there's an essay called "squad wealth" by toby shorin et al. about the proto-institution of squads forming as a rejection of individualism and an alternative to the amorphous identity of collectivism.

scheming with a group of no more than 12 people lets you move fast similar to the scrappiness of a startup, enabling social and creative production, financial coordination, but also emergent thinking only conceived in the presence of others.

they published this in 2020 when this was only an emerging trend: forming squads during the pandemic and slowly moving away from public social media. today private groups have become almost default. but the digital substrate is thinning and has lost some of its magic.

the existing gap imo is that squad formation used to happen incidentally through schools, neighborhoods, workplaces and now has to be its own project. the cultural infra for that, especially IRL, is still pretty uninspired.