How Fourth Spaces Are Redefining Community

Are we becoming dependent on online spaces to curate offline spaces? Maybe, but it's almost as if the internet has become a large sorting hat. And you can pull whatever it is that you want out of the hat and be a part of that community in real time. So it's not that four spaces out of the internet are replacing real life. It's almost that this side's helping people decide who they want to be faster. Right? Rather than having to go through the friction of being a part of something, I can be a part of it online and then fast track my way to doing it in real life. QHumpfree, director of Creative Intelligence at WGSN. The power of connection can be hard to describe and sometimes hard to come by, but it is a feeling we all create nonetheless. Now, no doubt you've heard of third spaces, but have you heard of fourth spaces? Today we're discussing this new phenomenon and why our online behaviors are increasingly curating how we experience in real life events. We're going to explore space, community and why we want it more than ever before. To explain exactly what fourth spaces are and why they're becoming increasingly popular and important, I'm joined by Quentin Humpfree, WGSN's director of Creative Intelligence. So Q, welcome finally to Lives of Tomorrow. We've been trying to get you on this podcast for some time. Can you introduce yourself to our listeners? Absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you for having me, Karla. This has been a long time coming, but honored to be with you and to be chatting about all things futuristic. My name is Quentin Humpfree. Everyone calls me Q for short, just one letter, very easy to remember. I am the director of Creative Intelligence, which is a new dimension of our content team at WGSN. I have been with WGSN for what seems like a lifetime, but it's only been eight years. I guess that is a lifetime in millennial ages. Before we get into today's topic, which I'm really interested to talk about, I just have to tell our listeners or perhaps anyone who's watching clips of this on social, so I turned up for this podcast, wearing something different. I've actually recorded two podcasts today and I was trying like change my top during it. Then Q turned up in this very cool cardigan, am I? We haven't changed it again, so that we were matching. If you're wearing anything close to what Q's wearing, then you are definitely on-trend. I'm ending my week feeling very on-trend because I'm sort of matching you today. Right, that has nothing to do with today's topic. We're not talking about fashion at all. We are talking about fourth spaces. Can you define fourth spaces as a starting point? Absolutely. Fourth spaces are the new frontier for belonging. Eventbrite actually coined the term earlier this year. They did some interesting research and they're defining them as gatherings that turn your online interests into IRL community. It starts online and then it fizzles out in person. I guess for me the simplest way to put this is that their real life gatherings got started on the computer or on the screen. What's interesting about fourth spaces is they're anchored in passion as opposed to third spaces that are anchored in your postcode. You go to the specific place, you're at the third space. The fourth space is you're interested in this topic or hobby, so you show up wherever the hobby leads you to. Okay, that makes complete sense. What's your fourth space? Give us a little mini case, a Q case study. Fourth spaces are interesting because they're still fresh. So it's almost tough to say this is mine, but I would say my fourth space is rap rave. It's my community, it's my crew, it's my ecosystem. We started off on Discord almost five to six years ago and it was just a cluster of music lovers. We were sharing music, swapping tracks and we realized the real magic happens when we took it offline. We did our first party back in 2021 and we've since hosted a few parties across continents here in the US, in Eastern Europe, all the way over to Tokyo. We've met so many collaborators, creatives, but again, that's the magic of four spaces. You take that URL magic and continuity of being online with each other and you turn it into a heartbeat that comes alive in real time. Beautiful. Okay, I don't think I have a fourth space and I'm trying to work out whether that's because of my age or because I have no free time, but by the time this podcast comes out, I'm going to try and define what my fourth space is or maybe just get a life and actually try and meet some people in real life. I should tell you this is probably quite tragic. My fourth space probably is the office because if you look back over the last five years, lots of people came into our organization in a virtual way because we weren't in offices and now we're back in offices, so maybe my fourth space is the office. That's right. There's no premature as well that it's tough to say this is a fourth space. It's almost what you make it and again, it's just blending those worlds. We say, "Figital all the time," right? So it's not so much your fourth space. What do you do online that you like to do in real life, too? That's a good way to start to think about what your fourth space is. I'm going to ask you next year, top of the year when you have some time to marinate on it. Okay, all right. That's my homework. Can you give maybe a bit more context to the topic by breaking down the landscape of the fourth space, the economy? Great question. I think it's, I love the word economy, but I think it's a bit tricky to call four spaces in economy just yet. That feels a bit premature. It's more like a climate that's forming, right? It's bubbling up and it's a lot of these hobby-based communities that are technically four spaces, but I guess they