Social Media Escape Club

Engagement is the new uniques. The traffic era of publishing has ended. Nobody brags about their ComScore uniques anymore; engagement is the new North Star.

If you’re just posting and platforming because you feel like you should , then the point is to help tech billionaires buy more super yachts.

“The internet, as we have known it, has evolved from a quaint, quirky place to a social utopia, and then to an algorithmic reality. In this reality, the primary task of these platforms is not about idealism or even entertainment — it is about extracting as much revenue as possible from human vanity, avarice, and narcissism.”

the most courageous, life-affirming choice you can make is to break free from mimetic expectations around growth, and choose to define enough for yourself, and actually enjoy it once you get there. That's the ultimate gangster move.

So with all the caveats —we’re goofs, you shouldn’t trust companies, no one knows what the future holds, I am a literally insane person— I don’t expect this video work to “change Substack” in any deep way.