Category: Social MediaCategory: Social Media

From a Cal Newport blog post, “In Defense of Thinking,”

“I’m done ceding my brain — the core of all that makes me who I am — to the financial interests of a small number of technology billionaires or the shortsighted conveniences of hyperactive communication styles.”

The platforms display view counts of short form “content,” but that doesn’t mean you’re required to play along. Are those numbers even accurate?

Lots of people drive past billboards everyday on highways, but so what?

It’s 2026 and $20 magazines exist. People are buying vinyl records. Young people are buying digital cameras and camcorders and CD players.

There is a possibility that people you’re trying to reach aren’t even on social media anymore.

Someone asked me about finding engagement outside of social media on today’s Substack Live.

I get asked this a lot, and it came up in a great conversation with Deanna Seymour on her podcast that I recorded earlier today.

My answer isn’t super complicated, but it does require patience. I make it work by showing up on other people’s channels (think podcasts, YouTube interviews, live sessions) and having genuine conversations.

I don’t do this as a growth hack. I’m not expecting a thousand people to rush to my site. Maybe ten people really hear me, and two of them subscribe to your newsletter, and if I keep doing that, those twos and threes add up.

The real trick is consistency, though. One podcast every four months ain’t gonna move the needle. But showing up regularly, having good conversations with good people, and letting their audience find me over time – that’s how all this works without social media.

From Charlotte Rubesa of the print-first publication Quiet Media, in an interview with Naive Weekly:

“Social media used to be a fairly reliable channel. It gave us a direct connection with our audience and allowed for organic discovery. If you had 10,000 followers, maybe 80-85% of them would see what you posted and be likely to engage. Over time, it has matured into a professionalised industry and that sense of possibility has warped. Today your visibility is mediated by platforms and the algorithms they design, which results in a culture where we are constantly encouraged to optimise, to chase relevance and “hack” systems, while sidelining those direct relationships.”

Platforms change, and you can either adapt with those changes, choose to stop playing the game, or land somewhere in between.

The audience of people who spend 4+ hours per day on social media is quite different than an audience who wants to buy a magazine (like Quiet Media) for $20, but as Seth Godin says, choose your customers, choose your future.

I recently did a Substack live with Elin Petronella, an independent artist based in Paris who’s been building a creative business on her own terms for the last ten years.

She’s got half a million followers across Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest, and she’ll be the first to tell you that’s not even the point, as she recently walked away from monetizing on Substack, dropped her bestseller badge, and has been focusing on something more sustainable ever since.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t retain ownership this whole time. All the links are always going back to my own site,” Elin Petronella

All those followers across all those social media platforms is great and all, but if you’re not pointing them to something that’s more permanent, or if you’re not giving curious fans something to explore, you’re leaving money on the table.

As Elin explains, she has 200K followers on Instagram, and a single post might still only get 3,000 views. But if you can get just 1% of 3,000 click to your website, that’s still 30 people.

“How are you doing it before you had the idea that you wanted to monetize it? What are you already doing when people are not watching? What is your natural way of creating before you start thinking about eyes watching it or monetizing it? Double down on that,” Elin Petronella

When we start paying attention to how other people are doing things and assuming that that’s the way to do it, that’s where we can get in trouble. Trust your gut. Get back to the things that you enjoyed when you started making the work that you’re making.

I recently spoke with Stanford sophmore Truitt Flin, who leads Reconnect Stanford. From their site:

“We live in a time where people feel more detached from one another and from what truly matters than ever before. Although many factors contribute to this troubling reality, we count ourselves among those who see social media and our collective dependence on it as the chief cause.”

She told me how her and fellow students are ditching social media. Talking with other universities, and high schools. Setting up tables with signs saying “WE DELETED SOCIAL MEDIA,” and striking up conversations with fellow students who are doing the same thing.

She’s talking to fifth graders, and giving them hope that they don’t need to be on socials, and they listen to her because she’s not that much older.

If anyone was going to sniff out the toxic underpinnings of social media, it was going to be the youth, and people like Truitt of Reconnect Stanford are leading the charge.