair, it probably takes a dedicated and idealistic group of people to make it work; I'm sure many BSC co-opers never really held a deep-seated belief in cooperative living.

> The institution itself, as it's currently structured, does not require an outside source of funding to prop it up: the business is a closed loop, and the incentives are aligned.

This is categorically untrue. The BSC receives large subsidies from Cal in different forms. To my knowledge the main form is through Cloyne Court, which is owned by the university and leased back to the BSC for a dollar a year (seriously). Meanwhile, the university still pays things like property tax, insurance, and some other expenses on the building.

Because of this sweetheart deal, Cloyne is a huge profit center for the BSC and the funds are used subsidize unprofitable houses (mostly all the smaller ones). CZ runs a small profit, but no where near as big as Cloyne. If the BSC lost Cloyne, the entire BSC would either fold, or have to raise prices so dramatically it would eventually fold. They would definitely close all smaller houses like Davis, et al. Also the land for Rochdale village was a subsidized deal as well, which helps those stay profitable.

But my point is that the success of the BSC is due to "venture capital" in the form of students "investing" in their education. And the fact that undergrad and grads at Cal for the most part are very like minded and in similar "stages" in their life which makes co-habitation relatively easy. Which is why I say that when you look a few levels deeper, the BSC not a replicable model outside of academia.

However, I agree with you that the BSC is fucking awesome for all the reasons that you stated.

Speaking as a former Cloyne resident and former employee of the BSC, I would say the BSC works in spite of the fact that it is (mostly) run by students. Nearly all of the houses have a transitory nature to them - some of them rarely have students stay for more than a year at a time.

The BSC is more similar to the corporate co-living/nomad house than archagon realizes. Even though the BSC is a non-profit, it treats students like they are expendable. [1] The students don't own the house, they don't get to decide their own fate. It is not actually a true cooperative, employees of the BSC will be the first ones to admit that.

[1] See Cloyne's fate

That seems kind of cynical. I would certainly consider paying to be in a corporate created social apartment if the reviews were high and there was some guarantee of the managers dealing with problem people.

Collectives (and meetups etc) happen because someone volunteers. When that volunteer disappears whatever they were organizing often disappears with it. Turning it into a business means someone can be hired to do the organizing when no one has the time / motivation to do it themselves. Volunteerism is great but most people have other things they need to do as well. Paying so someone can do those things full time seems like a win/win.

Of course the details matter. I've been to a few "Spin" events and they needed more organization but at least at the time my impression was they were just starting and still finding out what worked and what was required.

I guess I don't see how making it a commercial enterprise is bad by default.

Chateau? Loth I can't remember a loth rooftop, PAX? they were great places that shaped me.

I'm guessing Ridge or Kingman.

Ahoy! I just stumbled on this. I was the Director of Technology for this set of local bizareness for its last two years. I won't say "I'm happy to answer any questions" because I may avoid some. If you want to ask, maybe hit me up, Especially the tech, especially if you got to play and have a good idea of what we were doing.

Also! I think I'm signed up to give a talk in May at ADG. If you're interested in this sort of world-building, and the hacker side of it; maybe come to that? My talk isn't on the shedule yet, but it's penciled in (and Definitely go to Catherine Herdlick's if you can!) http://www.meetup.com/Adventure-Design-Group/

Thanks for stopping by! What was the most memorable moment of the whole experience for you?

You mean the experience of running tech for a "secret society" or of my going through the immersive/interactive experiences?

At this pace, those secrets that were just welling up inside you won't ever make it out. Why not just answer one or both of those since either one would prove to be interesting to the readers you've hooked with your original post.

Why not, indeed.

Thanks. That was what I needed. Hard to know where to start.

I hate to say it, but the sump pump story was more interesting to me than the original secret society article. I guess I can empathize more...

OK, so my most memorable moment was The On Call Day From Hell.

I've told this story a few times a few different ways, but for this purpose, you could call what we did theatre. Every 5, or 10, or 15 minutes, all weekend, some weekdays and evenings, the show must go on. ~6 Locations spread through the city, two separate experiences, both with their own windows, problems, and margins for error.

Sunday morning comes around and I get an alert about one of the locations. The system didn't come online (startup was automated for one experience, and manual, but staffed for another). The automated experience wasn't booting up. I had a three hour window to make the trek from Oakland to SF and debug this, probably minor issue.

