Why some communities become collaborative while others turn territorial, and what that reveals about belonging

Some communities feel expansive. People share resources freely, celebrate each other’s wins, and welcome newcomers like there is enough room for everyone. Other spaces feel guarded. Information gets hoarded, collaboration feels performative, and every new voice quietly registers as competition.

In this solo episode, Tonya Kubo explores why that difference is rarely about whether people are “good” or “bad” and almost always about structure. Using examples from fiction writing communities, nonfiction publishing, online business spaces, and personal development ecosystems, Tonya breaks down how scarcity shapes behavior and how communities unintentionally teach people whether to connect or protect themselves.

This episode digs into the emotional architecture behind collaboration, competition, trust, and belonging. Why do some spaces naturally create generosity while others create defensiveness? Why do people become territorial when identity, expertise, or authority are tied to success? And what happens when communities reward visibility, curiosity, and shared discovery instead of exclusivity?

More than anything, this conversation is an invitation to stop asking whether people are “engaged enough” and start asking what behaviors the space itself rewards. Because communities do not become collaborative by accident. They become collaborative when safety, generosity, and contribution are intentionally reinforced.

You’ll hear how:

• Fiction communities often feel more collaborative because success is additive, not mutually exclusive
• Scarcity changes how people share knowledge, support others, and respond to newcomers
• Nonfiction communities become more territorial when trust is tied to the creator instead of the idea
• Community structure teaches members how to behave, whether intentionally or not
• Psychological safety creates generosity while fear creates defensiveness
• Rewarding collaboration publicly changes the emotional temperature of a space
• Belonging grows when people stop treating each other like threats
• Ambition and collaboration do not have to exist in opposition to each other

Episode Highlights

[01:15] The difference between communities that feel like potlucks versus cage matches

[03:40] Why fiction ecosystems naturally encourage collaboration

[07:10] How nonfiction spaces tie trust to authority and identity

[10:45] Why self-help and business communities often become more territorial

[14:20] The role scarcity plays in shaping community behavior

[17:05] Why plagiarism fears feel more personal in nonfiction spaces

[20:10] How communities teach members what behaviors are rewarded

[23:15] The connection between psychological safety and generosity

[26:00] Why belonging grows when people stop treating each other like threats

[28:05] The question every community leader should ask about their space

Resources & Mentions

• Episode 024 – Interview with Michelle Chouinard
• Clutter-Free Academy by Kathi Lipp
• The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

Meet Your Host

Tonya Kubo is a community strategist, marketing consultant, and rebel with a cause: helping people find the place where they truly belong. For nearly two decades, she’s built online spaces that feel less like comment sections and more like chosen family. She’s the fixer you call when your Facebook group has gone straight-up Lord of the Flies and the bouncer at the door of internet nonsense. As the host of Find Your Freaks, Tonya brings together unconventional thinkers and bridge-builders who know “normal” was never the point. Her favorite spaces? The ones where the freak flags fly high.

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What’s Next

Next time, Tonya Kubo sits down with Dr. Catrina Mitchum to explore why accessibility is not just a compliance issue — it’s the foundation of belonging. Together, they unpack what it really means to create online spaces where people can fully participate, connect, and thrive.

If you are somebody who runs a community or even if you're in a community and it doesn't feel quite right and you're not sure if you should stay or you should go, I want you to ask yourself these questions. What behaviors does the community reward? Does it reward sharing knowledge or does it reward hoarding knowledge? Does it reward visibility, being openly participatory or does it not? Does it reward generosity? When somebody jumps in to help somebody else out, does the leader call attention to that in a positive way? People will always adapt to the emotional temperature of the room. Communities will always respond to what is incentivized.

If you realize that the community will behave in a way that they see rewarded, then you can make a community that should be territorial by default a very collaborative space. We're wired for connection, but most of us are faking it to fit in. I'm Tonya Kubo, and this is Find Your Freaks, the podcast that flips the script and spotlights the quirks you thought you had to keep quiet.

Subscribe now and head to findyourfreaks.com for show notes and extras, because around here, what makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point. Hey there, freaks.

Have you ever noticed how some communities feel like a potluck? And, you know, everybody brings something to the table, people swap recommendations freely, new folks get welcomed in with grace and enthusiasm, and somebody else's success feels exciting because it expands the whole room. Everybody needs a slice of Aunt Martha's pie and they want the recipe. Then there's communities that feel like a cage match.

