Category: CommunityCategory: Community

On today’s Escape Pod Zoom Call we got talking about experiences with magazines when we were younger:

• One story was about a computer magazine with a program written by a young Bill Gates.
• Another was about buying magazines (plural) with a baggie full of change.

We don’t just talk about the XYZ’s of quitting social media, but about getting back to the core life experiences that made shit cool before techbro platforms flattened culture and gamified everything.

My childhood included a home foreclosure and a family split because of it. Calling my parents in their later years meant talking into an answering machine, “hey guys, it’s me, Seth” and then my dad (usually) picking up the phone. “We’re here, we’re here, yes, hello!?”

They screened their calls to avoid debt collectors.

Somehow my sister and I have avoided any major financial disasters, so long as you don’t count credit card debts that come and go every few years.

All that so say, I’ve got some shame around money and (of course) taxes.

I had a phone call with a good friend and we laughed about a tax situation I’m currently facing (don’t worry, it’s fine). We shared our collective money horror stories and I felt better afterwards. Shame crumbles under the weight of laughter.

(more…)

We did it. During two Escape Pod Zoom calls this week I asked guests to read something for one minute.

This was inspired by Lindsey Adler’s recent post, where she attended a party where the host had folks get up in front of people and read something.

So folks in our Escape Pod Zoom calls read poetry, newsletters, dialogue, unpublished work, and more.

I used to think Social Media Escape Club was going to be all about tactics and strategy, but it’s become about community, communication, reading, making, collaborating, making room for things just outside our comfort zones, which are some pretty good ways to spend our time online and off.

Inspired by Lindsey Adler’s recent Note, I decided that on Monday’s Escape Pod Zoom call we’d go around the room and each of us would read aloud for one minute.

Someone read their first Substack post. Someone else read old journal entries their daughter wrote at age nine. An inspirational quote and a paragraph from “Letters to a Young Poet” by Rilke. Excerpts from “Hysterical Blindness and other Southern Tragedies that Have Plagued My Life Thus Far” by Leslie Jordan. A paragraph from the Combahee River Collective Statement.

I read dialogue between two civilians signing up to run a cantina from “Death Star.”

Over the last several months, we’ve built enough connection that this activity didn’t break us. No one logged off.

And while I’m pretty sure this didn’t help anyone “quit instagram,” this was a small act of performance. This was curation. This was taking and giving of ourselves.

And the mere act of sitting there and listening to a person read? This wasn’t a YouTube video or podcast, but a Monday morning group of misfits simply reading to one another.

Not everything needs to be useful, but all of this has purpose.

Inspired by Lindsey Adler’s ​recent Note​, I’m trying something new for our Escape Pod Zoom call this week.

Last night, my friend Zito Madu hosted a party at his apartment that came with one non-negotiable rule: Every person in attendance had to stand up in front of the crowd and read something aloud.

Everyone in the room knew the host, but none of us knew each other. He had us wear name tags and bought a lot of fancy cheese.

There were no further parameters on the “read something “ edict. Some people read book excerpts, some read original poetry or fiction, two people (myself included) read portions of revolutionary manifestos. Someone read a magazine story about the decline of men reading fiction.

Our work grows when we stretch ourselves, which leads to even more growth. Showing up on a Zoom call with a bunch of strangers is stretching ourselves, approaching someone who books shows, reaching out to our heroes. There is tension, there is doubt.

As Seth Godin says:

Along the way, we’ve been pushed to load our decisions with a need for certainty. It’s easier, it seems, to not try than it is to fail. But the question, “is it worth trying?” unlocks possibility.

I’m not certain that asking people who show up on a Zoom call to read something aloud for one minute will work, which is exactly why we’re going to try it.