Club meeting proves that Instagram is not enough
The room is large, divided into a section with seating, and a section with rows of tables. I can pick up snippets of different conversations; the voices are mostly male. Thirty or so collectors are mingling, some by the trading tables, and some by the plastic downhill Hot Wheels track. Four or five kids are running around. There is a remote, shaped like a gas pedal, that lowers two metal stoppers to send two Hot Wheels cars down the track. Every time someone starts a “race,” speakers in the remote simulate the sound of an engine accelerating. The room is loud, chaotic, and fun.
Today, I attended a meeting of the Charm City Collectors Club (C4 for short). The scene above took place in a party room at a bowling alley in Middle River, MD. It’s the club’s third or fourth location — they have had to move in the past because of financial issues. There are no club dues and no entry fees, just a five-dollar charge for the vendors to rent a table for the day. The club meets every month on a Saturday to buy, sell, trade, race, and hang out. It’s the typical club — friends who meet to enjoy a shared interest.
All semester, I’ve been discussing the importance of Instagram to these collectors as an imagined community. It is an outlet for them to turn what can be a solitary and sometimes embarrassing hobby into a community of shared interest and mutual support. I’d still argue that Instagram is extremely important to these collectors’ community, but the C4 meeting today reminded me to step back from Instagram and look at the bigger picture. C4 is an important reminder that for diecast collectors, social media has not entirely replaced social gatherings.
The club itself has a social media presence, but not all of its members are that interested. Dave, for example, is a diecast customizer who posts his builds on Instagram, although I didn’t catch his username. Roi, on the other hand, couldn’t care less about digital communities. If you want to talk to him, or trade with him, you can call him or find him at a meeting. Overall, for this group of collectors, Instagram isn’t that important compared to the club meetings. Other collectors I’ve spoken to only engage with the hobby and other hobbyists through a screen. So, what makes in-person meetings so important to the members of C4?
Simply put, face-to-face meetings offer a sense of community and membership that Instagram cannot. Instagram is an imagined community, while C4 is a real community. The social dynamics may be more or less the same in both cases, but the fulfillment of a club meeting is very different than that of an Instagram post.
In a 2015 article, Entrepeneur magazine set out five reasons why virtual meetings don’t cut it in a business environment. These five reasons are also useful in understanding the appeal of a C4 meeting. Essentially, face-to-face meetings still have their benefits because they create a more engaging experience. The physicality of the meeting allows for a more immersive hobby and more meaningful relationships to develop.
So, what is the future of the hobby? I can’t imagine that in-person club meetings will disappear, but I’m sure more collectors will continue to adopt Instagram. Virtual communities and real communities will continue to mesh, and these collectors will continue to enjoy their shared interest, whether or not the outgroup understands it. In the words of the club’s Vice President, “it’s geeky, but isn’t that what drives us all?”
