Why I Even Bothered with “Flat Club”
You know, I was looking around, and everything just felt… too much. Too many layers, too many notifications, too many hoops to jump through. Like those companies where you need six approvals to change a comma. Drove me nuts. So, “flat club” wasn’t some grand vision, not at first anyway. It was more like a sigh, a need for something… well, flat. It was my little rebellion, I guess, against all that unnecessary fluff I kept bumping into everywhere, especially in some of the digital tools we’re all supposed to love.
Getting it Off The Ground – Or, More Like, On The Table
So, what did I do? Nothing fancy, that’s for sure. I didn’t draw up a 50-page business plan or try to get funding. Nah. I think I just grabbed a notebook, one of those cheap spiral-bound ones, and scribbled down a few core ideas. The main goal was dead simple: a place, or a way of doing things, where everything was just straightforward. No complicated hierarchies, no complex rules you needed a manual to understand. Just… a space to breathe and get things done without the usual song and dance.
My first actual steps were pretty basic, almost embarrassingly so:
- Figured out what “flat” really meant to me in this specific context. Was it about design? Communication? Structure? All of it, really.
- Thought about who might even care about such a thing besides myself. Maybe a couple of friends who also grumbled about the same stuff.
- Picked the simplest tools I could find to start. Seriously, I think the first version of “flat club” was just a shared document and a group chat with very strict “no nonsense” rules.
The Actual “Doing” Part
Actually building, or rather, setting up “flat club” was less about any technical wizardry and more about constantly reminding myself to stick to that “simple” rule. Every time I thought about adding a feature, or a new section, I’d have to stop and ask myself, “Does this make it less flat? Does this add a layer we don’t need?” If the answer was yes, or even a hesitant maybe, I’d usually just ditch the idea.
There were plenty of times I was tempted, you know? Like, “Ooh, maybe some user profiles with badges!” or “How about different levels of access permissions!” But then I’d remember why I started this whole thing in the first place. It was a constant battle against my own urge to overcomplicate things. It’s actually way harder than it sounds, trying to keep things genuinely simple and stripped down. We’re all kind of programmed to add, to embellish.
I remember one afternoon, I spent a whole hour fiddling with fonts and trying to decide on a “brand color.” Then I just burst out laughing. Flat club! It didn’t need a brand color. Black text on a white background, maybe a single accent color if I was feeling wild. Done. That’s the kind of vibe I was going for. No frills, just function.
So, What Is “Flat Club” Now?
Well, it’s not going to take over the world, and that’s perfectly fine with me. It never was the point. It’s basically evolved into a very stripped-down online space, kind of like a digital bulletin board or a super-focused forum that I share with a handful of friends and a few collaborators. We use it for specific projects where we just want to communicate clearly and get things done without the noise and distraction of bigger, more complex platforms. No endless DMs popping up, no algorithmic feeds trying to guess what I want to see. Just posts, in chronological order, about the stuff that matters for that particular thing.
It’s small, it’s quiet, and honestly, it works beautifully for what it is. Sometimes we just use it to share interesting articles or ideas without all the usual social media drama and performance. It’s my little quiet corner of the internet that doesn’t constantly scream for my attention.
What I Got Out Of It
This whole “flat club” experiment, it taught me a surprising amount. Mostly about how much conscious effort it takes to resist adding unnecessary complexity. We’re so conditioned to think “more features equals better,” but sometimes, less is just… less, and that’s exactly what’s needed. It’s like a little digital oasis. It’s definitely not for everyone, and it doesn’t even try to be. And that’s the whole point, I guess. It really reminded me that not everything needs to be a massive, scalable, venture-backed startup aiming for a billion users. Sometimes, a small, flat, simple space is all you need to be productive and, dare I say, a bit more peaceful. It definitely helped me clear my head after dealing with some ridiculously tangled-up projects at an old job. You know the type, where a simple request turns into a three-week series of committee meetings and a 100-email chain. Yeah, “flat club” was my quiet little antidote to all that noise.