Social media feeds have become so fucking boring. I spend more time searching than I do consuming. it feels like thats intentional. Like the tech companies give us what we want via algorithms sure, but it also feels like they through in stuff they know we won’t like to keep us scrolling.

I have said it before and I will say it again, podcasts are the last place we have true freedom of art. The rss feed has all but been killed off. even Spotify is trying to kill it off in favor of propriety feeds and exlusives.

It wasn’t that long ago that it felt like exclusive art on the internet was not a thing that could really survive. And yes I said art not “content”

But now we are seemingly foaming at the mouth for walled gardens. We could live in a world where I distribute my art to multiple platforms and people partake depending on the platform they use. This is of course how podcasts work. But no. I am told I must make different “content” for all platforms. And those thumbnails better be on point. I better get my SEO on point… I have already heard this story grandpa.

It’s the same old song and dance. Up the requirements for relevancy to the point you can only have success if you have a large amount of free time and resources and ability. And typically one only has these things if they also have a tremendous amount of privilege, usually passed down through family. So, the people that succeed start to look a lot like each other and a lot like the successful people of the past.

That is the cycle we need to break. I dont think it’s some master plan or some grand conspiracy. It is just how systems of supremacy work. From the patriarchy to white supremacy classism these things all survive because of the systems. And every once in a while a new system poops up that looks like it may finally topple supremacy and quickly rules and requirements of success come in to make it hard for those without privileges to succeed.

Western music theory, proper grammar, universities, best bussiness practices, proper manners, universities, churches, and now social media engagement, SEO, content monitization… these are all set up to make sure only those with privilege can truly succeed and the the about privilege is that its number one priority is to stay privileged.

The ability to subscribe to and follow any is the biggest threat to all of this. So thats why I am not surprised that on nearly all social media platforms follower counts matter less and less and you are lucky if you get your “content pushed to more than 10 percent of your audience. No. Wait. No. You are not lucky. You are privileged.

Instagram just released a new app called threads. It’s a twitter clone but its killer feature was to instantly follow everyone you follow on instagram now on threads. But dont get it twisted and think you are actually able to follow people in any sort of normal real time way. THEY LAUNCHED WITH NO FOLLOWING FEED. Those followings are just used to fee the algorithm to serve you what they think you want and continuously scrolling.

They had a real opportunity for a stable enriching platform. But that is not the internet we have right now. We have an internet and a culture that will gladly sacrifice stability for growth. But non stop growth is no way to live. it doesn’t support actually life. Just ask…cancer.

And guess what? It’s your fault. It’s my fault. It’s our fault. We just accept it and it’s probably the most destructive thing in our society. Look it’s not bad to using algorithms to serve new things, the way streaming sites do based on what you’ve watch and on what people who watch what you watch also watch. But imagine if you opened up Netflix and it only showed you random episodes based on an algorithm.

It’s not good for us. None of this is good for us. It’s all way too damn much.

Internet 2.0 was this great promise and it was centered around a thing called an rss feed. A url that was updated every time a creator released something. This was the backbone of blggon and podcasts and YouTube and later Facebook and twitter. The problem is when private companies went public and the pressure for monetization came in to play.

It went like this.

We need to make money. How?

Ads.

Ok. So we sneak them into the feed.

There is a problem though. We can’t clog up the feed with ads. And if Mary sue only follows 15 people she’s only spending an hour or 2 an our platform so she is only getting an add or 2 a day.

Ok then let’s also show in her feed any post the people she follows comments on. And let’s add groups or forums or trending topics to generate more comments. The more comments we get the more posts show up in the feed.

Now we have a lot more content all of a sudden. Let’s do some research on what kinds of content gets more people to comment on and push that to the top of feeds.

While we are at that research thing can we also find out what gets people addicted to commenting and coming back to see who responded?

Ok. Thats working. Now people are spending a lot more time on our platforms and we can serve more ads.

Ya know now that we have all this data I bet we could write some code that replaces the rss feed with a new kind of feed that serves what ever is going to get the most engagement and keeps people addicted to our platform.

Well that worked. But some of our advertisers don’t nt like how easy it is for certain kinds of content to gain traction and there are certain kinds of people they don’t want having that kind of power. Can we do something about that?

Sure. We can prioritize things in the algorithm feed that make it easier for certain kinds of people to succeed. Then we can pay people to follow these rules and then push their content. We will make them sign an NDA so no one knows and make sure to make it look like organic growth. Then people will follow those rules and start to censor themselves.

And now we have things like “corn” instead of porn or the over use of the term unloving entering the vocabulary of society in a huge way. I am even starting to see people unnecessarily censor them selves in private because it’s become such a huge part of our culture. All because advertisers want you on your best behavior so you can help them sell more products.

Dont get it twisted. Y’all aint content creators you are an advertising platform.

Look I am futurist. A progressive. So I dont say this lightly. We need to turn things back a bit. Or it’s going to be the emotional and spiritual death of us. We need to bring back true followers. Subscriptions. Enrollment. We need to reject scroll culture. We need to get back to picking who we let into our feeds. Feeds are here to stay. But a feel should be a delivery system not the product itself.

Sharing something and following or subscribing to someone should be a meaningful activity. What we pay attention to and what we share with each other is a core of our identity and culture and we need to have ownership of it.

So how do we the “content consumers” do something about all this. It starts with intention. Asking how this behavior helps you or could help you to help someone else whether its insightful ness, silliness, entertainment, education or whatever.

When you share something on social media that someone else made dont just simply share the link. Add a caption. Share why this was impactful enough for you to want to share. If you can’t come up with a reason consider that maybe it’s not worth sharing. Not everything is and thats ok. It’s ok to create or consume things you dont share.

I promise if you limit yourself to 1 or 2 hours a day of short form social media a day not only will your happiness and social media experience improve the way you use it will change.

Embrase long form content. Consider that maybe your resistance to long form well thought out content with lots of context and nuance is not because of your shout attention span but perhaps an addiction to short instantly gratifying content created to get you used to consuming ad length content.

Aint that a bitch? Think about it. We are all basically just watching commercials all day long now. Not just short video but even the way we present text and pictures is set up like an ad. Everything is an add. So many you dont even noticed how many ads are being served to you.

I feel like “influencers” just make ads. Not just for products but ads for joining their “community” which is of course cuz advertisers figured out that community and culture are how trends are set. People like us do things like this.

And now there is this fear of long term content but I think it’s actually some bullshit. It’s not fear it’s junky behavior. Its weird justifications to not admit we are addicted to short form instant gratification.

I dont can’t commit to a 3 hour movie but I will binge watch 30 minute episodes like it’s my actual job for 8 hours.

I dont have time for that 2 hour podcast but I will spend 6 hours watching TikTok videos.

Can’t respond to my friends long ass book of a text who desperately needs connection but nah I can totally talk to strangers on the internet for 5 hours.

And then we act like we fucking know something. We know nothing.

They got us chasing being an influencer just they like did chasing being a rock star or business man. It was all made up then and it’s all made up now. If you give a shit about your well being and integrity you face an uphill slog covered in boulders that crushed those that crushed the souls of those that came before you. Even if you think you are not chasing influencer culture you should take inventory cuz I got some bad news for you… we al are.

They took this wonderful phrase “it aint what you know it’s who you know” and twisted it into this weird middle school social game of hierarchy. Perhaps we should update that. It’s not who you know its who you have a relationship with. Who claims you. Who is enrolled in the outcome of you being you.