Social Media Escape Club

Threads is adding view counts. This is probably a good place to put that my Threads referral traffic has completely cratered, as I knew it would. The decision to show view counts is, I assume, part of the typical Meta tactic to get people to care more about on-site engagement that any kind of real traffic.

Creator platforms algorithmically incentivize us to create at the pace Wall Street and the market demand. This is why we’re pushed to create more and more. Not because our audiences are asking for it. Not because the world needs more of what we have to say. Because we as artists, the platforms, and their investors desire, to varying degrees,... See more

How can I possibly sell art and “non necessities” during this time of great crisis? I try to remember that just as the world needs doctors and nurses and electricians and plumbers and farmers we need art.

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.

Almost everything that is meaningful, beautiful, life-affirming, empowering, transformational, true—it can’t be reached by shortcuts. But what we can do is make the longcuts walkable, put out footbridges and stairs, and a table where the ocean comes into view.

Having a style collapses hundreds of future decisions into one, and gives you focus.

I didn’t mind social media when it was just one aspect of the internet, and it was largely just for that first word, “social.” But it slowly became the everything place, and now it’s bite-sized versions of news, art, ads, politics, obituaries, health advice, crimes against humanity, kittens, low-rent humor, messages from friends, soft-core porn, go... See more