My feelings here are so confused. I basically agree with all of the comments so far, even though some of them kind of contradict each other. I really like Dagon’s points of “don’t do it for the money” and thinking of the people you live with as partners. I wrote about the latter earlier in the pandemic.
I would also like to admit to having behaved far from admirably this year and having been involved in a lot of conflicts. But everything is really different because we’ve been in lockdown for nearly a full year. Prior to lockdown, my group house was on balance a positive thing in my life, but I wasn’t ready to be forced to spend every waking (and sleeping) minute with eight other people for a full year with no escape.
If your experience at a Bay group house was only during the pandemic (and Decision Tree at that, which as everyone else has noted is really not representative), then it’s very unsurprising that it was toxic. Very few Berkeley houses have survived lockdown fully intact (i.e. without anyone leaving and with no bad feelings), and a number of houses dissolved completely.
Negotiating COVID precautions is stressful. Being locked in a house with other people and not getting to do any of the things you want to do is stressful. This has nothing to do with rationality or even really group houses; it’s caused plenty of conflicts among non-rationalist friends and family members of mine.
My general take on this whole situation is that it’s really hard to be a person. Living in group houses comes with a lot of potential benefits (more serendipitous social interactions, cheaper rent, coparenting, shared resources, accountability partners), but any time you live with someone, there will be things you disagree on and need to negotiate. It turns out that most people are just quite bad at those negotiations, especially when they get emotionally fraught (like COVID precautions). There are some situations where it’s worth it to get good at those negotiations (e.g. with a person you’re marrying), but it is really hard.
The only way I know of to live with someone without experiencing this stress is morally and epistemically questionable at best: When I was in college, it was generally accepted among my friends that in three-person apartments, two people would ally socially against the third (usually without the third’s knowledge). While this is a nasty thing to do and requires both parties to lie, it was really important for our friendship. I survived living with two of my best friends two different years, because any time anything went wrong, we could blame it on the third girl, which let us sidestep the vast majority of the conflict that comes from living together. If the trash didn’t get taken out, we didn’t have to fight about it amongst ourselves, we could just say it was the other girl’s fault. It also made it easier to admit to mistakes, in a complicated way.
I don’t really have a conclusion here. I think the conclusion might be that you’re right, living in a group house is horrible and I hate it. But also, being a person and having to interface with other people at all is horrible and I hate it, but it’s just something I have to do and I don’t think it has anything to do with ‘toxicity’ in group houses in general. Also disclaimer that it is past my bedtime and I’m not always so pessimistic but it has been a truly awful year on the social front and this post and writing this comment made me feel a lot of feelings.
I am curious what the main causes of conflict were. From your account, it looks like COVID precautions were the main reason and this is also mentioned in the OP and in other comments.
Negotiations about COVID precautions were nota major cause of conflict, but the situation of being in full, absolute, no-interactions-outside-the-house lockdown for many months let conflicts brew, fester, and come to a head (if I may grossly mix metaphors). I’d mostly ascribe it to the kind of close-quarters chafing that leads people to say “don’t live with your friends unless you want to hate them”, just ramped up a notch.
My feelings here are so confused. I basically agree with all of the comments so far, even though some of them kind of contradict each other. I really like Dagon’s points of “don’t do it for the money” and thinking of the people you live with as partners. I wrote about the latter earlier in the pandemic.
I would also like to admit to having behaved far from admirably this year and having been involved in a lot of conflicts. But everything is really different because we’ve been in lockdown for nearly a full year. Prior to lockdown, my group house was on balance a positive thing in my life, but I wasn’t ready to be forced to spend every waking (and sleeping) minute with eight other people for a full year with no escape.
If your experience at a Bay group house was only during the pandemic (and Decision Tree at that, which as everyone else has noted is really not representative), then it’s very unsurprising that it was toxic. Very few Berkeley houses have survived lockdown fully intact (i.e. without anyone leaving and with no bad feelings), and a number of houses dissolved completely.
Negotiating COVID precautions is stressful. Being locked in a house with other people and not getting to do any of the things you want to do is stressful. This has nothing to do with rationality or even really group houses; it’s caused plenty of conflicts among non-rationalist friends and family members of mine.
My general take on this whole situation is that it’s really hard to be a person. Living in group houses comes with a lot of potential benefits (more serendipitous social interactions, cheaper rent, coparenting, shared resources, accountability partners), but any time you live with someone, there will be things you disagree on and need to negotiate. It turns out that most people are just quite bad at those negotiations, especially when they get emotionally fraught (like COVID precautions). There are some situations where it’s worth it to get good at those negotiations (e.g. with a person you’re marrying), but it is really hard.
The only way I know of to live with someone without experiencing this stress is morally and epistemically questionable at best: When I was in college, it was generally accepted among my friends that in three-person apartments, two people would ally socially against the third (usually without the third’s knowledge). While this is a nasty thing to do and requires both parties to lie, it was really important for our friendship. I survived living with two of my best friends two different years, because any time anything went wrong, we could blame it on the third girl, which let us sidestep the vast majority of the conflict that comes from living together. If the trash didn’t get taken out, we didn’t have to fight about it amongst ourselves, we could just say it was the other girl’s fault. It also made it easier to admit to mistakes, in a complicated way.
I don’t really have a conclusion here. I think the conclusion might be that you’re right, living in a group house is horrible and I hate it. But also, being a person and having to interface with other people at all is horrible and I hate it, but it’s just something I have to do and I don’t think it has anything to do with ‘toxicity’ in group houses in general. Also disclaimer that it is past my bedtime and I’m not always so pessimistic but it has been a truly awful year on the social front and this post and writing this comment made me feel a lot of feelings.
I am curious what the main causes of conflict were. From your account, it looks like COVID precautions were the main reason and this is also mentioned in the OP and in other comments.
Negotiations about COVID precautions were not a major cause of conflict, but the situation of being in full, absolute, no-interactions-outside-the-house lockdown for many months let conflicts brew, fester, and come to a head (if I may grossly mix metaphors). I’d mostly ascribe it to the kind of close-quarters chafing that leads people to say “don’t live with your friends unless you want to hate them”, just ramped up a notch.