It’s been more than a decade since the esteemed trend-setters of our age dubbed Facebook “uncool.” Yet, by userbase, it still dwarfs TikTok, Instagram, and its other competitors by nearly a full billion. And when it comes to revenue, it out earns the next 7 platforms combined (worth noting that the next two are Instagram which it owns and YouTube which hardly counts as social media).

It’s clear that the dispositions of our influencer-ing superiors are far from the whole story when it comes to what makes a social media platform successful.

But it’s worth asking: “What makes a social media platform successful?” and “For what group does a platform exist to serve?” At the very least, there has in the past ten years become a growing disconnect between the platforms that are fun and the platforms that are profitable, but I believe there’s a straightforward explanation for why every mainstream platform inevitably falls from the former into the latter.

Every platform (assuming it continues to gain traction) will progress through these stages. But the question is: why?

The allure of using social media stems from the fact that everyone else is using it. This leaves developers for new platforms in a bit of a Catch-22: The platform only has value if everyone is on it, but only a small percentage of social media users value it enough to pay for it.

The solution? Start with a platform that is fun, flashy, and easy to join. The initial and sole objective becomes capturing as wide of a userbase as possible. If you fail to attract a large enough percentage of the population fast enough, your platform is toast and your funding is irrecoverable.

If a platform is one of the lucky few to find favor in the eyes of the influencing elite and it grows to a large audience, the next goal becomes capitalizing upon your captive audience.

Takeaway: Disingenuous or misleading sponsored content overwhelming our social media feeds is the inevitable consequence of our unwillingness to pay for valuable services. The bottom line is that with every platform, we either PAY for the product, or we BECOME the product.

The Elusive Multitasking Ability

For a long time, I fooled myself into thinking I was a multi-tasker.

I could definitely play Minecraft while sitting through a boring Zoom call, or participate in a conversation while scrolling through Instagram, or listen to The Lone Ranger Theme 10 Hour Version on volume 11 while attempting to solve tedious chemistry problem sets.

I’ve always prided myself as an innovator—one who could do things faster and more effectively than others.

But scientific studies have confirmed again, and again, and again that doing multiple things at once is ultimately less effective than doing multiple things in sequence. For some reason I believed I was the exception to the rule.

Indeed, as our society at large becomes less focused, the negative effects of multitasking on ourselves become harder to recognize. The lines between work and leisure have become so blurred in our modern world.

We watch YouTube while we're at work and we answer work emails while we're at social functions. We play while we work and we work while we play. The act of being present and directing our whole attention to the people and places in front of us is becoming a forgotten discipline.

Just because we are capable of switching between browser tabs or phone apps in the blink of an eye, doesn’t mean that our brains work in the same way. In doing so, we’re mistaking our attention spans (stunted by compulsive inbox-refreshing and TikTok-swiping) for efficiency. We feel fast—therefore we must be fast.

In our drive to accomplish more, we've ironically made work less productive and leisure less restful.

Walter Brueggemann pointedly observes in his book Sabbath as Resistance, that the act of attempting the practice of multitasking is a vain attempt to transcend our human constraints.

Takeaway: No matter how much we want it to be, multitasking is a myth, and attempting to do it is hazardous to our well-being. We would do well in our modern, distracted society, to revisit the old adage of “work hard, play hard.”

Concrete Idea of the Week: Remembering Our Lives

What if have having cameras in the palm of our hands at every waking hour of the day actually makes it more difficult for us to recall our experiences?

The process of writing content for this newsletter and producing videos for social media about ideas has driven me to think more deeply and grapple with a ton of new ideas myself. As I do that, I want to make an effort to share some of these ideas that I haven’t fully processed or synthesized into my own thoughts, but which have left a deep impact upon me, and are in some sense, provocative. I have found this video by Johnny Harris to be both.

He contends that our desire to document and capture what we see actually leads us to internalize less of our other experiential senses in the moment. In focusing on the photo, we’re blocking out our sense of smell, taste, touch, and sound—all of which are necessary to the act of remembering. He makes a compelling argument, and as I think back upon my own life memories, I have often found that memories from the most recent decade in which I rarely went places without either my smartphone or my camera are frequently less vivid than those from longer ago in which I carried neither.

I first watched this video a couple weeks ago and I’m still not sure what to make of it, but that’s the power of a concrete idea: it stays with you. If nothing else, it gives me a renewed appreciation for my mom’s approach to family trips: because the rest of the family was occupied taking photos and videos, she felt free to experience the moment.

Personal Pitch:

If you’ve made it this far, I hope that you found this content insightful or valuable. My goal is to share ideas that are contagious—that you would want to pass on to others. If you found this the case, I’d love if you would share this email with your friends/family or social media following. If not, or if you have ideas about things I could add or adjust, I’d love to know how I can improve so let me know!

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Thanks for reading!

Brent