Right? People guard the information, they avoid revealing too much, they don't want to share resources, and collaboration always feels surface level at best, right? It's performative, there always feels to be something underneath, right? Like everybody's angling for something under the guise of seeming collaborative. And everybody who walks in who has a similar idea rather than creating super friends, they start to feel like a threat. You know, when I spoke recently to best-selling mystery author Michelle Chouinard, our conversation covered a wide swath of space.

I mean, we talked about everything from fandom to serial killer tourism and even true crime writing ethics. But underneath that conversation about books in fandom was a much bigger question. Why do some communities become collaborative while other communities become territorial? One thing that Michelle said is that mystery writers were one of the most gracious, inclusive communities she had ever encountered.

And while she used terms like generous and kind to describe the writers who supported her throughout her career, I don't think the difference between this community and others is as simple as certain people being nicer than others. I think actually what matters more is structure. In fiction, readers usually consume broadly, right? Like readers are super fans of the genre, maybe they're super fans of specific aspects of a storyline, you know, but nobody ever says, I already read one mystery author, I'm done forever, right? Nobody read one Agatha Christie book and said they never needed to read another mystery again.

Nobody said, oh that's it, it's Agatha Christie or bust, I'm never gonna read Poe, I'm never gonna read Tom Clancy, I'm not gonna read anything else, it's just Agatha Christie for the rest of my life, right? That's just not how fiction operates. But in the non-fiction world, it's a totally different story. When you look at non-fiction, I mean, non-fiction covers a wide variety of genres, right? There's memoir in there, there's autobiography, but when you look at the top selling titles, they usually fall under business and self-help.

You know, we oftentimes refer to prescriptive non-fiction, which is like a how-to book, but really it's a self-help book. So if you think about it, right, self-help can be relationships, right? It can be parenting books, it can be marital romantic relationship books, it can be books about friendship, can also be, you know, books about yourself, like hacking your own brain, how to handle neurodivergence, neurodivergent parenting, neurodivergent friendships, like all of that falls under that self-help category. So does, you know, anything that's diet and fitness, living with chronic illness, couch to 5k, like any of that stuff, right, all falls under self-help.

And then you've got your business books, right? I think that's the other main seller in the non-fiction category. And in those cases, which is very very different from fiction as a whole, but especially from mystery, is that the value proposition of the book oftentimes is or is very closely tied to the author's lived experience. So the book is often their framework, right? It is their baby, this the methodology that they have birthed into existence.

But, you know, a lot of people who found Kathy's book Clutter-Free and who fell in love with it, fell in love with it for all the reasons that it was different from Marie Kondo's book. And the people who loved Marie Kondo's book loved it for all the ways and reasons it was different from other books about organization and decluttering and such. And so because of that, because you're either usually in one camp or the other, you know, nobody says, I'm following the Clutter-Free method with some inspiration from the KonMarie method, it makes collaboration a lot more complicated.

It makes collaboration a lot more complicated across the spectrum. You will typically find in nonfiction, an agent will typically only represent one author with one specialty. You won't find an agent who says, I represent all authors who focus on home organization and decluttering.

Usually they'll say, you know, I represent prescriptive nonfiction or I represent nonfiction. I'll take, you know, history buffs, but I can't have five World War II historians. I can only have like one or two World War II historians, depending on your focus.

I have one self-improvement health and fitness coach. I have one diet coach. I have one home organization clutter author.

And then that's it, right? And then with publishers, they may publish titles with similar focuses, but there's usually three to five years between those titles, right? They're not going to publish them all at the same time. So again, it's a lot harder to collaborate in that nonfiction space than it is in a fiction space just because there truly is more scarcity involved. And so what I thought would be interesting is to, with you, explore this idea of why some communities become rising tide communities, right? Like everybody's in it together because they know when one of us wins, all of us win.

And why others are more scarcity driven and what happens when belonging gets tangled up with the competition. So going back to the interview with Michelle, one thing that I think is important to remember is that the ecosystem of fiction is additive, right? So I would say fiction ecosystems are more about like more is merrier versus there can be only one, right? It's a Highlander. You know, one thing that Michelle said that I wrote down is that nobody in the world ever said, I only read one mystery writer, right? Like I brought that up, you know, at its core, mystery, like other fiction genres, you know, thinking of romance, romanticy, fantasy, they're an escape from reality and readers hunger for that escape regularly.

