The Lost Sense of Belonging

The rituals that still sell... and why the brands that win now feel more like tribes

Last week I was sat in a coffee shop in Tarifa, a small coastal town in southern Spain. I overheard two women catching up over iced matcha latte's. One had flown in from London, the other had settled there... part of the growing trend of people trading pace for presence.

The visiting friend was hyped. Buzzing, actually. And that stood out, because in truth, you don’t see much hype these days.

She’d managed to get a Hyrox ticket for Valencia. London was sold out. The whole event had become a scramble, and Valencia still had space. She was trying to convince her friend to come with her. The Tarifa one wasn’t moved. "I’m not paying that much for that," she laughed.

I smiled. Not at the conversation — but at the pattern. I’d just published a piece the day before about the slow death of hype. Algorithms are flattening culture. Brands are fighting for attention. Conversion is collapsing. But a few things still generate real-world energy — and Hyrox, for whatever reason, is one of them.

By the end of the week I was back in the UK, standing in a crowded pub full of Italians watching Napoli play. A big screen, hundreds of people, voices rising together. It didn’t matter that they were in a foreign city. For 90 minutes, they were home.

We used to have more of these moments: the album drop, the TV finale, the Saturday night out you’d talk about all week. These were our water cooler moments, and if you didn’t show up for them — the show, the game, the night out — you felt it. You weren’t just out of the loop, you were outside the conversation entirely. That, in its own way, was a form of belonging too... being part of the cultural rhythm, knowing the references, speaking the same language.

Now, the water cooler has become a Slack check-in, the album drops while you sleep, and the finale is something you’ll 'get to eventually'.

Culture hasn’t disappeared. It’s just stopped being shared.

But some things still gather us.

Football, for one. In Europe, it might be the last standing ritual that still unites people who’ve never met. In pubs, in plazas, in airport lounges, strangers stand shoulder to shoulder, singing the same songs, wearing the same colours, and feeling something together.

It’s not about the shirts. It’s about the sense of being part of something living. Memory, identity, emotion — all wrapped around a ball and a flag.

And then there’s Hyrox.

I’ll be honest... I don’t personally feel drawn to the event itself. But I do understand why it resonates. It offers what most modern experiences don’t: clear structure, earned recognition, shared adversity.

It’s not a brand. It’s a rite.

And when you finish, it’s not about the time. It’s about who saw you. Who cheered. Who clapped.

They don’t applaud the fastest. They applaud the ones who didn’t give up.

That matters.

Because when we’ve lost our temples and our town halls, when religion has thinned and politics has polarised, people still need somewhere to feel seen. Somewhere to sweat through struggle and come out the other side — not alone.

As someone who moves around a lot, I know what it means to search for that sense of place. Remote work, for all its gifts, also dissolves the default communities we once relied on. But I’ve found new ones.

At Nomadbase events. In co-working spaces. At Titan Fitness in Thailand, where people show up from every continent to heal, push themselves, and reconnect to the body.

These places don’t sell hype. They offer belonging.

And that’s what we’re buying now — not products, not programs, not “lifestyles.” We’re buying a place to land.

Hyrox is ritualised suffering. Football is inherited identity. Nomad retreats are temporary tribes. They’re all trying, in different ways, to answer the same question:

Where do I belong?

The brands that win in the next decade won’t be the loudest. They’ll be the ones that offer people a real sense of place — even for a moment. The feeling of being in the room. Of being witnessed. Of being part of something that didn’t need a feed to exist.

So no, I don’t think hype is making a comeback. But meaning is. And the two aren’t the same.

If you see someone crying at the end of a Hyrox race... don’t assume it’s about fitness.

It might be the first time they’ve felt seen in years.

That matters more than metrics.

And it might just be the beginning of something real.