Leave the door open - Understanding Neo4ic and it's community

This article is a deeper look into the philosophy behind Neo4ic and the community we are trying to build around it. It explores why belonging matters to us, how the communities we encounter can shape our relationship with the things we love, and why we believe experience should create an opportunity to welcome others rather than exclude them. From the clothing we design to our in-person Creative Community Series, we want Neo4ic to be a place where people can share the worlds that made them, discover new ones, and feel welcome whether they've been creating for twenty years or started yesterday.

The read time is about 7 minutes 
Suggested song to listen to while you read: 
Salzburg - Worakls

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I’ve spent a lot of my life moving through different communities. Rave ( underground and festival ), art, fashion, tech, gaming, design, a wide gamet of music genres, philosophy, church, competitive sports and business have all introduced me to completely different groups of people, and I’ve noticed that there are generally two main experiences you can have when entering a new world...Some communities seem genuinely excited that you found them. They want to show you things, introduce you to people and tell you everything they know. Others make you immediately aware that you are new. There is a subtle feeling that you haven’t earned your place yet, and before you can participate, you first have to prove that you belong. You don't feel welcome. 

I think most of the Neo4ic community have experienced some version of this. You discover something that genuinely excites you, maybe a band, an artist, a type of fashion or an entire subculture, and suddenly it feels like you have uncovered a world that was somehow waiting for you...or something that was MADE for you.

You start researching it, learning its history and finding the people who have been there much longer than you. This is usually the moment when your relationship with that community can go in two very different directions.

Direction 1:

Some people see your inexperience and use it as an opportunity to make you feel small. They know the obscure reference that you don’t. They were listening to the artist before you were. They own the original version. They know the history. Their knowledge or capabilities becomes a kind of social currency, and the easiest way to demonstrate its value is by reminding you how little of it you possess. You can walk into a space passionate about something and leave embarrassed that you were ever excited about it in the first place.

I’ve experienced that enough times in my life to know how quickly it can change your perception of something you once loved, but I’ve also experienced the exact opposite.

I’ve met wonderfully inspiring people who have spent decades developing a craft and still become genuinely excited when somebody new shows an interest in it. 

Direction 2:

Instead of saying, “You don’t know this?” their reaction is closer to, “You haven’t seen this yet? You’re going to love it.” They send you the stems. They explain the reference. They introduce you to someone. They show you how something works without making you feel stupid for not already knowing. They love seeing the beginner experience the same feelings they did when they first started. 

Those people have had a profound impact on me because they made me feel safe enough to be curious. When you aren’t worried about looking stupid, you ask more questions. When you ask more questions, you learn faster. When someone takes your early attempts seriously, even when they aren’t very good, you become more willing to make another attempt. Something as simple as another person’s enthusiasm can become the subtle green light you needed to go deeper.

There is a strange danger that appears, however, once we finally become knowledgeable ourselves. The outsider eventually becomes the insider. The beginner develops expertise. The person who once desperately wanted to be welcomed eventually gains enough status to decide who else gets welcomed. If we aren’t careful, we can become remarkably similar to the people who once made us feel like we weren’t good enough to be there.

Personally, I think pride has something to do with this. Pride in a craft, culture or community can be an incredibly positive force. It makes us care about history. It creates standards. It pushes us to develop taste and discernment. It makes us protective of something that genuinely means something to us. But pride is a double edged sword, it can quietly transform into contempt when we begin using what we know as evidence of our superiority rather than an opportunity to share what we have learned.

Eventually, we can find ourselves guarding the entrance to the exact world we once begged to enter.

At the age of 39, I finally believe that becoming knowledgeable about something creates a responsibility. If you understand something beautiful more deeply than another person does, you have the opportunity to show them why you fell in love with it. We can use ten years of experience to demonstrate the distance between ourselves and a beginner, or we can use those same ten years to shorten the distance they have to travel. Both choices reveal something about the person we have become or are becoming. 

This idea is one of the reasons we started the Creative Community Series at the Neo4ic headquarters...ie our warehouse, office and retail store. 

We wanted our store to become a physical place where photographers, designers, musicians, producers, filmmakers, cosplayers and other creative people could meet each other without skill being the price of admission. That doesn’t mean pretending everyone is equally skilled. Someone who has spent fifteen years mastering something obviously knows more than someone who started fifteen days ago. But I think that difference should create an opportunity for mentorship rather than humiliation.

