May I Have Your Attention Please.

Is there anybody out there? there there there there

It’s Thanksgiving Day. 9:30 a.m. I’ve been flitting around Substack, checking out people’s posts and notes. Substack is a treasure trove of like-minded people bursting with things to share and a desire to connect—smart, informed, earnest, lonely, happy, sad, creative people.

If we were at a mammoth slumber party, I bet we’d have so much fun. We’d empty SEV-ER-AL bottles of wine, enthusiastically interrupting each other and putting obnoxious amounts of whipped cream on a third serving of hot cocoa—whatever suits our fancy. But we’re not. We’re stuck in screens responding to one another in a linear fashion sharing pictures, missives, desires, regrets, fresh snowfall..

And oh my god, look at the image ChatGPT made for me:

But I digress.

It’s insufficient. We created the Internet, and it is deeply flawed. As a brand strategist in advertising, I would interview as many people as I could, immerse myself in situations, observe, ask questions, look for undiscovered patterns and desires, and figure out how to solve a problem. Unfortunately, the point of that work was to sell. I wanted to land the jobs where you design better environments, rather than manufacture desire, but alas, I did not. Even if I didn’t love advertising, the process was meaningful: Listen and try to find a kernel of truth that led to a better idea but we never did that with the Internet. Tech bros just went off and made something to get people to clickity click so they could sell more crap and get richer.

Yay it worked. And here we are, totally fucked. Alienated. Isolated. We call people who perform airbrushed lives “influencers” while teens sit up in their bedrooms feeling like shit because clearly the whole world is in Bora Bora RIGHT NOW.

Anyway, word is that people are opting out of social media. One report talks about the “enshittification” of the platforms. Seems apt. Instagram is experiencing a 16% year-over-year decrease. The Verge declared that “social media is doomed to die”. I get the die thing. Everytime I scroll, there’s a noticeable dip in my mood. I can almost feel the serotonin rushing out and the emptiness rush in. And while I have an enthusiastic small following for my almost-year-old podcast that I love so very much and that sells NOTHING but ideas and community, I don’t have a big audience here or anywhere for that matter. I can’t always do the consistency thing consistently. I can’t turn on the charm, the turn of phrase, day after day. But I want it. I want that community so bad. I’m not going to lie. I want that long tail of like minded people that I can eventually go slumber party with in the end days but I'm inundated with divergent thoughts as I grocery shop, meal prep, pack lunches, respond to clients, look for more clients, and edit my podcast. I get sad that I don’t have that strong audience I crave that encourages me to go on but I stubbornly persevere because like a lot of you, I got shit to say and I want us to know each other.

I want to connect. I want to get to the bottom of all the shit we have to wade through to get to one another. And we need each other more than ever in the shitstorm of regret that is the clown car of the coming Trumpocalypse. Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy my attempts to create an image to convey this essay. Please listen to Actual People wherever you get podcasts. If you’re like me, you’ll love it. See you there.