what is Social Media doing to us?

First, be clear about your intentions. For myself, I want to maximize learning and improving myself, and minimize “zombie entertainment”. This is when we’re caught in a pattern of consuming from a firehose feed for entertainment, without intentionality. It’s a fake flow state: time passes quickly and the world fades away, but there’s no cognitive... See more

Stand for something that’s all your own. Help us find unexpected things and think unexpected thoughts. Don’t create for the algorithm (as tempting as it is to try and give it what it seems to want, to help your brand gain visibility). Don’t drift to the middle in search of eyeballs. Think bigger, more long-term, more societal-level, even. Do things... See more

Something I’ve noticed, however, is that exclusively using TikTok doesn’t mean I’m only exposed to TikTok-specific trends and culture. In fact, many of the dust-ups from other platforms still make their way onto my For You page. Rather than a standalone platform, as it was in its early days, TikTok has become the ocean into which—and out of

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I do think that social media is largely a trap... for users and for brands. It’s purposely built to create insecurity and false proxies, metrics that get people to work for free to support the business model of the social media companies, as opposed to their own goals.

When Wendy’s or Oreo cookies pulls some sort of stunt on a social media platform,... See more