Collective
Collectives are groups of people phys-side who have banded together and, through the use of technology, elected to lose as much of their unique identity as possible and live as facets of a shared identity. Many of the first collectives were inspired by a misrepresentation of clades and may even structure themselves as such. Some collectives are quite against the System, with some notable examples of the Our Brightest Lights Collective who perpetrated the Century Attack and the collective that attempted to sabotage the Launch project. However, such is not always the case, as there are collectives working to help support the System, such as the London Cohort of New Zealots who, though they will never upload themselves, wish to see all who have uploaded survive.
Goals of collectives
There are many reasons that a collective may form, though they often boil down to individuals having a shared goal. For instance, several collectives have formed around complex feelings about the System, with many of the early instances involving a love-hate relationship with the idea of uploading; while they may loathe the idea of uploading themselves, they template their collective after a misunderstanding of cladistics.
After the initial array of collectives, however, many other reasons became attractive for collectives. For instance, many collectives formed around various religions and spiritual ideas, with climate activism being another common attractor. In these cases, the technology that drives the collective was used to align the hearts and minds of its members toward a singer goal, to greater or lesser extent. In tightly integrated collectives, this risks creating a feedback loop that will lead to ever more extreme ideas picking up traction.
A side effect of some collectives is that, after a member's death, their thoughts can remain echoing within the minds of their cocollectivists, leading to a case of ghosts in the machine, and several collectives may turn into memorial collectives, preserving these identities as best as possible as a unique form of infolife.
Membership
Joining a collective involves a special class of implant — with there being several options and no particular standard — which integrates with the nervous and limbic systems. These implants are generally recognized as safe, so long as one follows a few standard protocols, such as taking regular breaks from allowing the implant to exert its control, no matter the strength of the integration.
Those who belong to a collective are known as 'collectivists', and will refer to others within their collective as 'cocollectivists'. One may leave a collective, but when one is removed from a collective, it is called 'sundering', and can be rather dangerous to the sundered member. Sundered collectivists or those who leave a collective without having followed the safety protocols will be impacted by episodes of psychosis and disordered thought patterns, and, in extreme cases, neurological damage.