Dear James,Why does every online “support group” I’ve joined seem to turn into something worse than the original trauma for which I need support? I’m not a perpetual victim, but over the past 12 years, I’ve felt the need to leave at least four online communities for the sake of my mental health.The first was a forum for daughters of mothers with narcissistic personality disorder. When its founder converted to a paid model, the restrictions felt like a betrayal, the dynamic became strained, and I lost many valuable connections. Another was a Facebook group for moms who’d experienced life-threatening pregnancy complications. For a time it was nice, but some women became unkind, and it started feeling less like a support group and more like a mean girls’ lunch table. Yet another was a forum for people who, like me, had left a highly controlling religious denomination. At first, it was great, but after I posted one night—expressing concern that theological arguments were getting overly heated—I awoke to a fight in my comments section and a nasty DM. The last straw: I told one person who had called some members “demonic” that they were making the group feel unsafe, and my comment was deleted by the admin.Then there’s the political chat full of liberals, where I thought it would be a safe space to be a liberal. Instead, I’ve been cyberbullied. I’ve had my spelling and grammar mistakes mocked. When people have misunderstood something I’ve written, I’ve tried using humor to defuse the conflict, but commenters have simply doubled down, gaslighting me and calling me names.How did we get here? I think of the old saying: “Hurt people hurt people.” Maybe the answer is as simple as that. But there must be something more to this pattern I’ve observed, something rooted in how we process grief or handle triggers. Whatever the case, I’m discouraged: Do I need to stop joining these groups? Should I stop trying to find my people?Dear Reader,First thought: You should by no means stop trying to find your people, but you should definitely stop trying to find them online. Second thought: Maybe you should stop trying to find your people.First thought first. The second law of digital thermodynamics states that every online community, however nurturing and self-aware, however skillfully moderated, will eventually devolve into bluster, acrimony, scapegoating, and chemically imbalanced postings in the small hours. Why should this be? I don’t know. But it is. Humans can be awful, is one answer. And never more awful than when they’re just about to hit “Send.” The liberal chat room turned sour—my God, what a snake pit that must have been. “An intellectual hatred,” as the poet says, “is the worst.”Second thought. You’ve been seeking your people—people with experiences and opinions similar to your own. What if that’s the problem? Might that not be the larger message of this sequence of online implosions? The safe spaces, the like minds, the emotional-ideological habitats: For me, it’s all part of the great splintering, the fragmentation of consciousness that has left us ripe for authoritarian takeover.Burn down the book club! Is that what I’m saying? Not quite. Community can be beautiful, of course. But do you know what I’m getting at? It’s time to de-categorize ourselves, un-diagnose ourselves, eject all these discourses from our bodies and embrace that person over there, whoever they are.My point is: You are not the problem, nor are the other people in your forums. The problem is the infernal force of atomization that is running all over us. And the way for us to resist it—the only way, as far as I know—is to get out there and meet the Other, expansively, overcoming our own fear, again and again, until the Other is not other anymore.Toppling from my pulpit,JamesDear Readers,This will be the last “Dear James.”I’m conscious, as I say goodbye to this column, of a powerful impulse to be all English and flippant and self-deprecatory, to make jokes about the quality of the “advice” that I’ve been dispensing, ho ho, ha ha. But I’m going to override this impulse and attempt instead to proceed in the fine old register of American sincerity.Here goes.Obviously, I couldn’t have done this without you. Your letters have touched me, challenged me, worried me, made me laugh, made me think. I’m extremely grateful for the courage you showed in writing and for the trust you put in me. Your problems became my problems, which is not as bad as it sounds. Actually, I think it might have helped me: Expansion of sympathy is a good thing, especially now. To the readers whose dilemmas I addressed, I hope I was helpful or at least not unhelpful. (“Worse than useless” is a category I particularly try to avoid.) And to those readers I was unable to answer, I apologize—I hope you weren’t left hanging for too long.In closing, then: Courage, people! Never give up. It’s rough outside, it’s rough inside, and it’s about to get rougher—you don’t need me to tell you that. But if we can stay connected to the miraculous and fleeting fact of being here at all, we’ll have at least a chance of being—eventually—okay. I’ll leave you with a line from Samuel Beckett’s Molloy: “I am still alive then. That may come in useful.”Signing off, with drunken orchestras playing behind me,James