Livestreaming a doitocracy: Platform-jumping participatory practices in modular synthesis gear cultures

Abstract

Earth Modular Society (EMS) is a cross-platform community dedicated to live hardware modular synthesis, with their primary efforts going into a 24/7 modular “radio station” that livestreams on Twitch and YouTube, and a supporting Discord chat server. Although part of the broader modular synthesis gear culture (a large-scale social formation that coalesces around specific classes of fetishized technical objects), EMS represents a new development in gear cultures as it foregrounds live performance and minimizes the accrual of status via conspicuous consumption. The normative governance structures of platform-specific gear culture communities preclude all but one or a handful of users from having any meaningful input into the rules, governance, or participatory modes of the platform. In contrast, EMS is structured as a doitocracy, where all are encouraged to bring things to do to the community, and to support each other in doing. The doitocracy concept contributes to understanding the wide range of DIY (do-it-yourself) and DIT (do-it-together) community practices. This doitocracy case study also demonstrates the importance of analyzing the performance of crafted objects, and how these, alongside platform-jumping practices, can constitute primary organizational forces in online/offline community sociality.