Category: sethwCategory: sethw

Maybe quitting social media is more than apps and hacks which lean heavy on the SELF HELP industrial complex.

Maybe quitting social media involves other people who want to quit. Other small businesses folk who want to find new ways to market their work. Other creative people who could use the support of other people who seek the same escape.

Social media platforms isolate us, making us feel like we can just figure out the algorithm, the scheduling, the pacing, the engaging.

Then we try to walk away and look around and notice we’re alone. With more likes or comments, we lose the validation, the comfort, and we go running back. Or we buy a dumb phone, or a device, or set time limits on our apps, or try to go cold turkey.

This is why we need support, we need each other. Tough things are worth doing together with other people.

We have potential fans beyond the social media platforms, we just have to let them know we exist!

3/16/2026 – Max Pete, “YES, I ONLY HAVE ONE HAND. YES, YOU CAN ASK.”

1/6/2026 – Rabbit Cavern, “Do you want to be friends with a crow?

1/3/2026 – Elise Granata, “Flyering as a Spiritual Practice“

12/29/2025 – Mel Mitchell-Jackson

12/15/2025 – Mel Mitchell-Jackson

After listening to you chat with Amelia on Off The Grid I made a bunch for my tutoring offers! Here’s one in San Francisco after a few months of sun and fog fade!

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12/14/2025 – From WBEZ Chigago (link via Jen):

The 51-year-old graphic artist, Derek Erdman, swears there’s no catch behind his quirky side project. Instead, he describes his public art stunts as acts as civil disobedience, or “civil d” for short.

(more…)

This from ‘MTV Cancels Itself‘ by kd:

MTV didn’t ask me what I wanted to watch. It told me what I would watch.

When you go to someone’s blog, that first post says “this is where we’re starting today.”

Just like MTV, as kd says, the writer didn’t ask what you wanted to watch or listen to, the writer told you.

When a musician gets on stage they don’t run a poll, they’ve made a set list.

When you walk into a record shop, no one asks what you want to hear. Just like MTV, the choice has already been made.

Pick, choose, lead. You’re allowed to say, “I’m going this way, come along if you want.”

Social media can’t wait. It needs your posts now, several times per day.

Photographer Noah Kalina explains his belief that “it takes at least six years for a photograph to start getting interesting again after the day it was taken.”

As artist Tim McFarlane said in one of our recent Escape Pod Zoom calls:

“When I think about posting or blogging, I usually start visually. The photos come first, and that’s what gets the story going for me. I’ll remember where I was, what was happening around me, what I was thinking at the time — everything tends to spin out from the photograph. And it’s nice looking back now, having all this material that I can move into other things if I want to, because nobody’s seen it already. I also have a different way of talking about it now.“

Isn’t that magical? That nobody has seen the image yet? And our thinking of the image, the art, the photo – that you’re a different person today, different from when you made the image last week, or a year ago.

Social media begs us to share quick and often, but we’re allowed to distance ourselves from that urgency.

I’ve learned over two decades of writing online is that the half-way okay blog post becomes a foundation not just for better blog posts, but for better conversations.

The ideas keep coming so we must keep writing.
We become tuned to the frequencies that expand these ideas.

An example; I went out for a donut and iced coffee, and had a conversation with the shop owner which becomes a blog post.

I’ve written probably 100 posts since then, which led to more conversations, a cycle that adds seasoning and fresh ingredients to the next blog post or newsletter, which can’t help but bubble up in conversation because I’m living and breathing this subject matter.

Then, what I’ve found, is taking these conversations into new spaces of varying discomfort bolsters the ideas.

Talking with a friend is safe, but things feel different on a group Zoom call with people you don’t know, or on a podcast, or on a panel in front of 30 people.

I’ve been writing about ditching social media for years. Then I started hosting weekly Zoom calls with readers back in 2023, joined other online community calls, did live stream interviews, and appeared on a handful of podcasts.

Then I did something even more uncomfortable by setting up at punk rock flea market and talking with people face to face about leaving social media.

These conversations, in varying “live” settings, sharpened my ideas and my ability to express them.

This is how Cory Doctorow can riff about horrible corporations for over an hour and make it look easy.

We can all do this if we stop spending five hours a day on our phones.

We lose in followers, but we gain by honing our craft, finding our unique ways to express the ideas and concepts that will resonate with the right people.