Relating with social media

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

But social media platforms have trained brands to be thirsty for metrics that aren’t always of real value because it’s in their interest to give the impression of continuous growth . You have 500k followers on Instagram! But an awful conversion rate. You have had 1.2 mil views on your video! But struggle to turn one-time customers into anything... See more

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... See more

We’re at an inflection point.

The tide is turning in the conversation around digital growth and social media. We’re tired of losing months of the year to our phones, of producing content for content’s sake, of trying to keep up with platforms that demand more and give back less. We’re thinking critically about the way we spend our days and lives... See more

The most successful social media accounts today are rich. They’re thick with engaging content. They innovate on the constraints of the medium. They are wildly inspiring to me.

I never get the feeling that they’re saving their best stuff for their website or email subscribers. They make remarkable content and put it on social media for people to... See more

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... See more

I know Instagram has lots of faults. I’m not going to sit here and pretend it’s perfect. But what got lost in the “I’m Leaving Social Media” discourse is that shunning a platform like Instagram does not make the job of growing a following, a business, an email list, a publication any easier.

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.