Like people who love to read a good novel are people who really want to just take a step from reality for a moment. They want to immerse themselves into a different world. They want to either become a character or be part of the all seeing narrator who is guiding them through the story with the character.

And then the other piece, which, you know, I've kind of described, but I want to call out is that fans oftentimes become bridges between creators instead of gatekeepers. So what I mean by that is back when Clutterfree came out, I remember, you know, that's part of how I got to work with is that book came out and as the daughter of a hoarder, it totally changed my life. It changed my perspective on the challenges I had with clutter personally.

It also changed my perspective on my mom's challenges with stuff. I mean, I knew my mom was a hoarder. I knew that was a mental illness, but I didn't know, right? Like there's like one thing to know at the surface level, there's another thing to know to the core of your being.

I didn't know how deeply that affected me. And also all the other stuff around the hoarding disorder and also what I could do to stop that cycle. I learned a lot of that from reading Kathy's book.

Now I have not read The Magical Art of Tidying Up. I've read like the first two chapters and like chapter one, I was like, oh yeah, this person doesn't get me. And then I saw a couple of like interviews on TV with Marie Kondo and I was like, oh yeah, we are not cut from the same cloth here, right? Your life is not my life.

My life is not your life. And so, you know, when I was at a social event, if somebody was talking about how they were like con marine their whole house, I was like, oh yeah, I do not see myself in that picture. And I instantly knew that wasn't somebody that I could discuss my own decluttering journey with because they had a very different perspective of what the priorities were with decluttering, what a kept house meant, didn't mean, all of that.

And because clutter-free is a system. Sold a system for decluttering your home and keeping it that way. Magical Art of Tidying Up sold a system for decluttering your home and keeping that way.

I would argue it was much more about organization, but I'm not going to split hairs there. So you either follow one type of system or the other. You're either passionate about this system or the other system because the systems don't intertwine.

They don't work together. They're not designed to work together. It's one or the other.

It's the same thing with parenting books, right? Are you a gentle parent? Do you follow the connected parent philosophy? Do you follow the positive discipline philosophy? Do you follow the spare the rod, spoil the child philosophy? Do you follow something in between, right? There is like no shortage of different types of parenting books out there. But if you have a friend and she has got like 10 different parenting books on her shelf, it's not because all 10 of those books worked. It's because it took her 10 books to find the method that worked for her.

It's almost like her bookshelf is almost her resume of what she has done to try to solve her parenting challenges. So with non-fiction, you're either all in on one author's way or you're on the search to being all in on an author's way. It's rare that you will find different methodologies that work together.

It does happen in some cases, but not always. And most authors are hopeful that their way is the one way to rule them all for you, right? Because that is their future job security of writing more books. Because if you can buy into this one methodology, right, then they can take you to say level two, level three, level four with subsequent books.

Or if you buy into that methodology, then they can present that methodology with different angles and you will buy those, right? You'll become all in on their ecosystem. And if they've got offers on the other side of their book, which some do, some sell courses, some sell programs, some have just like merch lines, whatever that is, you'll buy those things too, right? Because their one book changed your life. Their one book is the one way to rule them all for you.

So that in and of itself, I think explains objectively why you don't see the level of collaboration in nonfiction spaces that you see in fiction spaces. And I think, you know, while Michelle is a mystery writer and she can only really speak of mystery writer communities, I have heard the exact same thing said about communities with fantasy writers, communities of romance writers, and then communities of writers that merge genres or books with paranormal speculative fiction. That's what it's called, speculative fiction.

Those are much more collaborative communities than your nonfiction spaces. And again, it's because when you read a fiction book, it's done, right? You immerse yourself into the story. You close the book.

Maybe you talk about the characters. I wonder why they did this, or what about this, or when's the next book coming out? Are we ever going to hear so-and-so story? For the most part, my experience with the book was done the moment I closed it. And, you know, I'm waiting for the next book to come out.

When I read a nonfiction book, I mean, sometimes the reason that I will finish a book or not finish the book has to do with the fact that they ask for implementation, and some are easier to implement than others. And some of them, if I'm not quite in a place where that book necessarily applies to me 100%, I can't even implement it, right? And so then I have to go, okay, well, is there enough story here to move me through the book if I'm not doing any of the exercises? Can I share the identity of other fans of this book if I'm not able to check all the boxes the book is asking me to check? And many of these books do require some form of long-term commitment. Mystery writer is just saying, just buy my book and just read it, or at least give it a check.

