The social media antidote: real Community – with a capital C
Am I the only one that gets a bit of a rash from the mainstream way of doing social media? The chirping birds that once allowed a community of journalists to gather on a platform to squawk freely has degraded with the equally free speech of Trump-eters and Musketeers alike. Quick quips of less edited and more run ons seem to fuel an arbitrary fire of divisive rhetoric instead of an international call and response of reporting. Makes me itchy just thinking of it! How about you?
Facebook’s boat of town hall focus has long since sailed in consideration of a user first, Community centered model; unless you want to sell your old Ray Bans or gently used couch. And now with it’s not so sly rebrand, Meta is no longer the digital hub to visit in simply searching for long lost cousins without getting tussled in a political crossfire. Or maybe you’ll just have your movements tracked for what you may have clicked (baited) on, unsuspectedly. Let’s not get into the weeds about the actual WHY beyond Zuckerberg’s build of said social network but a simple survey on the ethics of the platform in the ten year span of 2010-2020 doesn’t show FB was built to scale to make people feel good about ourselves and our shared humanity; aka Community!
FB’s own takeover of the once ‘independent’ & ‘emerging’ social media channel, Instagram, was notably created by a nice, New England guy who began his tech obsession playing warfare in simulation games like Doom. Kevin Systrom, who attended Stanford and would initially turn down Zuckerburg for gainful employment before developing IG (2010) for what he would then quickly sell for a cool $1 billion ( 2012) straight to his Ivy league peer, Mr. Mark Z. Talk about a tech unicorn!! As we all know, Instagram (as does Meta) leads with its algorithmic shadows leaving users feeling more like it’s a high school popularity contest instead of an inspiring, visual landscape of creators {woof}! Are you scratching yourself yet?
Upgrades to Community building by way of new social apps like the audio only Clubhouse, user monetized Fanbase and reportedly less ‘toxic’ micro blogging site Hive Social are taking their own moment to convince users to come along for a better, more curated experience, off of the quite literal ‘beaten path. {grrrrr}
We humans are old dogs, and sadly, we don’t do new tricks well, it seems.
Making new social habit is hard, generally, and then the specifics of switching patterns from shitty, addictive behavior is something of (wo)mans’ existential kinks of our earthly existence.
But what of TikTok, you may say. It’s so fun, you may bark! The Chinese owned, facial recognition software, in its American version, is made quite differently than its own, homegrown type where the Great Wall-ed Community audience consumes an intentionally more educational set of media; much more PG rated than its US ‘content creators’; think PBS and not HBO. Oh and if you’d like to register yourself as a company or business on TikTok to have a proper pro account, please be sure you upload your EID number and supporting tax documents. Are you kidding me? They are not even trying to be low key, creepy. Just upload your social and we will get your media out expeditiously. {Please pass the salve, I’m beyond irritated. }
With all those pitfalls to what a Community network really may need to flourish, it’s really surprising to me why we keep swiping for more! Not shocking however, are my notes from over two years of interviewing & studying women, ages 22-48 on our shared social media experiences and behaviors. I have heard so many people, particularly countless women in business and loads of established, well-known thought leaders saying that social media just makes us… sad?! We are many times left feeling less than social, even suicidal. This is not exactly conducive to fostering a Community! When I actually take a closer look into my own social media consumption, even if I use it to study and also promote this antidote I am creating, I am typically left feeling like absolute shit.
{whimper and growl!}
During those last few years of research, I have also been conceiving and building the panacea for this scratchy mess of bad behaviors in tech. In creating this new model as a digital hub and corralling new users there instead of other, extractive channels, many women have confided in me that they would rather not show up at all to seemingly prove themselves on the current version of a social media like FB, IG, sometimes even LinkedIn- the more ‘professional’ space amongst the network camps!
With all the ‘other’ extractive, toxic and alienating garbage that is the main stream, it’s no surprise that even those of us #livingourbestlives still feels like a shadow of ourselves after we put the phone down.
In fact, many of our new users on The Backstage Pass have mentioned they’d rather just lean directly into a trusted Community instead. Internet users far and wide, particularly busy women, would rather go straight to the source when they need support from Community. They’ve also told me that the space we are building Backstage is expressly different and participation there actually makes them feel good, seen and valued. Wooooa! Community with a capital C is reborn, meow!!! Phoning a friend to ask her direction as to how to find the best resources on funding for a project or educational endeavor, where to find safe, reproductive resources or healthcare answers she can trust, or even where and how to get politically inspired?? Spoiler alert, that friend is often me and I know there are more amazing connectors like me to add to this generative model. And so I want to know, why do we keep doom scrolling when we can easily be bloom scrolling ?? { see what I did there?}
Maybe it’s because the way social media is rigged currently is not real; one could argue it’s a bit surreal. It seems to serve as a weird hologram of what is sorta, kinda real with a filter and cute edit. And maybe we like that, for a minute or two, because we are so flawed, pimpled, puffy eyed and truly exhausted by the reality of life. Perhaps we like to make it look like that A role, hologram is real. And maybe, once we’ve had 5-10 minutes ( or in my recent, covid holiday case, 498 minutes in one day of screen time), we suddenly are not as happy with such a photomicrograph of our shared existence aka Community as the channels suggest. Instead users leave feeling like a mer shell of the hologram our filter told us we are; taking us away , one at a time, from actually being connected to the Community that we so eagerly desire by way of small bread crumbs of the ‘likes’ to our lustrous posts. Ah the dopamine!! { howwwwl!}
Maybe it’s because social media is mildly unconscious at this point.
