More community, less consumption

In 2013 my boss (a CMO) called me a "nerd" for explaining why Twitter could be a viable marketing platform. Well, I'm about to be a nerd again, because I believe that decentralization is the future of the way we will communicate online.

Bluesky was just the beginning. There are so many apps being actively built on decentralized protocols like atproto and ActivityPub , but in my experience in the world of corporate social media marketing, it's very likely that if I brought this up to a CMO right now, I'd be called a nerd again.

Social media professionals in the early days (the Twitter days!) had to be on the cutting edge of tech. Today, however, the field has morphed into just another way to sell content and market things.

I've always preferred to live on the tech side of emerging platforms and the way humans communicate. Maybe this is why I've always felt as if I was cosplaying a business professional through my career in social media and community. I think this is why it was relatively painless for me to exit Meta platforms like Facebook and Instagram for my personal life. Those platforms feel stifling to me. They are so heavily censored that we've had to develop a culture of self-censorship just to speak our truths.

With decentralized social media, though, if a platform decides to censor me, I can just leave it (and take all my content with me). I can choose a better place to post and interact. We all can.

Platforms will come and go (and sometimes platforms morph into the torment nexus ). Businesses (and thus, my jobs) could never really grasp (or care to) these things, because to them, these are just "channels". It's literally built into the marketing lexicon: "What channels are we posting on? What channels perform best?"

I am, fundamentally, a community builder. I've been able to shoehorn this passion into income via the cosplay of marketing in "social media" (at this point, a relatively archaic term IMO), but marketing has never been my strength. I am a listener, a talker, an introducer. I am at my very best when I am introducing people to either other people or new experiences. I take pride in understanding people and connecting the dots as to what I believe might bring them joy. I practice thoughtful and intentional curation, which is kind of the opposite of consumer culture.

I am excited by the future of decentralized communication. We lost our way by the rampant need to monetize everything and dangle the carrot of fame and fortune to individuals by calling them "influencers". This is why we have Meta and X.

Remember, though: people thrived on the internet before these corporate platforms existed. Forums, IRC, Usenet, BBSes, niche networks, fandoms. We just want to enjoy stuff!

Decentralization is the answer to this. People are so tired of being force-fed "buy this" or "think this" or "be mad about this" every single moment of our lives by what is ultimately just an extremely elaborate commerce platform. We just want to talk to each other!

I wish I was employed right now, and could afford a trip to ATmosphere Conference , because I think I want to become a part of the community that is building this future. If you have any interest in building the future of community, you might want to check it out.

-prime