wouldn't call themselves that. If you are, for instance, in a band and you make a Britpop, right? Someone classified you as that. You would say we're a Britpop band, right? And it's almost like that's what four spaces are. They're bubbling up and we're starting to classify them as that, but they don't necessarily have that commercial viability yet. And so we're watching a whole ecosystem change, platforms, discord servers, fandoms, hobbyists, circles, local scenes, micro subcultures, all these things that could emerge as four spaces, but it's tough to put them in that category. And I'm sure Carly, you know from all the communities that you're a part of and subcultures that you're interested in, you know, even if it is a subculture, you wouldn't necessarily call it that in its moment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That makes absolutely sense. So then let's think about why is there such an apotype for fourth spaces? Why is this, why is this beginning to kind of grow right now? I think there are a few forces converging at once. First, we have digital fatigue. How many screens are we on? How many orderings do we have? How many times a day do we find ourselves scrolling? Actually, you just got to ordering myself after you told me how good the customer service was. I really did. I did. You mentioned that they replace your battery and you ring very quickly and I was like, I like that kind of customer service. I'll get one. There you go. I should be on some kind of like, I don't know, affiliation for aura because I'm raving about that customer service to everyone at the moment. I mean, I'm raving about the fact I quite like it because it's given me lots of good health data and it's not a screen. That's actually why I got it. So I guess it feeds into both topics here, which was I'm on my laptop. I'm on my phone. I used to have my Apple watch. I was like, I've just got too many things, too many screens to look at. So I replaced it with aura. But yes, another that the customer service is exceptional. I've told everybody at work about it and now I've got people like you buying or a ring. So, or I call me. So, we need some extra love because Karli, clearly doing the Lord's working, getting everyone to subscribe. But it's that digital fatigue. So a few forces at work, digital fatigue, of course. So that's why we have the aura ring because we're so tired of looking at the screens and all of the things that you can't actually touch. But then there's also this craving for a hybrid nature. So even when you're tired of the screen, sometimes you want to be connected to something online. But equally, you want to see what it looks like in real life. And so young people especially are craving digital and physical. And then I guess the last one I'd say is the idea of niche belonging. There's a lot of fragmented communities. You might feel a part of something because you've seen it on TikTok. Mainstream culture feels too big, feel too polished, sometimes homogenous in a way. But niche communities, that's where the soul is. The soul of the internet is in these niche pockets that bubble up and make their way to the mainstream because they were authentically themselves. And we know that almost 90% of US youth engage in niche groups, whatever it is. So it's early to say it, but it feels like there's more than a small shift coming. There's like a watershed moment happening where we feel like these small communities are bringing this sense of niche belonging, which is driving this world where we want to be a part of communities online and offline. So is it too early for brands to think about this as a point of activation? Is this a kind of watch, wait and see, or is this something that brands should be gearing themselves up to take advantage of? Phenomenal question, I think the art of strategy is knowing what not to do. And so if you're a brand that already has a deeply engaged online community, four spaces might be a natural evolution to expand your pop of strategy, maybe lean into the idea of a brand residency and just leaning into your store or spaces being a cultural hub. So it's natural if you already have that, but if you don't have that hyper online consumer or community, then don't force it. Sit back, observe, learn, read into it, see how you can support and contribute to what four spaces are becoming as opposed to trying to capitalize on a moment, because it's not always a commercial opportunity. Sometimes things are moments to just learn and understand where the culture is going. So which brands would you or we don't need to be specific Take care. about the actual brands, but maybe brand spaces or industries. Do you see having a sort of natural affiliation with this trend? - Absolutely, this trend is interesting because it touches on so many things that we've covered on WGES and Insight. And brands as a retail hub, right, is something we've known forever. But brands as a point of connection, a point of content, we see so many brands shifting into content creation hubs, where there's stores a place where you can shoot video and record photos and really do things that allow you to share your momentum of being in the space. One brand that I think is one of the phenomenal job of a here in New York is MC Studios. And they started off doing brand activations and experiential moments, but very recently they opened a showroom in Soho, it's on Canal and Broadway, and showroom where creators can borrow clothes. You can read books in the library, you can work, you can have a coffee, equally they have their own app where you can share photos of your entire, when you wear the clothes, you can post images. So it's very online, but there is a physical touch point. And that seems like a shift from what we've seen before where brands have a store and then they go