I had VPNs everywhere, if I needed to show up, it was usually a hardware or networking issue. I was grumbling as I left my girlfriend on Sunday morning. I felt like it wasn't my turn (there were two other engineers, one other who would sort of rotate these duties at the time). So I'm trudging along and I get a text from the staff member running the other thing. She tells me that "there's water under the tunnel". This is very bad. This particular thing was built into a basement, which was at one time a creek. Even in the drought we were pumping ...water (and mission st run off)... out fairly constantly.

So I parlay the problem downtown by forcing an unexpected reboot of all equipment and make sure it sets itself up properly. I move to the mission and I'm woefully underprepared. The set itself has begun getting wet, I go to the source and it's just a black hole. Our construction crew set it all up initially, and would normally be the go-to for this, but we were a very small crew. Construction wasn't responding, and the first appointment was in 45 minutes. This was my problem. So I psych myself up. I was going to something else and definitely not planning on getting shoulder deep in sludge. I undress as much as I can around other employees, the two of us cover the set with as much protective barrier as we can and I just stare at it.

I'm about to get into the sort of territory where I'm cautious about telling it to the HN audience, but I shit you not, a voice from inside the hole, and from a very good friend whispers to me "psssh. Hey, you, It's down here. Come on down".[1]

And I get shoulder deep in a sump pump field disassembly and repair. No appointments were missed, edited or canceled that day.

[1] There's a very practical and boring explanation for this, but it was a very laugh-out-loud at my own weird life sort of moment.

As far as the experience goes, one of the things I'd say over and over is that if you noticed my work, I did a bad job. I was building the automation, electronics, mechanics, and hardware and software systems to make things tick. I was typically working with about two other hacker-types. sometimes hardware and audio folks, sometimes web and software folks.

So there was this beach on the top floor of a building downtown. When you were invited in, a whole day would pass in the scope of twenty minutes. More than anything, it was a place to think. And through some very clever crafting with about a dozen RGB floodlights (and previous work deconstructing how to work the Philips Hue API) we made it simultaneously look like an office/gallery, that would pass from dawn through early morning, noon, afternoon, sunset, evening and the sort of blue-midnight you only see on television.

I didn't really "do" the experiences, I always knew what was behind the door when I opened it, and often times I was "doing" it for QA purposes, but that part of that room will probably stick on me like a soft spot for a very long time.

> if you noticed my work, I did a bad job.

Partial counterpoint: I didn't notice the cameras in the sandbox, so I happily covered them up by accident. It just "felt right" to me for whatever reason to decorate the corners. Oops.

For those who don't know: He's talking about the in the aforementioned "beach" room, which had a different name, meaning, and story. MrEricSir appears to be one of the top google results for "The Latitude Book 2" if you care to explore.

There was a hexagon shaped table with a sandbox. In each corner of the sandbox there was a digital camera (connected to a raspberry pi) that would photograph the sandbox throughout your appointment and then send the pictures to your personal account on our website. When you went back to the website to confirm that you had completed your experience, you were presented with a handful of sandcastle-POV photos that were just for you.

Yeah, I heard that a couple of times. That's part of why there were 6 cameras, with the hope that two or three would be working + get a decent shot.

Still, I'd say from a design pov, that _totally worked_. People behave different when they know they're being watched or evaluated. This was meant to be a private space for you, and the photos of that thing were meant to be a pleasant surprise.

That's awesome. I was an early tester on Book 2 and I really wanted to take photos, but I didn't because I wasn't sure if it was against the rules. Really glad to hear that you added this detail so carefully!

Over/Under 1 orgy while in Latitude?

Well, the public part of TLS spanned two Burning Men, and is in the Bay Area. It's not my scene, but I'm sure it happened.

---

Alt note: I spent two years at that gig, and much of it was "public" facing, i.e. to participants. Talking about it now it's very difficult not to default into the cloak and dagger mode. It's now shockingly easy for me to write coyly.

How did you put that time on your resume? The article indicates that it was not wanted...which seems odd/possibly illegal.

I can't speak for the GP, but there are plenty of jobs that expects you to euphemise items on your CV. At many consulting shops you will be violating your NDA if you name clients, but there are also many places that simply value discretion without legally requiring it.

Yeah, this is the exact right answer. The artists in the crew have the pieces in their portfolio. The techs are free to go into details when needed. For much else of the gig and things around it go discretion is the norm.

