Well... Now What?
This post was originally sent as an email to subscribers on January 23, 2025.
Hello, friends! How is everyone doing? The state of the country… er, world?… has been bleak lately. What have you been doing to find peace?
I’ve been trying to spend less time on social media. As someone whose job is mostly social media, I’ve noticed that it isn’t doing good things for my mental health. You may have noticed this from reflections in my previous email. In order to be a social media professional, you kind of always have to be online. Our brains were not made for the 24 hour news cycle and I’m starting to see the effects seep into my mental health and wellbeing. One person can only consume so much brain rot, hateful comments, and recycled memes. So, that’s why I’ve decided to stop offering social media and content creation as a service in my business. I’ve ended my contract as a social media manager with Hidden Valley Ranch, which was a difficult but necessary decision (so long, free ranch!). This has been a long time coming for me as I’ve known that I don’t want to work in social media anymore for a while now. The feeling of closing out of all those Chrome tabs was unmatched. It’s been almost a week—my last day was Friday—and I already feel so much better.
It’s very hard for me to support businesses (read: Meta, X, TikTok) whose values don’t align with my own. Surely you’ve heard about all of the drama going on in social media over the past few weeks. Zuckerberg rolled back Meta’s DEI initiatives and removed fact checking from its platforms. Elon Musk did the Nazi salute on a national stage at the inauguration. TikTok was banned and as part of a circus-like propaganda plan, users received multiple pop-ups in the app commending Trump for his efforts to restore the app before he was even officially in office. Never mind that he was the one who initiated the ban, and that the ban only effectively removes TikTok from the app store. Remember Flappy Bird? Even though it was removed from the app store, phones that still have the app installed can still play it. You just can’t download it onto a new device or install any software updates. That’s essentially what happened to TikTok. So all those pop-ups? Propaganda. If that’s not scary to you then maybe you haven’t studied and worked in advertising for as long as I have? ;) Words matter and they have the power to change public opinion. And this is a frightening time to be on social media.
People with money and power are trying to squash our attempts at collectivism and connecting with each other. They know that when we are united, the people have the power, but when we are divided, the upper echelon has the power. The attempt to control the narrative on social media and in our classrooms and workplaces is a threat to our democracy and another step in the direction of an oligarchy (although, some would argue that we’re already in an oligarchy).
In 2023, I read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and in 2024, I read Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. Both classic works of fiction that draw parallels to our current situation. The Book Thief follows the story of a 9-year-old girl in Nazi Germany and shows how Hitler was able to rise to power and popularity by promising a better future for Germany, appealing to young men and boys and their definitions of masculinity, and by burning books and changing the narrative so people were not educated and were no longer able to distinguish fact from fiction. Parable of the Sower was written in 1993 and takes place in California in 2024, and it tells the story of a dystopian version of the US and failed government led by someone who literally promised to “make America great again.” With those exact words. Written the year I was born. These books serve as cautionary tales for what’s to come and what’s already here. And, friend? It’s not looking good. The way these protagonists survived? By working together with their communities. We need each other now more than ever.
So how do we build community and stay connected? That brings us back to social media, which no longer feels like a safe space. I weaned myself off of Twitter when Elon Musk bought it and deleted my account several months ago. I removed the Snapchat and Facebook apps from my phone again. After I download my data, I plan to delete my Facebook account and will soon be taking a break from Instagram until I can figure out a better solution for advertising my business. As much as I can go on about how bad social media is, there are a lot of reasons I love it too. It keeps me connected with family and friends that feel so far away—it’s how I stay in touch with my loved ones in different states and even different countries around the world. It allows me to creatively express myself and find inspiration. It helps me grow my business—a lot of my client work still comes from Instagram. It helps me make new friends and find community in Seattle. So how do we stay connected without it?
One of my goals for this year is to revive this newsletter. I’m planning to do monthly updates and try not to clutter your inbox too much (they’ll be more lighthearted than this one!). I’m also trying to be more involved in my community and attend more in-person social events. This year, I’d love to plan and host an event myself. Until we can find a better solution for sharing with each other, I’m going to keep to my little corner of the internet. I also feel a pull to move back to analog ways of doing things. I’m going to make more old-fashioned phone calls, send photos to the group chat, send snail more mail, and make plans off-screen.
You can expect my future newsletters to be a bit shorter (I’ll link out to the blog for more long-form writing going forward). I’ll try to keep them lighthearted and fun to give you updates on my life and work, and I may share some photos that I would normally have posted on social media. I’m playing around with the format and branding and I’m open to feedback! You can always reply to an email to talk to me directly or call me. Thanks for being here! I’m excited to try something different.