It’s now so aged that it may have forgotten about its job description to act as a social glue and to utilize the internet for all its good tributes of tech facia; connecting human beings to both one another and to a bevy of information that the world wide web boasts. Somehow the (questionably) well intended mission jumped the tracks and put profit first and divided the Community which essentially creates the content that makes it. Or maybe that’s just the tea we have drunk, served cleverly to us as Community whilst the architects never had true connection in mind.
I mentioned a handful of new social apps making small waves with new approaches, which is arguably great for a variety of reasons: accessibility, profit sharing and less toxic amongst them. I really want to not only center how we can individually profit off of usage of our content, our own data and ultimately people power that we consciously lead; I want us to also think about how we can access the currency of the Community not as extractive but as generative; a total reverse usage of the model that big tech has presented as the only way the internet can be won. I don’t want to break the internet, I just want to buy it back for its shared, collective powers of Community, with a capital C.
The advent of modern day religion, albeit centuries ago, called humans to gather under one roof, in our various sects, together. Then, the $8 latte heralded by Starbucks underscored the opportunity to charge for that which tithes and offerings fell short of; perhaps a shortbread cookie instead of a dry wafer as you say hello to all your neighbors on the way to catch the train! And now the “free access” to social networks that promise to connect as they openly make major profits from your personal preferences and data in exchange for your direct access to the Community you know that you want, or maybe you don’t know but it is arguably instinctual.
What if that value of Community was reverted?
What if that belonging that we all inherently seek because we are intrinsically herd animals ( sorry but we are) what if the value of your life lived wasn’t an accumulation for personal gain? But the value we all carried was by how each of us are able to give support to our Community, and not just your inner circle, your local tribe but the larger Community of Humanity.
This would require us, as humans, to see personal gains ( money and the gathering of wealth) to be far more than just piles of stuff. We’d have to refuse to allow how much or how frequently we consume to be an indication of success and the worth of the person. THIS is the antidote to separateness; a true salve to current day social media’s hologram of selfish, greed, jealous inducing and ignorant (sad) bliss. Big tech’s extractive nature has not only made pretend versions of ‘networks’ centering the most human thing, Community, but also made us all a bit melancholy in heading to the proverbial town square for our $8 latte blessing and data collection of facial recognition software and other fun grabs for personal information.
In a timely report, our own US Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy shares that we are in a pandemic of loneliness. With all these incredible uses of technology to connect us, we’ve never been so alone with over 60% of Americans struggling with loneliness and upwards of 75% of younger people in deep bouts of mental unwellness; likely most common social media users.
But what if we didn’t need an ointment each time we used our handheld computers with power so great it can drive a car, adjust a thermostat or even make our morning toast! What if we employed a bit of conscious economics to bring people together instead of dividing us in the typical, extractive capitalist models. Like I said, I am not interested in breaking the internet but I would like to buy it back from the wild, wild west gents of tech delight ( looking at you Bill, Mark, Steve, Elon, Herman, Thomas, Charles and bevy of otherwise decisively progressive yet ultimately White Guys.) And let’s be clear, I don’t want to buy back the internet so I can be the Queen of the hill. No no! I’d like to be the god bless Robyn Hood of the internet: redistributing the powers of access to tools & resources and flipping the script on how we do business.
As a lifetime shit stirrer, now lovingly called an industry disruptor, I’ve been asking myself why we keep going back for more and where are the better ways?
The simple breakdown of the words social + media would imply the goal to be to use media socially to take action, likely driving people to do something ….good, maybe even helpful to one another! A fella woman in tech with veteran status far greater than mine, Gina Bianchini, has taken her love of Community with a capital C onto build and form a very powerful antidote indeed, a hub of hubs: Mighty Networks. She & her very Community focused crew have centered the Independent Creator as lead of their own networks and empowered us to build accordingly.
LBI Digital’s main hub is currently housed on Mighty so that we can build effectively, efficiently and with a shared ethos of women lead businesses with Humanists like Gina B at the helm. I’ve chosen this path to build our Community of badass women thought leaders, fella industry disruptors and business activists instead of continuing to support the outdated methods led by web profiters who seem to intentionally build divisive and separatist soap boxes that quietly collect data, runs ads based on your movements and otherwise extracts personal information from its users via automations, zaps and other cool roboto types of mechanisms. You will see less of me, Rose Kaz, and less LBI Digital on the aforementioned dinosaur channels of extractive tech. I’ll be busy building generative and helpful solutions to access the incredible web of information we humans generate. I will be aggregating that information as it pertains to women’s equity in the world so we can ALL progress better together AND actually feel good about ourselves!
Modern day …errr Dino day social media is like our Grandparent with dementia that can’t recall if you are his nurse, best friend Johnny or car wash attendant. With due respect for whatever he has accomplished in his heyday, he isn’t really contributing to the overall growth of modern society and adding value to current day culture. Dinosaur social media is on its own walk in the never ending, cul de sac of a doom scrolling park, basically nearly in an induced coma. You’re drunk social media, go home!
love,
Rose
More About Rose Kaz:
Rose Kaz is the Fem Founder and she’s done this a time or two. Her photo & video production company has taken her around the world but her new app allows her female clients & even women she hasn’t met yet to lean into each other, learn about our opportunity as business activists to support, grow & shop directly from one another. We are building a new economy, globally. WOW!
And the app we are talking about is that which Rose + the LBI Crew has launched where the ask for women is to: ‘ take center stage in their lives; to stand up, speak out & get GLOWING like never before’ Think activism meets B school meets super hip, online resource center! Sprinkle in some new school networking and POW The LBI Backstage Pass is #trending!
Click here to come Backstage, meet Rose and the entire community of femme forward leaders.
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