Well, it's all public now, through various straight forward means like this article, public postings on the website by the owner, etc. This covers most of my NDA. At the time, most of the secrecy was for game mechanics. That's pretty moot now as well. I've had several jobs where nobody wants the specifics discussed, so I've gotten good at saying "Imagine if you had a shipping container with a lock that needed to open for a hundred different people at a hundred different times". You can zoom into and out of problems with fabricated scenarios.

The other side of this, is that for the 18 odd months that Book One was open I would just give you a card. From my POV, that was better than any description I could give. I gave them out like candy and I still only had about 50 or 70 people come through. I probably gave out a hundred and fifty invitations.

+1 for ADG, which is an amazing meetup, one of the best in the city!

>One member wrote later that “I was stunned, flabbergasted, to learn that a significant number of people don’t even bother taking that step. A friend sits you down, asks of you absolute discretion, and then gives you a mysterious card that, if activated, literally opens a door to a new world of adventure, and you DON’T EVEN USE IT? C’mon, people: Be better.”

Maybe they could smell it was a lame transmedia project that was trying too hard to copy Eyes Wide Shut. I mean, any real-deal secret society is going to have rules that—when broken—result in membership revocation via way of tragic suicide. It's just not an authentic secret society experience without that constant spectre of death looming over each and every member.

In all seriousness though, I enjoyed the article, and it's neat that most of the compelling narrative in the society ended up being user-generated. You also have to give its creators credit for trying something that far out in left field.

I wonder if people forget that there are plenty of legitimately secret societies like the sort you described (in just about any sufficiently large city in the world). They're called criminal enterprises. With few exceptions, I don't think most people on HN would enjoy being part of them. However I can certainly think of a few pleasant ones that reminisce the cryptic business card. Then I read on a bit further and realized we were just talking about a game.

I would have said rather copy "The Game"

I had at least 2 people who never did it because it felt like someone got high at burning man and tried too hard.

I never got an invite to this. I started working in the city two weeks before the shut down, so perhaps this is for the best.

But I have gone to:

A game of space ships on the frontier and brown coats, using Nerf Guns, run in a Dungeon.

A game of cosmopolitan monsters with a 20+ year history of play in countries around the world.

A private performance space, where I've met amazing friends: amazing people, magicians, performers, stars of world renowned shows, artists, gamers, cyber security wizards, and more.

Community organized get togethers for Metafilter users.

Secret Meetups for Ingress Users.

I'm sure there are more things that nobody has invited me to, I mean there is underground, and there is the center of the earth, but I would imagine that Latitude is only the tip of the iceberg, a single cavern in a vast but hidden space.

In my younger days when I lived in SF, I felt that most of the fun in the city was in it's subcultures and underground societies. The city officially closed very early 11 or 12, and then the "other" took over. I'm glad that it's not dead yet.

Same thing with the music scene in the Bay Area. There are tons of underground parties happening behind plain doors and in warehouses all over if you're part of the announcement groups on Facebook / group chat programs / info lines. Breaking into it isn't too hard but can take a few weeks of effort. The best way is, of course, to talk to someone already part of that scene and have them show you around :)

It's sounds like a well-produced LARP. Like Escape Room.[1] It wasn't really a society. It was a startup pretending to be one.

With today's high real estate costs, it's hard to do anything like this in the physical world. People no longer rent storefronts as clubhouses, or set up social organizations which own their own buildings. Hacker Dojo morphed from a hacker space to a commercial co-working startup for that reason.

[1] http://realescapegame.com/pzrsf/

I'd disagree with your assumption that it wasn't a real society. Maybe it wasn't really secret, maybe it wasn't...something or other; but that was, and for many many people, is, real. It might be more apt to say that it was a society pretending to be a startup.

Pretend is almost always the wrong word when anybody in the room takes it seriously.

Hacker Dojo morphed from a hacker space to a commercial co-working startup for that reason.

This is false. Hacker Dojo is a non-profit, and many members and those on the board are passionate about its future. The Dojo has the best rates in the Bay Area ($100 for non-work hours and $195 for 24/7 vs. $300 avg for SF/SV). There is a maker-space with a laser cutter on the way, and an electronics area that Woz only wishes existed back in his day. There are several events each day, including tech meetups and educational classes.

Dojo rents out some of its space to bootcamps and startups. Why? To meet its fundraising goals. In May, Dojo will move from Mountain View to Santa Clara; however, several members are interested in buying a building in the next couple of years assuming commercial real estate experiences a down market. I assure you, there is nothing "commercial co-working startup" about it. It is and will continue to be a community-focused non-profit. The board members wouldn't allow otherwise.