online, MC Studios sort of reverse engineered it. And even though it is in one place, it does start, it feels like that early art of what the for space will look like from a brand perspective. - I think what's interesting about coming back to your personal experience of this, is that it felt very global. And the meeting up is not just in, it's not isolated to one small area of the world or one small area of a city. Is that normal in this? Would you say that's a good example of for space, sort of activation, or do you think that that's quite unique to your experience of it? - I think that's what a for space is in its essence. They can be location agnostic. And so I use MC Studios as an example. I guess that's a bit of a nuanced example because it has a physical post, right? The real for space is something I just pops up anywhere. So maybe it's in London this week, next month it's in Berlin, help months later it's in LA, it's an online community that can get together wherever based on their shared interests. And you might not be able to always participate in it, but when the for space is accessible for you, that's when you leave your screen and you go to the scene. - Okay, give me a generational lens on this. So is this predominantly being kind of powered by Gen Z is this happening across multiple different generations? Who's the demographic that's driving it? - I'd say this is happening across several demographics. Millennials, younger millennials are definitely a part of this conversation. Gen Z is driving it, but I think alphas will carry it into the next element where we actually start to see for spaces become a more commonly used phrase. And so if you think about millennials being digitally native, internet native, right? Gen Z of course are internet native and internet fluid. Gen Alpha are maybe AI native and also internet fluid. So their interests start online and then make themselves to the real world whereas millennials have the best of both worlds. So I'd say it's cross generational, but we're gonna start to see alphas carry this for space into a dimension where it's a bit easier to spot. - So I'm just thinking about the sort of sporting side of it. You know, is this sort of old school getting together in a field and kicking a football round or a soccer ball in your life? - Absolutely. It's exactly that. It's kicking around a football, it's playing volleyball. The beauty of this is you can be however specialized you are. It doesn't necessarily make you a bigger part of the community, right? - Yeah. - It's accessible from all fronts. And so we talk about the idea of the social sweat and I'll go back to Gen Z right now where they are on the dance floor as much, which is a bit sad for me, but you know, they aren't dancing as much, they aren't clubbing as much, but the social sweat means a lot for them. And so that force base could be them chatting online within telegram, signal, discord, we chat, whatever they like and then saying, "Hey, five of us are in the city. Let's get together and skateboard. Let's get together and kick around the football." And so sporting is a big part of that because we know it's a social fabric, right? That connects different communities and at the same time, we know that there's a bit of a downturn in nightlife and partying. So the alternative activities that are analog, that are more tactile are a big part of that and sports and the social sweat is a huge component. - The social sweat, I haven't heard that one before. That's a black mark against my name as if somebody runs a train of forecasting company. Okay, we're gonna pause for a moment on the topic to get to know you a little bit better. So we've got some quick fire questions. First thing that comes into your head. First of all, what did you say you wanted to be when you grew up? - When I was growing up. - When I was growing up, I think I was a Mr. Noatall. And so I thought I would be a teacher. My God, I think. - But yeah, I thought I would be a teacher. I guess later in my high school days, primary school, I realized I wasn't the best student. So it would be hard to deal with someone like myself. So I quickly changed my tune and I think fashion is what drew me to New York. And so initially it was teaching and then it was design and fashion. But I guess a combination of those two was how we landed in forecasting, right? It's teaching and understanding, but also the design and aesthetic architecture that keeps me going. - I love this question because you do get to know quite a lot about people when you ask them it. So that's fascinating. All right. What is your most frequently used app? - I'm almost embarrassed to say, but X formerly Twitter is my most used app. I love the silliness and the real time updates. Equally, I like the world where you still have to use words to communicate something. - Yeah. - Right now on many platforms, we're seeing content that might be AI generated or might not be, and that's not to say that that also isn't on X, but you still need to use words. So however you communicate it, even if it is an AI image or a video, there's still some kind of human syntax that goes into bringing that thought to life. - Your favorite AI tool. - So this is a contentious topic for me because I think my favorite tool in AI space is perplexity. I like the idea of a research tool. That's good at scraping things. Equally, I know there are other tools that folks are hot and cold about. One of them is Suno, which is an AI music app. Really, I guess interesting topic because a lot of artists are aware of it because AI is doing a music with some folks described as an ethical to the arts. But for instance, we can make a funny WGSN jingle just using the app and encourage the teams to be a little bit more engaged and proactive. And so I think there's a beauty of