Very different. So, you know, with any type of fiction, not just mystery, all readers are invited to explore. Explore this book, explore this series, explore other authors, explore other, you know, similar topics.

And when you're looking at non-fiction, especially, you know, the self-help books, the business books, they're asking you to make a commitment. And there is this feeling of infidelity if you try to commit to more than one author who writes about the same thing. The other thing that we see, and this comes down to framework, right? Because mystery books aren't selling you a framework.

The writer may be following a specific framework to tell you the story, but they're not selling you on the framework. And so with non-fiction, you know, your trust in the framework gets tied directly to trust in the creator. Because this book solved this problem better than anything else, you now trust anything that author puts out to solve that problem.

And so what that, you know, speaks to really is the difference in how we bond, right? So fiction readers as a community bond to the story, they bond to the characters, they bond to the worlds being built. And in non-fiction, you bond to authority, to the credibility of the author, maybe to the author's personality, to their lived experience. Maybe their lived experience is similar to yours, or maybe it's completely opposite, but their perspective on it is very interesting to you.

Or maybe it's their expertise. Maybe you have bonded to this particular author because they have a PhD and 20 years of research on the topic, but you bond to another author because they're a journalist who has been covering this topic for 20 years and is now writing books based on, you know, the compilation of all the reporting and all the sources that they have spoken to over the years. And so you feel like they're giving you a much more holistic picture, but it comes from you having faith and trust in the experience that they're bringing into the book.

And so when trust in the book gets intertwined with trust in the author, you can see where criticism and competition feel much more personal. But with non-fiction, you've got not only does the criticism feel more personal because to some degree they're arguing with your lived experience. The other thing that I don't think non-writers think about very often, but when we're looking at community and that difference between what makes them competitive versus collaborative, we also have to think about plagiarism and theft of intellectual property.

Plagiarism is an issue across the creative spaces. I am not even going to go down the rabbit hole of all that is AI, right? But whether you write movies, you write books, you write courses, like there is copying going around. There just is.

But the plagiarism fears, I think, run higher in the non-fiction space because it all goes back to the author's credibility. I said, I write this thing. I say, this is, this is the way to live till you're a hundred.

Somebody else comes in. They publish that same exact thing, same exact story under a different title because their cover is prettier. They sell more copies.

And now suddenly everybody thinks I copied them and not them having copied me. That's a real fear in the non-fiction space. Like everybody's rushing.

I think that's why we have so much self-publishing happening with business books is because everybody's rushing to become the known expert on a thing before somebody else who has a bigger audience, bigger platform gets known for it. And so naturally creators do become protective of their work, protective of their frameworks. You know, they want to trademark them where in, when we're talking about fiction writing, it's like, there's no shortage of cop dramas.

There's no shortage of, you know, alpha male romances. Nobody's got the market cornered on that. Everybody writes it a little bit differently, but everybody writes it kind of at the same time.

It's just like, what trope are you using? You know, it's almost a mix and match, right? This kind of trope with this kind of topic in this kind of setting. And it becomes an entirely different story. And even if all the Lego blocks of the story are the same.

And so I think that's why you see a lot of territorial behavior happening in online business spaces. Like some of the most difficult communities I have ever had to manage or to repair have been business communities. And I see that a lot in a lot of online business spaces, a lot of fishing in other people's ponds, you know, people even teach that.

So I think the fact that they become territorial is natural, you know, back to in fiction, we sell stories and in nonfiction, we sell trust, we sell expertise. And that in and of itself just makes for a more competitive environment. So with all of that being said, does that mean that nonfiction authors don't have communities? No.

Does that mean you can't have great community as a nonfiction author? Or does that mean that if you aren't an author, episode has nothing for you? No, I don't think so. I think that back to what I said about structure, you know, communities will always respond to what is incentivized. And so if you realize that the community will behave in a way that they see rewarded, then you can make a community that should be territorial by default, a very collaborative space.

So those systems in place, having that structure tells people how to behave in the space and tells people how territorial they get to be, how collaborative they need to be. Going back to the earlier points, the scarcity that creates defensiveness, when people feel like there can only be one expert on this topic, they're naturally going to get defensive, they're naturally going to clamor to be that one expert. But if you can create an environment of abundance, right, there is enough pie to go around, there is more than enough for all of us, then you get that openness and that collaboration.

