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Comment by watwut | Hacker News Reader

If the community and friendly feel is the selling point, then no you can not really scale that way and simultaneously keep the community and relationships. You have to choose between the two.

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As if Berghain is still a community venue, as opposed to a bunch of ur-capitalist hustlers selling the idea of community to lost and naive souls.

Community and scale do not mix. If the founders truly cared about community they would have wound the place up in about 2010 and done something new.

But once people experience a bit of success greed inevitably takes over…

I see your point, but a community venue and constantly wounding up and starting anew also don't mix. It's an unfortunate outcome of the scale and the system we live in. If Berghain was a XII century monastery in an inaccessible place it could have maintained a community venue for centuries. A large club in the techno capital of the world has to resort to a different approach if it wants to maintain at least some level of continuity, status, and quality for its community.

But it excludes arbitrary people from the community for arbitrary and superficial reasons.

Why is this so hard to understand?

This is an exaggeration. All communities have something that make them a community, and not just an everchanging group of random people. Is being into techno a random or superficial reason for being a part of the techno community? Is looking and being friendly a superficial reason for being a part of an intentionally accepting community? This is the same argument people use in many other contexts where inclusion is conflated with having no rules and preferences. Should gay sex parties admit large groups of drunk aggressive lads just because gay parties are supposed to be inclusive? This approach ends up compromising the community itself, it really doesn't benefit the cause.

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