Am I the only one that gets a bit of a rash from the mainstream way of doing social media? The chirping birds that once allowed a community of journalists to gather on a platform to squawk freely has degraded with the equally free speech of divisive rhetoric and billionaire ego trips. Quick quips of less edited and more run-on content seem to fuel an arbitrary fire of divisive noise instead of an international call and response of reporting. Makes me itchy just thinking of it. How about you?
Facebook's boat of town hall focus has long since sailed in consideration of a user first, community centered model, unless you want to sell your old Ray Bans or gently used couch. And now with its not-so-sly rebrand, Meta is no longer the digital hub you can visit simply to search for long lost cousins without getting tussled in a political crossfire. Or maybe you will just have your movements tracked for what you may have clicked on, unsuspectingly.
A Scratchy Mess of Bad Behavior
In my research over the past years of interviewing and studying women, ages 22 to 48, on our shared social media experiences and behaviors, I have heard so many people, particularly countless women in business and loads of established, well-known thought leaders, saying that social media just makes us... sad. We are many times left feeling less than social. This is not exactly conducive to fostering community.
When I actually take a closer look into my own social media consumption, even if I use it to study and also promote the antidote I am creating, I am typically left feeling like absolute garbage.
Internet users far and wide, particularly busy women, would rather go straight to the source when they need support from community. They have told me that the spaces where they feel genuinely good, seen and valued look nothing like mainstream social media. Community with a capital C is what we are actually craving.
The Social Media Hologram
Maybe it is because the way social media is rigged currently is not real. One could argue it is a bit surreal. It seems to serve as a weird hologram of what is sort of, kind of real with a filter and cute edit. And maybe we like that, for a minute or two, because we are so flawed, puffy-eyed and truly exhausted by the reality of life. Perhaps we like to make it look like that A-list hologram is real.
And maybe, once we have had five to ten minutes of screen time (or in some recent cases, 498 minutes in one day), we suddenly are not as happy with such a photomicrograph of our shared existence as the channels suggest. Instead, users leave feeling like a shell of the hologram our filter told us we are, taking us away, one at a time, from actually being connected to the community that we so eagerly desire by way of small breadcrumbs of "likes" to our lustrous posts. The dopamine.
A Pandemic of Loneliness
In a timely report, the US Surgeon General shared that we are in a pandemic of loneliness. With all these incredible uses of technology to connect us, we have never been so alone, with over 60% of Americans struggling with loneliness and upwards of 75% of younger people in deep bouts of mental unwellness. This is likely our most common social media user base.
What if we did not need an ointment each time we used our handheld computers with power so great they can drive a car, adjust a thermostat or even make our morning toast?
Buying Back the Internet
What if we employed a bit of conscious economics to bring people together instead of dividing us in the typical, extractive capitalist models? I am not interested in breaking the internet but I would like to buy it back from the gentlemen of tech delight. And let's be clear, I do not want to buy back the internet so I can be the queen of the hill. I would like to redistribute the powers of access to tools and resources and flip the script on how we do business.
Generative, Not Extractive
I really want to not only center how we as women in business can individually profit from usage of our content, our own data and our people power that we consciously lead. I want us to also think about how we can access the currency of community not as extractive but as generative: a total reversal of the model that Big Tech has presented as the only way the internet can be used. That is the foundation of Business 4 Good.
The Real Antidote
The advent of modern day religion, centuries ago, called humans to gather under one roof, in our various sects, together. Then the $8 latte heralded by Starbucks underscored the opportunity to charge for that which tithes and offerings fell short of. And now the "free access" to social networks that promise to connect us while openly making major profits from your personal preferences and data in exchange for your direct access to the community you know that you want.
What if that value of community was reverted? What if that belonging that we all inherently seek, because we are intrinsically social animals, what if the value of your life lived was not an accumulation for personal gain? But the value we all carried was by how each of us is able to give support to our community, and not just your inner circle, your local tribe, but the larger community of humanity.
This is the antidote to separateness. A true salve to current day social media's hologram of greed and ignorant bliss.
Big Tech's extractive nature has not only made pretend versions of "networks" centering the most human thing, community, but also made us all a bit melancholy heading to the proverbial town square for our data collection and facial recognition blessing.
This is why we are building a new economic model at Business 4 Good. Not another social media platform. Not another networking group. A marketplace where women's expertise becomes equity, where cooperative profits return to the members who built it, and where the cumulative intelligence of that exchange becomes the world's first women-owned AI. Where your data stays yours. Where #Tequity is the operating system.
Because this is where belonging actually lives. Phoning a friend to ask her direction on how to find the best resources on funding for a project, where to find safe healthcare answers she can trust, or even where and how to get politically inspired? That is what real community looks like. And that is what we are building.
Why do we keep doom scrolling when we can easily be bloom scrolling? And while we are at it, why not reprogram the other algorithms running our lives, too?
Love,
Rose