If you remember nothing else from this conversation, what I want you to remember is that communities, any community teaches its members how to behave. So if you are running a community or if you've been in a community and you want it to be much more collaborative than it is, recognize that it is the way it is because of how the structure of the community has taught the members to be and to change the culture and the climate is as simple as changing the structure to support different behaviors. So if you are somebody who runs a community or even if you're in a community who doesn't feel quite right, you're not sure if you should stay or you should go, I want you to ask yourself these questions.

What behaviors does the community reward? Does it reward sharing knowledge or does it reward hoarding knowledge? Does it reward visibility, being openly participatory or does it not? Does every time somebody tries to answer somebody else's question, do they get shot down because they're not an admin? I've seen that happen, it's awful. Does the community reward shared discovery or does it reward exclusivity? Does it reward generosity? When somebody jumps in to help somebody else out, does the leader call attention to that in a positive way? People will always adapt to the emotional temperature of the room, whether that room is online or in person. So to kind of tie this all up, what I would say is that belonging grows when people stop treating each other like threats.

I think a big part of that is finding your perfect people, right? When you come into a space where people understand your obsessions, you feel at home. And then there is a difference between fitting in and being understood. And so if you are somebody who runs communities, think about that.

Think about how you can help members feel understood versus making a place where they have to figure out how to fit in. And then always be thinking of ways to establish and promote safety. I talk a lot about psychological safety.

That is just that feeling that I can let my guard down when I'm in this space. But know that when people feel safe, they tend to be more generous, right? That scarcity mindset, that territorial behavior comes from fear and it comes from feeling like it's not safe here. And so if they can feel safe, they'll feel secure.

That will make them more generous. And then for your part, it really comes into just rewarding more of that collaborative, generous behavior. So I think the thought that I would like to leave you with today is that what sets, you know, Michelle's description of the mystery writer community apart from other author communities is not ambition.

It's not that nonfiction authors are more ambitious. They want to be bestsellers more than mystery authors. It's not that mystery authors are kind of ambivalent.

They don't care if they sell books or whatever. It's that you can be ambitious in the mystery genre without having to step on other people's heads to get to the top. Everybody can climb the top of the ladder together.

They can give each other boosts. And when one mystery writer gets a boost up, you know, they get on the bestseller list. It actually elevates the genre across the board and people start reading more mystery across the board.

On the nonfiction space, ambition doesn't have to come with isolation. It's just, that's kind of the nature of the beast these days, but it doesn't have to be like that. So if you are a community leader, regardless of what kind of community you're running, I want you to kind of explore how can you make it so that ambition and isolation aren't synonymous, don't have to be synonymous, right? How can people be ambitious in this community, be super active, be thought leaders in your community without overshadowing anybody else? Like rising tide raises all boats.

And if you are somebody who is active in communities, you're not running a community, I just want to encourage you that if you haven't yet found the room where your intensity matches everybody else's, where everybody is as enthusiastic as you are about the topic, keep looking, keep looking. There's a million and one communities out there, I kid you not, maybe two million. Your perfect people are out there, you just have to look for them, but you don't need to waste your time in spaces where you feel like you have to hide your true self in order to be accepted.

So to kind of land the plane here, the deeper issue between collaborative and competitive communities isn't really about the publishing industry, right? It's really about this is kind of a case study in what scarcity does to people. When people believe that there isn't enough room, enough opportunity, enough recognition, or enough safety, they will start protecting themselves and that protection will supersede any attempts at connection. And that changes how people share in a community, whether they collaborate, how they treat newcomers in a community, and how they respond to other people's successes.

So when I think of my conversation with Michelle, I don't just think of how supportive the mystery writers have been to her, I think of how that community structure allows every writer to believe that others' success does not prevent them from succeeding, does not get in the way or delay their own success. And that's a very powerful, encouraging belief. So remember, it's not about ambition, it's about the absence of threat.

And so if you're building a community, leading a community, or just trying to find your people, the number one question worth asking is what behaviors does this space reward? And if the space doesn't reward generosity, curiosity, or shared enthusiasm, then maybe it's not doing its job. Or maybe it's just not doing its job for you. So until next time, I want you to stay weird, stay freaky, and join us for the next interview, which will be all about accessibility.

And I can't wait to hear what you think. That's it for this episode of Find Your Freaks. To help more weirdos find their way here, subscribe, rate, and leave a review.

And if you're craving connection, join the freak show at findyourfreaks.com. What makes you weird, makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point.