Wait, what happened to the Laser Cutter that was there, that Carlos was training people on?

Yea! And where's Carlos? I want to go surfing or maybe have a beer w/ that guy. Carlos, I hope you're there for my first Burning Man experience.

I wondered that, too. Apparently it was just on loan. If you want to use a laser cutter, join TechShop. They have lots of them.

It very much was a real society.

Hi! I'm the article author. AMA :)

When you think about the governance of cults, do you think the latitude society could've worked if the authors had been upfront about their intentions from day 1?

That is to say, if the invitation had said "we are building a secret society for the elite", would that have sufficiently filtered the population such that monetization would've been possible? I'm thinking of this from the perspective of startups which have a false freemium narrative vs companies which monetize from day 1. User acquisition would've been harder, but each user would've crossed a wider moat to entry.

MIT Sloan has a great article about converting visitors into subscribers that I think is arguably relevant here: http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/turning-content-viewers-i...

I think that if you're trying to build a product that you want to charge for, then it's worth signaling that aggressively from the beginning (building what they call the "ladder" in that article). That said, Latitude did send some signals (e.g. the Marketplace section on the website, etc). But of course, it was challenging to balance that with the whole invitation-only "you are special" mythos.

I think that it would also have been possible to announce the monetization plan differently, with more tiers of engagement, and more explicit levels of "earning" a free membership. There was only one paid membership option, which was hundreds of dollars.

The company could also have pursued a totally different plan -- like finding a fiscal sponsor and applying for grants. Nonprofits have a higher survival rate than startups, and their art was so unique and beautiful, I think it could have had potential for major grant support. This would have required a major shift in approach though (and probably staffing, too).

What kind of grants? I think using public funds for a private secret society could be quite controversial.

It may have been controversial, and I never investigated it thoroughly as a possibility, so I can't be sure. But the Latitude did a very good job of making members approach and think about the city of San Francisco differently, in an arguably artistic way. There are funders and orgs that are interested in that sort of thing (for instance, SFMOMA has a recent interest in games as art, and has placed immersive game designers as artists in residence).

That last is very interesting. What do immersive game designers do as artists in residence? Has anyone written anything covering those stories?

That's a good question and I don't know the answer. Rebecca Power, CEO of Quixote Games, is currently an Artist in Residence at SFMOMA. I'll mention it to her (and I bet if you sent her fan mail asking her to write about what she's up to, that would be exciting for her).

What a great article! My head is buzzing, but to start:

1) You mention that some people never used the invitation or used it but didn't complete the initiation. "Why were some of us drawn in like moths to a flame, while others reacted zero?" You also mention some trepidation during your own initiation ritual. What made you go through with it? I'm a healthy young male, and I feel nontrivial trepidation at the thought of going somewhere unknown, alone, knowing I'm being watched, not knowing if I can get out, surrendering my phone and wallet, seeing the glass of who-knows-what...I imagine these fears would reasonably be stronger for many others. Is it reasonable for the society to ask such trust from people who haven't yet interacted with it? Presumably the danger and the fun are intertwined. Is that necessarily a good thing? Does it have negative filtering effects on society membership?

2) What happened if someone going through the initiation ritual didn't play along - didn't go down the slide or leave, didn't move on from the library at the appointed time, hid their phone then tried to record the Fable, etc?

Thank you! :)

1) Honestly, it never occurred to me to not go through with it, even when I was nervous. :) I guess I was just really pulled in by the beauty and drama of it. As I wrote in the article, there were many people who didn't go through with their first appointment, so the secretive appointment was certainly a filter. Whether it was a negative filter, I couldn't say.

2) My partner had a descendant who tried to steal one of the books from the library, hahahaha. He got chased down by one of the Nonchalance employees.

Fantastic article Lydia, thanks for writing it and sharing your experience with us!

Thanks for reading!

The first time I saw a game of MTG I was instantly hooked. 20 years ago on my way to class I saw some guys playing the game and I stood there watching for a while. I was invited to play and that was it. Played for a few hours, skipped class, walked away with a deck, skipped many, many more classes thereon.

Nothing had ever wrapped me in such a way, a delicious combination of fantasy, role playing, strategy, wits and beautiful art.

