Category: sethwCategory: sethw

​February 14, 2026 at 12pm EST is BREAK UP WITH SOCIAL MEDIA DAY. We’ll gather on Zoom to delete at least one social media app from our phone.

​This is a group break up, together, in good company.

• ​Sign up if you want to get away from social media.
• Sign up even if you’ve already deleted the apps and/or accounts
• Sign up if you’re curious about escaping social media
• Sign up if you’ve re-installed the apps a dozen times

​We’ll come together, check in for 10 or so minutes, then we’ll delete a social media (or two).

​Stick around and we’ll share your experiences with social media with other people on their own journeys.

Like I’ve learned from Priya Parker, this isn’t about self-help, this is about group help. We shouldn’t have to try and figure this out ourself, in isolation. Let’s delete, and then we’ll figure it out.

I’d love to see people host their own BREAK UP WITH SOCIAL MEDIA DAY hang outs in their bedrooms or kitchens or studios and join in on Zoom. I’d love to open the call and see your face surrounded by all the other people you brought together into your space! (if I can help make this happen, let me know)

This isn’t the answer, but it’s a start.

Register for BREAK UP WITH SOCIAL MEDIA DAY here.

We talked about this in yesterday’s Escape Pod Zoom call (next one is Sunday at 10am ET), about making videos to showcase our work.

This doesn’t have to mean making dance videos, or shouting directly into the camera, either. Check out the work of Noah Kalina, Taylor Pendleton, Softer Sounds, and ISETTA FILM, and see how they tell stories in their own unique way.

And when I say make a video, I don’t mean produce a fully-featured clip and upload it to YouTube. Set up your smart phone, or turn on your web cam, or make some voice notes talking the thing you do. Do this today. Tomorrow. This will help you when you get interviewed about your work, or someone asks you about your art at the local coffee shop.

Practice talking about your stuff.

Magic talks about THE DIGITAL POLLUTION THEORY in her video “the chronically online will become a new underclass,” and recommends we log off, sooner rather than later.

“We can still build places rooted in clarity and care and connection. I just think that exists in real life. We can still build places that are transformative and more transformative than performative. If we don’t imagine something better and abandon the space, a future will be built for us digitally, completely without our consent, against our interests, and against our human nature. That is a digital pollution theory, you guys.”

“Once I started trying to anticipate what other people would want, I lost my point of view,” says menswear designer Aaron Levine.

Don’t get caught up in how a newsletter to your fans is supposed to look. Don’t assume your fans want something short and sweet, or long and drawn out. You don’t make your art thinking about the audience, so don’t write and share your art in a way that forces you into form that is not your own.

It’s not just about walking away from social media, but where we’re walking to next. As I’ve been saying, social media loses power when we build community in other places. The following is by Heath Racela from ‘I Won’t Tell You to Avoid McDonald’s’

“I can spend the next four years shouting about each and every little decision, or I can spend that time working on building the alternative. I’m not exactly sure what that looks like yet: is it an alternative to the corporate media? Is it some alternative to our current political system? Is it just simply being engaged in mutual aid at the community level? For each of us, it will look different, but I think small, local community building is going to matter much more in the coming years.”

More from me:
COMMUNITY WILL BEAT THE ALGORITHMS
YOUR COMMUNITY WILL OUTLAST ANY PLATFORM
HOW TO FIND COMMUNITY
COMMUNITY WITHOUT PLATFORM