being able to make songs just from our prompt. But I think perplexity is my favorite. Suno is one that I'm interested in to see how we can change how we just communicate together as friends and communities. - Nice, okay. A bit more of a traditional question. What's the song that you currently have on repeat? Right now I have an unreleased rap rave track called Heaven. And it's produced by two folks, one Stony Blue, who's from Texas, Belives here in New York, and another producer called Tom Hanna, who actually lives in London in Gullet, Shabli. So little bit south. - Oh wow. And the chords are lush and cinematic. And there's this beautiful juxtaposition of the afterlife in a hazy nightclub, right? So it's the hook is, I found Heaven in the club. But it's like, club, Heaven, those are kind of different things. And so it almost feels like you're crossing a sunrise across two continents at once. So it's a great combination of the UK dance scene and Chicago house music, but it's a really fun track. - The last thing you took off your bucket list. - I was fortunate enough to go to Indonesia this year to Bali. If you seen me in the last three months, you know, I can't stop talking about it. Besides the food being incredible and the fashion being really aspirational, the trip gave me a lot of perspective on the power of stillness. And what happens when you truly slow down. And we talk about that a lot at WGSN, being more mindful and being intentional. But until you put yourself in a space to be bored, to be idle, then you realize how great it is for your productivity, for everything else that you wanna do. So all of that to say, it's important to spend time purposely doing nothing with intention. I'm intentionally not doing anything. I'm staring at the wall. I am being bored because that is what's going to keep your battery full for a longer period of time. - Lots of this is kind of riffing on the podcast that we recorded earlier about our top trends and digital privilege and all of those kind of things and the just switching off, which we do so infrequently. And okay, but we are not talking about that particular trend today. We are on fourth spaces. So let's get back to the topic in hand. So you're a forecaster. What are you forecasting for fourth spaces in the next five to 10 years? - I genuinely believe that the next generation of unicorns, right, these massive billion dollar businesses may emerge from four spaces. These communities are the new incubators. And eventually maybe they can be the next accelerators. We've talked about MVC at WGSN for quite some time, right? The minimum viable community. And so that's those small, intentional, value-led, high trust communities that start as communities before they roll out a product. And four spaces are just that they're the physical expression of what those MVCs are, right? So you've started the community, everyone's engaged, everyone's online, and then you do something in person. You realize there's a demand for a product or a service or a specific need that we're feeling because we found out online. And so I think it'll be interesting to see how companies are. birth from discord servers. And I think that's what that's what four spaces have the power to do expectatively, but we'll have to see. Okay. And what trends within the four spaces then have already caught your attention that you see having an impact on how we live our lives? We're no longer looking at mainstream media to validate us. Right? We don't look at the top of the pyramid and say, hey, this is happening. So we should also conform to this. It almost starts within and then it goes out. And so if you think about all the running clubs we've seen, we say running clubs with the new dating apps, those are effectively four spaces as well, right? You keep in touch online. We decide to meet up at the park. We decide to meet up in East London and hackney and go for a bit of a run, virtual book clubs, coding circles, anime meetups. This touches every industry and every community differently. Some communities are more analog and they want to be in person. Others are online and they start in a place that feels safe and anonymous and eventually feel comfortable enough to do that. But in each community, they're exploding. And so I think what catches my attention the most of the fact that this isn't specific to a generation or a graphic or a demographic, this can touch every crevice of culture that feels like it's connected to more than one person at once. It's really interesting because a lot of what we're talking about kind of ties into that nostalgia. Macro trend, which has been so big for so many years now and it doesn't really show any sign of waning. But things like running clubs, I mean, that's not a new concept and yet the number of people who are now partaking in that is huge and it's only increasing. And again, the forecasts are it more people are going to be partaking in that. Now that's tied into other sort of wellness trends and sort of people investing in their own health, but also things that don't cost a huge amount of money to do. So there's all these kind of trends crossing here as we're talking about this particularly, but it is these kind of you could say it niche, but running, reading, you know, they're not niche things that people participate in lots of people do it, but they're fueling this trend and many others as a consequence, which I find really interesting. Exactly. And what's interesting to think about is, are we becoming dependent on online spaces to curate offline spaces? It's almost that this that it's helping people decide who they want to be faster. Right. Yeah. It's like dipping your toe in, you're testing it without too much commitment. And are these people a community that you feel connected to? Does this thing resonate