I played the game for many years and even now when I seldom run into my collection (now forgotten in a closet) I remember that first feeling and get a sudden urge to go build a deck. Yet the magic faded until it died, it did when I started to see the business behind it, the artificial scarcity, the product cycle, the content adjustments to target new generations of players, the manipulation, the rules aimed to sell more. The business killed the feeling.

I suppose the same thing happened to many Latitude members: they were exposed to a crude reality check (pay to play) which killed the fantasy.

It is a big question for all startups: how to not kill that initial true value once you need to monetize.

Would that pay-to-play feeling have been less bad if the cult had been a nonprofit?

A nonprofit? Makes no sense. A business is fine. The problem is when the business crosses that thin line and it becomes too aggressive in its profit-seeking. In MTG the game stopped being a casual thing and it became a competition (regulated and very profitable). To compete one needs powerful cards which become quite expensive due to its power and scarcity (which is artificial b/c many more could be printed). The original cult changed then, forever.

Social networks do the same. FB for instance, it did deliver value at the beginning. It was super useful and innovative to get and keep in touch with fam and friends. Then the brands came, then ads flooded. That killed the original value. I closed my FB account and no value was lost b/c nobody in my circle is using it anymore for that original purpose. In fact, I regained value (time and privacy). Now we share on Whatsapp groups (which I am sure will soon be flooded with brands and ads in order to make back the billions). We'll move our sharing to something else.

As another former MTG player, I think the scarcity is part of the experience, but I think they went way too far, because they are hunting "whales", which I was close to becoming but didn't because of a lack of money. The scarcity can be simulated without resorting to the money grabs they went for :( .

And it "works" for them, I think it's a huge part of the Hasbro money machine. As a game it was (is?) great, but the cost to buy in is way too great.

I guess I agree that your disappointment mirrors the one from the people at this "secret society" when they started charging a very costly membership.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/14/whales-and-why-social-game...

Between this and the Trump campaign's success I'm increasingly certain we are living in a Hunger Games prequel.

The Longread from last September on The Latitude's expansion into a startup was pretty solid foreshadowing:

http://blog.longreads.com/2015/09/24/we-value-experience-can...

Attempting to scale a "secret society" has extremely obvious problems...

Maybe he should have gone for the religious angle and tried to get non-profit status.

Freemasonry is achieving this pretty well. I can count the number of movies that make a reference to freemasonry on my fingers with a single hand.

In fact I am surprised it was not mentioned in any of the comments or the article.

I would not classify Freemasonry as a secret society. Freemasonry wants new members and while recruiting is (supposed to be) a big no-no, being visible (preferably while bettering your community) is encouraged.

The appearance of symbols in movies and other media are somewhat like rickrolling or "masons were here" tagging, intended for other masons. An allusion to the "We Are Everywhere" motto which is intended well, but ends up sounding ominous to outsiders.

There are appendant bodies within Freemasonry that certainly are secret societies. Even secret from most Masons. Some Googleable (eg. J-----rs), some not. I can answer more specific questions here, if desired.

They have their own legends, symbols, and modes of recognition. Some of these are as small as a few people, and some are worldwide.

Source: Am one.

Edit: I should mention that this is all from my perspective in the US. European Freemasonry works substantially differently and I'm not familiar with perceptions and processes there. Thanks cm2187

Things might be more transparent in the US, but in Europe, freemasonry:

- only recruits by co-option

- membership and activities are secret

- medias pretty much observe a remarkable silence / lack of curiosity on their activities

Now I am not sure what are the exact criteria to call an organisation secret but it ticks the box to me.

LARP'ing Foucault's Pendulum was all I couldn't help but think...and hoping it would get to the Rosicrucians.

The lessons about social networks made it all worthwhile, though, I guess.

Is it just me or isn't this a case of a rich guy building his own cult? It either became too expensive or more likely he became bored with it and shut it down.

Eh I don't he really believed in it enough for it to be a cult. It's sorta like that, I guess, but a bit half-hearted or at least three-quarter-hearted for a cult. It sounds like it was a cult for some people (the ones telling that story to their kids every night, for instance).

Cults are fun, there's obviously a lot of demand for them among the atheists / logical workers of SF who have to live with so much boring truth all the time (e.g. the guy who says "I feel like much of my life is so focused on Doing The Thing that I don't take that kind of time very often. The feeling of warmth and excitement and sparkling eyes was really strong, and it formed a lot of my sense of what this group was and why it was meaningful.").