Every great artist was once terrible. Every photographer once misunderstood their camera. Every designer has old work they probably hope nobody ever finds. Every musician has recordings they would rather never hear again. There is no path toward mastery that somehow avoids incompetence. When we ridicule beginners for being beginners, we are effectively punishing them for standing at the beginning of the same road we once traveled ourselves and instead of operating from the place of passion that motivated us to learn, we are revealing that we are afraid there isn't enough for ourselves. 

I also think this explains something about why I have spent so much of my adult life making graphic clothing, first with Damascus Apparel and now with Neo4ic. The run of both projects has now spanned 17 years.

I have always had a difficult time separating the things that made me into clean categories. Video games, scifi film / animation, electronic music, Japanese design, technology, faith, philosophy, action sports, nostalgia and all of the other strange things I’ve absorbed throughout my life have become intertwined. I don’t experience them as separate interests anymore. They became pieces of the same person.

That seems to be exactly true for many of the people who have found Neo4ic.

When we recently tried to define who we actually make art for, one of the clearest patterns was that our customer rarely inherited an identity completely from one culture or scene.

They built themselves from pieces of many different worlds. They might be technically minded and artistically sensitive, obsessed with fitness and anime, professionally successful while aesthetically existing completely outside ordinary culture. They can be fiercely individualistic while still wanting to find people who understand them. ( confusing? maybe...but humans aren't simple, that's what makes them wonderful ) I've learned over the years that a lot of the Neo4ic community have experienced upbringing in very similar broken homes and have felt the same kind of heartbreak from family...which explains why we have found refuge in these other worlds. 

For me, clothing became one way of making some of that invisible world visible.

I can take something that mattered to me when I was twelve years old, combine it with something I discovered at twenty-five, filter it through who I am today and turn the result into something another person can physically wear. They can feel confident, they receive compliments and they can hopefully connect, but at the very least spread one of the many messages we embed in most of our creations. 

Once that shirt leaves our warehouse, I have no control over where it goes. It might end up at a concert, convention, gym, coffee shop, networking event, festival, office, or airport thousands of miles away. But occasionally, someone else recognizes what is buried inside it.

That interaction has always fascinated me. A person does not necessarily need everyone in the room to understand what they are wearing. Sometimes it is more meaningful when only one person does. In our own audience research, we described the ideal experience for someone wearing Neo4ic would be another person noticing the series, movie, obscure reference or hidden phrase and immediately understanding what it means and subtly understanding a tiny part of who the wearer is.

Turns out...being seen, noticed or complimented for things we love feels really good.

The garment becomes a way for compatible people to find one another...or at the very least have a conversation. 

Maybe that is part of why the things we grew up with remain so important to us. We don’t carry these worlds only because we are nostalgic for them. We carry them because they communicate something about who we are. 

In that sense, the Creative Community Series and the clothing we make are attempting to do the same thing in two different forms. For years we have been making pieces of art people can wear into the world. Now we are opening up a room where those people can meet.

I don’t know what will ultimately come from these gatherings, and I actually like that. Maybe someone meets the photographer who eventually shoots their first product they designed. Maybe a producer hears someone’s unfinished song and gives them one piece of advice that changes how they make music forever. Maybe two people start a company together. Maybe someone shows up alone, talks to three people and simply goes home feeling a little less strange than they did before they came. Not every meaningful interaction announces itself as meaningful when it happens.

The older I get, the more I realize how much of my life can be traced back to small interactions like these. Someone showed me something. Someone encouraged me. Someone took an idea seriously. Someone opened a door that they could have just as easily kept closed. At the time, neither of us could have known what that interaction would eventually become.

The world desperately needs this type of human...and my goal with Neo4ic is that our community is made up of them. 

So, I think there is a responsibility that comes with finding your people and finding the things you love. Protect what is meaningful. Develop standards. Learn the history. Become excellent at your craft. But be careful that your pride in what you love doesn’t become contempt for the person who has only just discovered it.

It is our responsibility to show the love that we wish we received. 

Because eventually all of us become the person standing on the other side of the door.

And when that happens, I hope we remember what it felt like to knock.