with you? Are you prepared to then take the extra step, the extra piece of effort? And then hopefully get huge amount back as a consequence, which comes to the topic that you and I were talking offline about, which is the, you know, bringing people together and how important that is. Absolutely. What if we get into any sort of specific industries and, you know, we've touched on running and things like that? What about the kind of food space? That's one again, endlessly fascinating kind of touches everybody. Where do you see your opportunities in four spaces if you're a, you know, a food starter or you're working the bed out space? What are the opportunities with four spaces? Beauty of four spaces is that they are location agnostic. So you can make a business model off of that. Think a pop up ramen collective, a nomadic supper club, right? Those are the sort of things that are available to you if you want to pop up in a new city. If you think about a business trying to penetrate a new market, if you're a four space, you already have your community there. So you know where you can pop up. It isn't about like, Hey, should we do a pop up here and see if anyone comes? We know our people are here. So when we show up, it's more of a contentional family moment as opposed to just a commercial opportunity. Yeah, that's the big takeaway from this conversation is this is not something to be commercialized for sake of commerciality at the moment. This is something that if you're in the brand space, you have the opportunity to maybe help facilitate or actually, a humble kind of facilitate not infiltrate. So create those spaces to bring people together. Or if you are a founder and you're within one of these kind of niche areas, then you have an absolute right to play. I imagine a right to really lead that conversation and then you can do it the way. But this isn't a big sponsorship opportunity right now. Absolutely. And I think the sponsorship you want to be delicate with because again, these communities flourish on their passions and their values. Yeah. So if you can support a passion or a value by all means, but this is an opportunity for product placement or to slap a logo on something, you want to make sure that you're elevating, supporting and appreciating the beauty of whatever these communities have going on. Yeah. Just thinking, I don't know why this has come to mind, but there's a sort of, I guess a parental aspect to this as well, which is, you know, there are lots of parents who are worried about their kids still sort of stuck inside that they haven't, you know, they were of a certain age when the pandemic came around, perhaps haven't got used to socializing. This is a really kind of nice way of sort of leading people back into that in real life world. What do you think about that? I absolutely agree. I have siblings who are 10 years younger, who are Gen Z. And because they went to high school, they're the pandemic, they have a different set of soft skills and social skills. And so if you think about a generation that maybe didn't get to go to school every day and shake hands or give hugs, these online spaces are sort of how they break the ice, right? So rather than walking up and saying, hey, I'm Carla nice to meet you. Happy birthday of school. It's almost like, oh, I played with you on Xbox before. Like, I'm familiar with your avatar. So it makes it easier in person. And so it's just a generational shift. Obviously, a lot of drivers pushing that, but from a parental perspective, I think it's great to think about a child or someone you're looking after being passionate about something and being connected to it and then realizing it. Like self-actualization can come from an online community that you actually connect to in real life as well. So a massive opportunity. But of course, we want to tread lightly and make sure all things are safe, covered and protected. Yeah. But it's a great opportunity to think about where those identity and expression drivers can come from and what that means for folks who just want to meet up and do something in real life from seeing someone online. Amazing. Really, really interesting. Thank you so much, Q. Now, last question is always, are you more positive, anxious, hopeful? What's your, what's your kind of emotions about this particular trend as you look to the future? Another insight term I'll throw out there. I am cautiously optimistic. Okay. And I say that because I'm hopeful for four spaces to remind us that community isn't dying. It's evolving. They're still there, but I'm cautious because like any movement, there are some risks, right? Over commercialization, burnout from participating too much. The temptation to scale too fast if brands get involved. But overall, I think we're entering a new decade where connection is becoming more creative, right? And we're embracing friction to be a part of the communities that we care about the most. So looking at community is not a chore, but a craft. Like there's a craft to hosting. There's a craft to being a part of a community. And I think that's why I'm optimistic, but cautious because I want to tread lightly and make sure that I'm being delicate with folks who are generally a part of these spaces. Amazing. Your debut on Lives of Tomorrow was as wonderful as I expected it to be. And that means that you're going to have to come back again soon. Thank you so much for having me. It's truly an honor and a privilege and I can't wait for round two. A big thank you to Q Humphrey, director of Creative Intelligence at WGSN. Please check out other podcasts, create tomorrow with my amazing colleague, Cassandra Nathalie. That's it for me for now. I'll return with a new episode of Lives of Tomorrow in 14 days. My name is Carla Bessarshi and the CEO of WGSN and I'll see you next time.