This right here from Emma Orlando is basically how our week Social Media Escape Club calls started:

It didn’t take long for social media to enter the chat because it has a funny way of stealing the show even IRL spaces these days. As the coffee went from warm to tepid, we lost ourselves on the trail of online exhaustion, more specifically the fact that it’s a bullshit metric measuring people’s ability to be in the room and how samey it all feels nowadays.

The exhaustion. The bullshit. The shame of some random niece you know being able to go viral, but you can’t even get 10 people to like a post.

I’m not saying deleting social media is for everyone, but if it hurts, if it’s painful, if it’s making you feel bad – none of those things can be good for your art, your business, your mental well being.

There are recovering musicians who don’t play bars.

As creative, magical, artistic beings we can find other ways to do the work. Are the platforms built by techbros the only way to flourish? I think not!

The quote above hits on something else, too – “the chat.” Talking with other people about the pain is the best way to beat it. Social media loves to isolate us, make us feel like we’d be lost without it. That sounds like “toxic relationship” langauage to me, and I want nothing to do with it.

So keep talking with other people. Keep the conversation going, in person, on the phone, in a Zoom call – whatever you have to do to get the feelings of exhastion and grossness out of your system, and find ways to replace it with better vibes.

This was inevitable: Meta charging for links in a Facebook posts and Instagram Reels.

As Future of Media reports, “without paying for a subscription, pages could come up against a maximum of two Facebook links per month.”

And it seems they’re going after the “link in comments” trick, too.

“The new restrictions being tested include links in comments. Users included in the test have reported that once they hit the limit, their URLs appear as plain, non-clickable text.”

The best time to have left Instagram and Facebook was five years ago. The second best time is now.

(via Pixel Envy)

From August Lamm, author of “You Don’t Need a Smartphone (affiliate link).”

Digital media stimulates us at a level that most routine analog activities cannot match. Once we adjust to this level it becomes difficult to appreciate the subtlety of offline moments.

This is why it’s so hard for me to pick up a book, or play a CD, because of the slowness. From the time I digitized my CDs and was able to switch between songs and albums and genres as fast as I could click, yeah, of course the idea of a five disc CD changer sound terrible, but that’s what we did back in the day!

Why watch one movie when you could scroll through 100 short form videos of just the best scenes?

Watching a movie, listening to a record, playing a video game – those used to be offline pursuits, where we “mono-tasked,” and now it just feels “hard” to sit still long enough to listen to a full CD and read a chapter in a book.

This was inspired from today’s “WHAT IS RSS?” Escape Pod Zoom call (we have another call on Thursday, Oct 8th), talking about how everyone is busy, and receiving so much information every day.

Then, if we start using RSS to read our favorite blogs, newsletters, YouTube channels, etc., well, that’s like a magazine. Remember back in the day you could just pick up the magazine and read it?

That’s different than newsletters that come into your inbox, because face it – our inbox is different. It’s not like a magazine, it’s business. It’s family. It’s bills. It’s notices. It’s receipts. It’s everything.

So with RSS, we control what comes in. There are no surprises. The only things that show up are what we add, whereas anyone can email us, and as we all know – it never stops!

And picking up the magazine today or two weeks from now is usually fine, but we usually can’t take a two week break from our email inbox.

RSS can remove weight from your email inbox.

I can walk for three hours per day because I choose to not spend three hours a day scrolling through social media. Thirty minutes here, an hour there, it all adds up.

Maybe Social Media Escape Club has missed some growth opportunities because I’m not in the “public forum” of social media, engaged in conversations and discourse through the day (and evening, and night), but I dare to believe that time spent on other activities have led to my own growth.

I host three Zoom calls per week, talking with people about leaving social media, building websites, and writing newsletters. That’s 3+ hours per week. And then 21 hours a week walking. A full day every week that I’m not giving to any social media platform.

Again, maybe I’d have 10,000 more email subscribers if I spent time on X or Threads engaging, but I like the people I get to talk to every week. And I like the calm and peace I find from walking so much.

Maybe everything doesn’t need to be about follower growth, or increasing reach.

A musician practicing three hours per day would probably compound so much in a years time. A writer or a poet could fill dozens of notebooks in a month’s time. How many sketch books could an artist fill if they spent three hours per day sketching?

Love this from musician Phoebe Dubar, who makes music as IKSRE, talking about getting away from social media as best they can:

Hiking, gardening, yoga – all these things are the ultimate antidote to any digital interference. Backyard campfires, playing card games with my husband and daughter, and spending time in our caravan. And physical media music. My CD, cassette and vinyl collection is such a treasured possession.

Again, it’s the act of escaping social media, it’s where do we go? How we we fill the time that we once spent staring at a screen?

“I’ve had to be on a bit more recently with the new album coming out and I can feel it zapping me. It’s wild. But taking my dog for a walk along the beach near where I live, solves that instantly. It’s all a balance, right?

I also stress this with Social Media Escape Club; it’s not all or nothing. Do what feels right, trust your gut. If you’re spending six hours a day on Instagram, and making Reels leaves you exhausted, examine that. Get outside, go for a walk, play some records.

We didn’t just wake up one day and look at our phones for several hours. That took time, and heading in the other direction will take some time, too.

Read the full interview with Phoebe over at Zen Sounds.

Finding your people is about signals, it’s about risk, it’s about trying something without knowing how the finish product shows up.

Posting on social media will get you near instant feedback, like eating a cookie. In the moment it’s great, but not a great long term strategy.

So Jen Mayer | Makeist of Zinestack and I collaborated on this EXIT ≠ DELETE zine. The photos here the deluxe version, and you can grab a digital copy to print at home from Jen’s Five on Friday post here.

We met awhile ago on Substack, via Notes probably and some Escape Pod Zoom calls, and we started working together on this zine project in June of 2025.

So really, finding your people, and then sometimes doing things with your people, can take a minute. And “finding your people” never ends. Today’s people might not be next year’s people, because you’re always growing and changing, just like everyone else!

WHAT’S THIS HAVE TO DO WITH SOCIAL MEDIA ESCAPE CLUB?

“Deleting the app is the start,” as I mention in our EXIT ≠ DELETE zine. We’re leaving, but we’re entering into something else, which is why I stress the whole “find your people” thing. If you’re trying to get away from social media, it makes sense to hang around other people who think the same thing. The journey isn’t fast or clear, but it just makes sense to go along with others.

So while this week our Escape Pod Zoom call wasn’t “how to get 1000 new subscribers” or “get my Instagram followers to go paid on Substack,” well… we’re just a bunch of artsy, creative weirdos who like the adventure of breaking up with big tech, spending less time on socials, and oh yeah – doing stuff.

I don’t promise results. There’s no map. And I don’t have all the answers. But we get where we wanna go together, so if that sounds fun, come along for the ride.