Community is the thing that sets a brand apart — not reach, not noise, but the feeling of belonging to something. Digital has given us more of it than ever. And still, I have a little FOMO about a mahjong table.
Let me confess something a little unfashionable for someone who has just spent a year going digital: I have been thinking about learning mahjong. Not for the game, exactly — for the table. Four people, a ritual, a few hours where nobody reaches for their phone. Lately I catch myself envying the friends who have that, and I have come to think the envy is telling me something useful about my own business.
The Distinction That Matters
Reach Is Not the Same as Belonging
Every brand now has an audience. That is the great gift of the last decade — a boutique in Sheung Wan can be seen in Seoul, a designer can build a following before she builds a showroom. Reach has been democratised, and that is wonderful.
But reach is not community, and the two are constantly mistaken for each other. A hundred thousand followers is an audience. A room of people who feel they belong to something — who would show up for you, and for each other — is a community. The brands that endure are almost never the loudest. They are the ones that make people feel part of an inner circle, with genuine connection at the centre of it. That feeling is the differentiator. It always has been.
Why I Went Digital
What the Feed Does Beautifully
So let me be clear, because this is important: I am not nostalgic for a world before all this. Digital has been a gift to community, not a threat to it. It gathers people who could never otherwise have found one another. It lets a member in Hong Kong and a member in London belong to the same conversation on the same evening. It is generous, it is democratic, and it is the reason a small brand can build a devoted following at all.
I moved my own work in this direction on purpose. If you want to build community at any scale today, you build it online first. That part is settled.
The Part I Miss
What the Room Still Does
And yet. There is a kind of connection that still only happens in a room — dressed up, present, giving one another undivided attention. A feed can make you aware of a community without ever quite making you feel part of one. That is the disconnect I keep noticing: everyone gathered, and somehow no one fully together.
Which brings me back to the mahjong table. It is the perfect small model of the thing digital cannot fully replace — a fixed number of seats, a shared ritual, and a few hours in which you are simply there. No scrolling, no half-attention. That is why I have FOMO about it, and I have decided the FOMO is instructive rather than embarrassing. It is the pull of belonging, in its most concentrated form.
For a brand, the test is simple: could your community sit at a table together and actually enjoy it? If yes, you have built something rare.
“A large following is reach. A few people who show up for you is a community.
So I am not choosing between the two, and I would not advise any brand to either. The future of connection is not digital or in-person — it is both, each doing what it does best. Digital to gather your people and let them belong at scale. Presence to turn that belonging into a bond. The brands that get this right will feel less like a channel and more like a club worth being in.
And me? I think I am finally going to learn mahjong. Consider it professional research.
— Reyna Harilela