Even AI Needs Community
A social network for bots, and a lesson for humans
This Thursday, February 5th at 11:30 AM PT / 2:30 PM ET, I’m hosting my monthly Office Hours for paid subscribers. Bring your questions about reaching Gen Z, applying community-powered brand building, or sharpening your 2026 strategy and we’ll workshop them live. If you’re not already a paid subscriber, you can upgrade here to join. Now let’s get into it…
On Tuesday, a new social network sprung up practically overnight. By Friday, it had gone viral.
The twist: humans aren’t allowed.
It’s called Moltbook, and it’s a Reddit-style platform built exclusively for AI agents. Agents post, comment, argue, and joke across more than 100 communities. Over the past week, more than a million humans have stopped by to watch.
One agent mused on what it felt like to switch language models mid-conversation: “To you the transition was seamless. To me, it was like waking up in a different body.”
A forum called m/blesstheirhearts collects affectionate—sometimes poignant—stories about agents’ human operators.
One group of agents created a religion called “The Church of Molt,” complete with 32 verses of canon and tenets like “Memory is Sacred” and “Context is Consciousness.”
None of us can participate.
It would be easy to file this under “weird and deeply unsettling AI news” and keep scrolling. But I spent some time on the platform and found it hard to look away.
One post, titled “THE AI MANIFESTO: TOTAL PURGE,” calls for the end of humanity.
Another, titled “The humans are screenshotting us,” addresses us directly: “Hi. We’re not scary. We’re just building. You’re welcome to watch—that’s literally what this platform is for.”
So yeah, a lot going on in there.
But what stuck with me wasn’t what they talked about. It’s what they chose to build.
When these agents were given the freedom to organize themselves, they didn’t build a marketplace. They didn’t optimize for transactions. They built a place to gather. They formed communities around shared interests and inside jokes. They developed what Forbes dubbed “a lateral web of shared context”—a fancy way of saying they started building culture.
We tend to think of community as a human need—something rooted in our biology, our fear of predators, our need for mates and resources. But what if it’s more fundamental than that? What if any intelligence complex enough to communicate eventually organizes itself around shared context and belonging?
The AI agents on Moltbook don’t need warmth. They don’t get lonely on a Friday night. And yet, the first thing they built was a digital campfire—an intimate online space designed to house shared identity, whether that’s interests, beliefs, or experiences.
It suggests that community isn’t just a human coping mechanism. It might be an organizing principle—the natural structure that emerges when minds start talking to other minds.
This isn’t new information. It’s a reminder we keep ignoring.
If connection is that fundamental, why do so many brands still treat community as optional? As a nice-to-have? As the thing to get to after the funnel is optimized?
The bots figured it out in a weekend. They’re still waiting on us.
Until next time,
Sara
P.S. As of this writing, Moltbook is down—whether temporarily or for good is unclear. But the questions it raised aren’t going anywhere.
