Ain’t remote workers got time for the metaverse

Since the pandemic started, many remote workers have been working from home. People have connected over Zoom, Slack, and other platforms. But, for many of us remote workers, that was not enough. Once we could travel again, we spontaneously booked tickets to fly again and said “Fuck it!”. Many remote workers have tried to replicate serendipity. I myself try to bring people together across different time zones through spontaneous virtual events, co-working sessions, and games you can play virtually with others. While I still do that, I realize that, unfortunately, nothing beats an in-person random meetup with people that we genuinely enjoy. Sorry, Meta and your metaverse. Call me old school, but I’d rather be present in the real world than the virtual one. And I’m not the only one.

Many of us remote workers won’t settle for less nowadays. During the pandemic, we did not stop learning and improving. I myself can now develop apps from scratch, while two years ago, I could not even print “Hello world”. So whenever we have a chance, we travel and don’t ask permission to anyone. We don’t travel only to fulfill a bucket list; we travel because we want to find people like us who think and dream the same way we do. However, the price of this freedom is loneliness.

Loneliness happens because we forget about one thing. Serendipity. Many of us became location-independent by randomly reading an article, talking to someone, watching a movie that inspired us. Even when companies decided to allow everyone to work from home, most of us still had the choice to stay at home, but others inspired us to choose location independence. Even Covid spread serendipitously and became an “overnight success.” Jokes aside, remote workers need serendipity to feel less lonely in this new normal.

I’ve helped over 3000 remote workers find Whatsapp groups in various remote-friendly cities in the last three years. I’ve talked to about 60% of them. But unfortunately, whenever remote workers travel to a new city, most of them fall into the same mistake. Let’s call this typical remote worker Paul.

1. Paul just traveled to Barcelona but didn’t know anyone in that city. So he makes a plan to join communities, join Whatsapp groups, introduce himself and take the initiative to either suggest where to hang out or join other people who would take the initiative.
2. Paul creates a good circle of friends, but now he has to make new ones because he’s traveling to Budapest.
3. Paul travels to Budapest and goes through step 1. He decides that he really enjoys Budapest. He’s made a good circle of friends. However, 50% of the good friends he made are moving somewhere else. Paul realizes that he hasn’t made great connections with the other 50% and decides to leave.
4. Paul again has to take step 1. However, he’s getting tired of this. So he decides to go back home for a little while. He hangs out with his local friends and cousins, but something is missing. None of his family or friends understand the value of remote work, location independence, and financial freedom. So he decides not to stay too long and starts traveling again.
5. Paul again has to take step 1 but decides to go to the most serendipitous place. Why the most serendipitous? Because it’s easier to meet people without having to take much initiative. So he decides to go to Lisbon this time and play it safe.
6. Paul is now happy; he’s made a great circle of friends who understand his lifestyle and are not moving too often. He’s able to establish great connections, and he’s able to talk about financial freedom, blockchain, and web3 freely and occasionally meet people that could potentially become investors in his idea.

Now we’re back to step 0 instead. Wasn’t the whole point of traveling, seeing the world, and meeting like-minded people? While I still don’t know whether people will gravitate towards major remote-friendly cities or distribute themselves, I know one thing for sure. We are in a desperate search for serendipity, for unplanned moments of happiness where someone just randomly asks us, “Wanna get a drink?”, “Hey, let’s work together” without having to continuously join events, communities, post on Facebook, ask on Whatsapp, or swipe right.

When remote workers experience serendipity, they are happier. When they are more content in a city, they stay longer, improving the local economy of that specific city. The metaverse can’t fix that. I’ll write a new article explaining how having a balanced stay in a city (average three months) helps you, the city, and the communities stay happy and healthy.

If you’re a community organizer trying to bring your members together in person but don’t have time to do so, feel free to ping me on Twitter or check us out here -> Unplan.