Cyber-Stoicism: The Spread of Stoic Philosophy Online

The Internet.  Ancient Stoic philosophy.  Two things that it might seem difficult to imagine getting on together, right?  After all, Epictetus felt he was better off without the luxury of an iron lamp, and preferred his earthenware one because nobody wanted to steal it.  Difficult to imagine him using an iPad, isn’t it?  Nevertheless, Stoicism has gone through a renaissance in popularity since the 1970s and the Internet provides a natural forum for people from around the world to discuss philosophy in small online communities, perhaps a distant modern echo of the visitors who used to drop in to hear Epictetus lecturing his students in ancient Nicopolis.
The information and statistics below are correct at the time of publication…
The New Stoa
Formerly the Stoic Registry, this is apparently the oldest Stoic community online, founded way back in 1996 by Erik Wiegardt.  It has over 1,000 members in its register.
International Stoic Forum on Yahoogroups
This is an older email-based system but it’s an active group, which was established back in 1996 by Erik Wiegardt of the Stoic Registry, and subsequently moderated by Jan Garrett and Keith Seddon.  It currently has over 1,000 members.
Stoicism Subreddit
Established in 2009, currently has 7,881 readers and is very active.
Stoicism Group (Stoic Philosophy) on Facebook
I set this group up myself about a year ago, partly to promote Stoic Week.  It currently has 770 members and is very active.
@Stoicweek on Twitter
Speaking of which, you can follow Stoic Week on Twitter for updates, along with 1,200 other people.
Stoicism Group on Facebook
Another Stoicism group on Facebook, this one has 1,580 members currently.
New Stoa Group on Facebook
This has been a bit quiet recently.  It currently has 183 members.
Google+ Stoicism Community
Google+ is growing in popularity, and this new community has 113 members already.
Linkedin Stoic Professionals
This is a different type of forum, with only 50 members at present.
Stoicism on Wikipedia
Of course, Wikipedia has a community of sorts, who discuss and help to maintain the numerous pages about Stoicism.  Wikipedia is also sometimes good at rooting out obscure links and pieces of information.  Check out this list of all Stoic philosophers, for example.
Stoicism Community on Amazon
This is really just a collection of books tagged as being relevant to Stoicism.  Not much going on here but you might like to browse.
Stoicism Book Club on Goodreads
You can find lots of information about books on Stoicism on Goodreads as well.  This little community only has 38 members at present, though.
Stoicism Bloggers on WordPress
This link will return blog posts tagged “Stoicism” on WordPress.  Interesting!
Stoicism Bloggers via Google
This is what happens if you search Google for blog posts about Stoicism.
Stoicism Discussions via Google
And here are all the discussion groups mentioning Stoicism, returned by Google.
Stoicism on Pinterest
Here are all the things tagged “Stoicism” on Pinterest, lots of pretty images and some quotes.
The Painted Porch
This website aims to help bring Stoic communities together.
Help!
There are other groups out there so please post your comments below!  We’ll try to add a few more, if we’ve forgotten any important ones.