Navigating my love-hate of social media (Part 3)
How to embody our own algorithm
Here I continue my inquiry into my love-hate relationship with social media. In case you missed the earlier essays in this series, they are here and here. Today’s installment goes deep into point 2 below:
1. Accepting social media the way it is, has unblocked my participation and influence in a global ecosystem, while enhancing my human-ness
2. Embodying my own algorithm in spaces of mass distraction translates into creation and engagement to trigger oxytocin, not dopamine
3. Staying sovereign on socials means unlearning sensitivity to imposed metrics – and stubbornly measuring success on my own terms
4. Being available to serve requires visibility and vulnerability, which makes my ego into an offering on the altar of collective transformation
5. Using socials for experimentation and expression (not perfectionism and performance) requires safety sourced from within
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Warning: continuing to read this essay series might completely ruin your existing worldview on social media.
Embodying my own algorithm in spaces of mass distraction translates into creation and engagement to trigger oxytocin, not dopamine
I am a solo entrepreneur, so having some footprint on social media these days feels like a non-negotiable. If you’re a corporate refugee like me, you probably also left behind one system of control, having already entered the next.
Within the virtual ecosystem of personal brands, if you are not on social media, you don’t exist. When you meet someone new in real life these days, they don’t ask for your business card anymore, they ask for your Instagram handle. It is literally and metaphorically how others get a hold of you.
We may have been given free social sharing platforms, but we have paid for that with the high price of our creative freedom.
Now we find ourselves as nodes in a web programmed for profit, not nourishment. Online, our social-ness is mediated by platforms designed to foment distraction, not to facilitate connection. Our attention is captivated by the flames of high drama. We bow in subservience to the logos of story, while neglecting the ethos of integrity and the pathos of empathy.