Is Somewhere Good the Future of Social Media?

I don’t think that we’re meant to navigate our lives solo. That is a narrative that Western culture, specifically when it’s at the intersection of capitalism, really loves to hold — the narrative of hyperindividuality.

We wanted to explore what it would look like if we created a social-media platform that moves against hierarchy and making people into brands. What care and safety mean when creating online connections that feel more tender and meaningful and not so transactional and extractive. And we’re thinking about citation, ensuring that creators and people o... See more

I understand digital gardens as online spaces where many people are coming together to tend to seeds, which can be understood as content. The container that digital gardens are held in is a commitment to sustainability, pluralism, and cyclical growth. It entails adaptation and a culture of learning.

Platforms like Twitter and Facebook run on users’ feelings of inadequacy and loneliness, providing an endless, scrolling loop of aspiration, virtue signaling, and doom.

I was thinking about what joy looks like to me on the internet, and I was brought back to earlier conceptions of playful online spaces: Neopets, Club Penguin, Microsoft Paint, those early chaotic days of MySpace, customized Tumblr blogs. When I think about the design of social-media apps today, it’s very clean and very minimalist, lending itself to... See more

Our first values are rooted in deepening connection, and in honoring and supporting Black expression. Oral tradition is deeply rooted in Blackness. There’s a certain vulnerability in audio, and we wanted to explore that intimacy. There is a deepened connection to our selfhood with voice. There is a nuance that voice captures that often isn’t found ... See more

What would it look like to have an online platform that is about meaningful connection, that is also about putting marginalized people first and not treating them as an afterthought?

“Everything worthwhile is done with other people.” I really stand by that. One of the bravest and most revolutionary things we can do is care for one another.

Interdependence offered a route that honored the care of the self alongside the care of others and showed how those two are actually in loving relationship.