Almost forgot to tell you all -- I wrote a followup and FAQ on one of my blogs here: http://lydialaurenson.com/my-new-article-in-vice-about-san-f...

(For those who haven't seen my previous comments, hi, I'm the article author! Thanks for reading!)

I don't know why but the author's experience and description of the scene reminded me a lot of Myst and how I felt the first time I ever played it. I envy anyone who is fortunate enough to experience even a portion of that IRL.

Does this seem... incredibly lame?

Funny how polarizing it is. The elitism, faux secrecy and utter pointlessness of this just ticks me off (along with the other criticism mentioned in the article), but some people, including the author, seem to gobble this up like candy.

To me it all seems like another planet from that of 'ordinary people' with a house and kids and hobbies. To each their own, I guess.

It's a power fantasy. There's an "in group" and through various mechanisms, it's perceived to be a concentration of power. Some people want to be on the right side of the line, while others actively distrust any organization that advertises the power fantasy behind a hidden agenda, or think it's childish, or both.

My view is that there's no harm in indulging this power fantasy if it's just a game, but when you try to merge it into your everyday life, you're playing with fire. Secrecy begets exclusivity and intentional power imbalance, and society as a whole needs less of both.

I am a huge cynic and probably one of the first people to agree with a post like yours, but I really have to disagree. I saw very little power dynamic going on from what I read. There was a level of mysteriousness in that some people knew a lot more than others, but seemingly a large part of this project was experiencing the discovery and exploration of the project. Hence the reason when the author asked a ton of questions, the guy replied "I could tell you, but do you really want to know?".

It was seemingly a large art project. Some people were "in the know" because projects like this require the full time work of several people. You exclude as many people as possible because it ruins the illusion that people enjoy. Your post may as well criticize Disney World for being a power fantasy because they don't allow park visitors behind the scenes.

"I requested that they deactivate my membership. But when I left, I became a security risk. People I knew made vague threats that I would regret leaving or talking about it. A roommate of mine stopped telling me where he was going when he left the house. Friends whom I trusted contacted me and played stupid about their own involvement in order to suss out what I knew."

That's an unconfirmed third hand story by someone who was obviously way too emotional about the equivalent of being kicked out of their D&D group. I would guess his/her friends ignored him/her because he/she was acting childish. What roommate ALWAYS tells the other where they're going? Especially if they started asking in a suspicious way? Or maybe the roommate stopped telling because he knew it was sensitive subject.

Frankly the way that account is told more than explains why people were distancing themselves from him or her. (S)he sounds crazy.

it reminds me of dungeon and dragons

Yes, it reeks of immaturity.

Without the context of what the community was like, I can see how some people might feel this way. I know nothing other than what I read in the article, but I think there is a lot of details left out about the people, activities, and ideology behind the project. It's not really any more lame than people playing D&D, but I can see how the less whimsical people of the world would call people roleplaying as elves and orcs to be lame.

You have to admit, though, that being handed a mysterious invitation by someone who refuses to tell you more is the closest thing you'll ever have in real life to getting your acceptance letter to Hogwarts. Even capturing a small amount of that magic and excitement is pretty cool, if you ask me.

The initial description of the library had me thinking of 'the Man Who Was Thursday', a book which includes its own absurd secret society.

Also, anyone interested in real-world social games might enjoy Journey to the End of the Night (http://ichaseyou.com/). It's not a secret society, but it shares some elements of roaming through your city, playing a game with strangers, and creating your own adventures.

+1 for Journey. It's awesome. The person who runs it, Thomas Lotze, was also a Society member and is quoted in my article.

This is Jeff Hull's follow up to the Jejune Institute, which I was lucky to have participated in and you can see a documentary on it called "The Institute".

Just sharing my experience:

I wasn't in search of it, but I'm known as a creative and energetic guy that loves fun and am totally curious, etc. I am 100% the target market, except that I am 40. A younger guy involved with The Institute film gave me a key. I alone found it charming. I didn't take it seriously. For fun, I thought to invite some friends. I think 6? Every single one of them had a weird experience where people took it far, FAR too seriously. I, at one point, had to accompany a good friend and his young girlfriend, at night, in the rain, in a foreign city to them. When I was going up the stairs to the final room, some people high on fake power and taking the whole thing FAR too seriously gave us a chilling and somewhat disturbing lecture about how serious it is for people to do it on their own, etc. It was unbelievably absurd, and destroyed all the simple charm. I abandoned it after that. When delightful ideas try way too hard... it vacates the intent.

