Relating with social media
On why social media won't save us and my personal journey to healing from its scars
Relating with social media
Because self-promotion sucks. It is actually very boring and not that fun to produce TikTok videos or to learn email marketing for this purpose. Hardly anyone wants to “build a platform;” we want to just have one. This is what people sign up for now when they go for the American dream — working for yourself and making money doing what you love. The... See more
Rebecca Jennings for Vox Media
And so we get on the Facebook merry-go-round, boosting our posts, counting our followers, and creating ever more content in the hope of being noticed. There are so many other ways to make an impact and earn trust. Much of what we take for granted in our marketing toolbox was considered a risky innovation just a few generations ago. It’s worth disca
... See moreSeth Godin • This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See
The Flattening
open.substack.com
“We’ve been too busy reacting that whence forgotten how to respond”
How does one start a new business or sell a product in a world without advertising?
How do you scale something fast enough through just word of mouth to get out of the red?
If I open a new bakery, is it predatory to send a pamphlet to the nearby houses? Should I just sit quietly and hope that enough people notice?
How do you scale something fast enough through just word of mouth to get out of the red?
If I open a new bakery, is it predatory to send a pamphlet to the nearby houses? Should I just sit quietly and hope that enough people notice?
mertd • Advertising and marketing have ruined *society*, the internet is just one of a l... | Hacker News
Ah, the age old question!
A lot of social media these days makes me feel like I’m doing it wrong; I’m not going to the right places or wearing the right thing or doing the right workout (or any workout tbh). Sure, it’s kinda an obvious takeaway about a common feeling, but what was less obvious to me is how this week’s contributor Alex Dobrenko characterizes this experience:... See more
There’s no urgency to idleness. Why not be idle tomorrow, once you’ve finished everything you have to do today? You will never get a midnight text reminding you to do nothing. You will never get a calendar invite to do nothing.
On the idea of idleness. Of actively not doing in response to a world where everyone is obsessed with doing as much as possible.
Few, if any, of this moment’s apparently unstoppable tech platforms will survive for long. The people on them will eventually leave—when they’re forced to do so by the continuous degradation of their experience, or because they’re forced to do so because their governments put the hammer down, as Brazil recently demonstrated—or sometimes when they j... See more
Erin Kissane • Against the Dark Forest
Global mega-platforms under capitalism are structurally incapable of handling the business of civilization: of governance, of providing genuinely public infrastructure, of making knife-edge decisions about the balance of liberties and securities. It’s not what they do or what they want to do, and in many cases it’s in opposition to their actual int... See more