TECHNICAL CARGO CULT

Communities form around technical mastery without the substance.

Technical communities form around shared tools. They persist around shared friction.

The inconvenience becomes the membership test. The difficulty becomes the proof of belonging. What begins as a technical choice becomes an identity marker. The friction was supposed to be temporary. It becomes permanent because it filters.


THE PATTERN

A community forms around a technology. The technology has friction — complexity, obscurity, difficulty. Early adopters tolerate the friction because the technology offers something valuable.

Then something shifts. The friction becomes valued in itself. Not because it serves the goal, but because it filters the membership. Only the committed will endure it. Only the serious will learn it. Only the worthy will persist.

The stated goal fades. The friction remains.


THE CARGO CULT

Some friction provides real advantage. Most does not.

The programmer who compiles from source feels powerful. Text scrolls past. Dependencies resolve. The binary emerges. But the programmer did not read the source. Could not modify it. Does not understand the flags passed to the compiler. The "control" is ritual, not capability.

The same source, compiled by the distribution maintainer, produces functionally equivalent output. The difference is the experience of watching it happen. The friction provided feeling, not function.

This is cargo cult technology. The forms of technical mastery without the substance. The visible ritual without the invisible understanding. The community that compiles together bonds through shared waiting, not shared knowledge.

The filter still works. It selects for those willing to wait, willing to troubleshoot, willing to endure. But it does not select for those who understand. It selects for those who perform.


THE EXAMPLES

The network protocol on a blocked port. The stated goal is simple content — plain text, minimal markup, no scripts. The format achieves this goal. But the community insists on non-standard ports: 70, 1965, 300. These ports are blocked by firewalls, unsupported by browsers, ignored by CDNs. The same format served over standard ports would achieve the same goal with less friction. The friction persists because it filters. Running a server requires commitment. Accessing content requires special tools. The format was the point. The port became the identity.

The operating system compiled from source. The stated goal is control over the system. But the user who compiles does not read the code being compiled. Cannot identify vulnerabilities in it. Does not understand the optimizations applied. The binary from the distribution achieves the same function. The compilation provides the feeling of control without the substance. The hours spent watching text scroll create shared experience, not shared understanding. The filter selects for patience, not competence.

The vinyl record in the streaming age. The stated goal is audio fidelity. But the listener who insists on vinyl often cannot pass a blind test against high-bitrate digital. The claimed warmth is often distortion. The claimed superiority fails measurement. What remains is ritual: the cleaning, the placement, the flipping, the physical artifact. The friction is the point. The community bonds over equipment, over technique, over the shared inconvenience. The fidelity was the justification. The ritual is the function.

The film camera after digital surpassed it. The stated goal is the image. Some formats — large format, specific emulsions — offer characteristics difficult to replicate digitally. But most film photography does not use these formats. Most uses 35mm, where digital surpassed film years ago. What remains is process: the loading, the limited exposures, the waiting, the development. Each step filters. Each inconvenience removes the casual. The community that remains bonds through shared friction, not superior results.

The programming language with elaborate type systems. The stated goal is correct software. Type systems do catch errors. But the community often values type complexity beyond its error-catching utility. The pleasure is in the abstraction itself — the monad understood, the type-level proof constructed. Software could be correct with simpler types. The complexity filters for those who enjoy complexity. The errors caught justify the friction. The intellectual satisfaction sustains it.


THE HONEST FILTER

Not all friction is cargo cult. Some friction provides real advantage.

The command-line editor, once learned, enables editing speed difficult to match with graphical interfaces. The learning curve is real friction. The resulting capability is real advantage. The friction serves the goal.

The difference: after the friction, capability increases. The person who learned the commands edits faster. The person who compiled from source does not compute faster. One friction was investment. The other was ritual.

The honest community distinguishes these. It says: this friction provides advantage, that friction provides belonging. Both have value. But they are not the same value.


THE UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTION

When a technical community resists an easier path, ask: what does the friction provide?

If the answer is capability, the friction is investment. The community that endures it gains something the community that avoids it lacks. The friction is cost with return.

If the answer is feeling, the friction is ritual. The community that endures it feels something — mastery, belonging, sophistication — but does not gain corresponding capability. The friction is cost without return, except the return of identity.

If the answer is filtering, the friction is boundary. The community that endures it remains small, committed, bonded. The friction keeps out those unwilling to pay. The return is the community itself.

Each answer is valid. But they require different honesty.

The community that mistakes ritual for investment deceives itself. It believes the compilation provided control. It believes the vinyl provided fidelity. It believes the non-standard port provided simplicity. The friction was identity dressed as advantage.

The community that names its filters honestly is healthier. It says: we do this because it bonds us, because it filters for our kind of person, because the shared inconvenience creates shared identity. The friction is the point. We are not pretending otherwise.


THE COST

Friction-as-filter has costs beyond the friction itself.

Reach. The filter excludes everyone unwilling to endure. This is the point. It is also the limit. The community remains small because smallness is the mechanism.

Fragility. Infrastructure built for the filtered few lacks the resilience of infrastructure built for the general population. The special protocol has no CDN. The niche format has no ecosystem. The custom toolchain has no support.

Stagnation. The community optimizes for what existing members value. New members are selected for compatibility with existing friction. The feedback loop narrows. The community becomes more like itself.

Cargo cult persistence. The friction that began as necessary becomes traditional. The ritual that once had meaning becomes empty form. The community continues compiling, continues spinning vinyl, continues running servers on blocked ports — not because these serve the goal, but because these are what the community does.


THE ALTERNATIVE

Separate the goal from the filter.

If the goal is real, achieve it simply. Serve content through whatever protocol delivers. Listen through whatever medium is faithful. Compute with whatever system works. The friction that does not serve the goal is not serving the goal.

The tribe dissolves. The goal remains.

This is not better or worse. It is a different optimization. Reach over identity. Impact over belonging. Capability over ritual.


THE QUESTION

When you encounter friction in a technical community, ask:

Does this friction provide capability I would otherwise lack?
Or does this friction provide feeling, belonging, identity?

If capability, the friction is investment. Pay it and gain.
If feeling, the friction is ritual. Decide if the ritual has value to you.
If belonging, the friction is filter. Decide if you want to belong.

Each answer is valid. But the community that confuses them — that mistakes its rituals for investments, its filters for advantages — builds on self-deception.

Name the friction honestly. Then choose.

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Lingenic LLC
2026