Hmm.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

Very interesting. Im only halfway through so this is a pre-comment:

Anyone interested in this sort of immersive experience needs to watch The Game with Michael Douglass. Skip the trailer and its spoilers. Just watch it. It's like this but better. Preempted the appearance of such things you might say.

Admittedly only skimmed the article, but I missed exactly what this group actually did. Philanthropy? Community service? Multi-level marketing? What's the purpose of having some secret group that only exists to be secret and to be a group?

I read the article from top to bottom, and these questions aren't exactly answered. I got the impression it was a group of mostly artistic types getting together for conversation, essentially bringing social networking back to the real world instead of through screens.

How the hell this was supposed to be a "startup" that expected to grow into a profitable business is beyond me. In any case, Jeff Hull inherited many millions of dollars, blew a chunk of it on a personal pet project, and then had a hissy fit when he tried to monetize it and met resistance. Classic child-like behavior of inherited wealth, completely detached from the real world where the rest of us have to work hard to earn a pittance.

So, it's like normal social interactions in something that look like a club or a non-profit but done by a private company that watch you all the time ?

That sounds to me like something for people that lack actual interesting social groups...

Of course it is. That's why it's in San Francisco run by techies.

This feels very much like the kind of thing that could have benefitted from an endowment, rather than a monetization strategy.

rich people with too much free time

Seems like the video indicates Nonchalance used a projector, to animate the fable, on the book pages...or was it something more exotic (?) Kind of hard to see.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAazLmTcmb0

Looks like a projector to me too, based on the lighting at the end. Would have been really cool if it was a Harry Potter e-ink invention. Too bad...

Yeah, it's a projector. pre-recorded projection mapping, custom electronics as a triggering mechanism. Automation for the projector and underlying computer. flask-socketio + Chrome for the media player.

You saw what the article was claiming was the total budget right? If we had done "mischief managed" levels of wizardry on that budget you would have heard about a very different aspect of what we did.

Wow, I'm glad I have so many better hobbies than this.. This seems like a sad state of affairs to me.

I'm curious. "I'm asked to surrender my possessions. So in go my iPhone and wallet"... and yet somehow there's photos of everything beyond that point.

In the end of the article he talks about how he went back and photographed everything after it shut down

She. She talks about it. ;)

oh, ouch. Sorry. And on international women's day :)

Really great article, btw.

Thank you :)

Hi! I'm the article author. Praxis events were held in the same building as the slide, receiving room, etc. So I got the photos later, months after my initial Latitude experience.

Interesting read! I've always love new experiences and have been thinking of ways to share with people. Do you think instead of a single entity covering the cost, a group splitting the cost would make this idea lasts? For example, businesses that sponsor the society can get 3 invitations each to give to their top three customers. I'd love to brainstorm this if anyone in SoCal is interested.

Ahh, gotcha. Thanks for the clarification!

They went back to the same location at later points in time.

That might be the creepiest part. I never would have done that.

Great read! Now I so badly want to be apart of a secret society

It's a bit of a long read, but well worth it IMO.

You can always be the (secret) society you want to see.

You mean you're not part of one? But all the rest of us are...

I'm pretty sure I am. But which one is a secret even from me!

Mr penumbras 24 hour bookstore

Hah, I just read that a few weeks ago and that's the first thing I thought of also. I wonder if the author was a member/participant in this.

I submitted this yesterday. I thought HN didn't allow recently submitted articles?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11240405

I actually submitted this 13 hours ago, not 1 hour ago. Take a look at my profile. Curiously, the front page shows 1 hour.

Regardless of that discrepancy, fvrghl's post was still prior to mine, as it's from a day ago. I'm not sure what's going on with the time stamps.

Check that. 17 hours ago. Still doesn't explain my ability to submit the link.

"Interesting" posts that don't make it to the front page are sometimes revived.

I once received an email asking me to resubmit a link to something considered interesting, as part of a kind of trial for whether it should be the norm on HN. The behavior is now built in, so you don't need to interact with the system for your link to come back if it's "interesting".

My understanding is that HN's moderation involves some discretion.

Why not just join Scientology? Seems like it scratches may of the same itches.

This reminds me of "Visit Port Watson". Similar purpose, similar execution.

This article felt much like reading a pitch for a MLM scheme.

hipster D&D

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