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$1024 IN PRIZES FOR VIDEOS ON THE COMMUNISTIC SOCIETIES OF THE UNITED STATES
Next up in our interactive book club: The Communistic Societies of the United States, by Charles Nordhoff.
Back in 1875, "communistic" meant something more like "profitable voluntary commune" or "startup society" than its modern meaning. Around that time, Nordhoff toured America's intentional communities, like the Shakers, Harmonists, Oneida, and Amana. He wrote down their operational details, internal economics, bylaws, and failures. It's one of the best primary sources we have on successful (and unsuccessful) startup societies.
We want a video that discusses this book and these communities. What did they have in common, why did some last a century while others collapsed in years, and what can anyone starting new communities today learn from the past?
YOUR TASK
Make a 59 second (or less) vertical video with a 9:16 aspect ratio on this book. Assume your viewer has absolutely no context and is starting cold. Feel free to use AI, but please don't make it look or sound like AI slop :)
We'll give $512 for first place and $128 each for up to four runners-up, subject to whether there are enough good submissions. Winners are paid in USDC to their public Farcaster wallet addresses by default. To enter, reply to this post with your vertical video. This prize runs for three days exactly from this post's timestamp, after which we'll take a little time to review entries and make awards. Please note: we can't give detailed feedback to each submission today as there are often too many, but we'll try to automate this. However, we'll look at every quality entry.
For background, go read the book here[1]. Use AI to learn about it too. Then reply to this post with your video. The best will earn a prize!
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D4FKHLKY