I am growing weary of social media. I am growing weary of the mental health “community” on social media. I am growing weary of algorithms that have ZERO interest in this topic and could not care less about teaching, privacy, safety, or actual support and empowerment.
Social media doesn’t care if I provide accurate or helpful information. It only cares if I am LOUD. It doesn’t care if you are benefiting from what I say as long as I keep talking. It isn’t interested in your safety or your well-being, it only wants your attention. It doesn’t care i f you can focus on this problem, it needs you to focus on EVERYTHING all the time. KEEP SCROLLING! DON’T PUT YOUR PHONE DOWN!
I’m getting very close to done with this now.
One of the reasons I started The Anxious Morning was so that I could communicate outside the cacophony of the dreaded scroll. I hate the scroll. Recovery is NOT in the scroll. It absolutely is NOT there no matter how many mental health celebs and influencers want to use the word “community” as a way to validate what they do.
Really, what community?
Community is a thing we want, but have to EARN and BUILD. Community isn’t a word we just get to use because it makes our business plan sound more socially acceptable. Community is based on common purpose and a desire to contribute knowledge, skill, or care to something larger than oneself. We come together in a space of our choosing, we make the rules for that space, and we work together in that space toward the goals we share. Social media platforms look nothing like that. The space is theirs, the rules are theirs, and the only goal that matters is the monetization of your thoughts and my ideas. That’s not a mental health community. That’s your mental health and my desire to help turned into someone else’s profit.
If I could make anxiety recovery edgy and controversial so that half of you love me and half hate me, but you argue all day long, I’d be MUCH larger than I am on the platforms. If I just stuck with soothing and telling you that you are amazing and that its OK to hide because nobody understands, I’d do much better algorithmically. But neither of those strategies have anything to do with improvement! The only thing they improve is my bank balance and Meta’s profit and loss statement.
Seerut Chwala is a therapist from the UK that I follow on Instagram. She’s great. For a full week she focused her content on men’s mental health, which seems like a good idea, right? WRONG. She had content removed by Instagram twice, got hammered by angry people in her comments section saying horrible things, and effectively got shadow banned by the algorithm as a result. She lost a TON of her audience. Men’s mental health. That discussion got her punished in that environment.
How is this even possible?
Anyway, I am not one to just complain and whine. I tend to do something with my complaining (and my whining). So while I will not deny that Facebook and Instagram contribute to my book sales, I can’t just do nothing because I sell books. That’s not OK.
For the last year I’ve been working on building a platform outside social media designed to allow us to come together without Meta watching every conversation, in a place where its ONLY about mental health and recovery, and where information is easy to find, easy to share, and easy to TALK about. Like actually TALK about. Oh, and with no ads and no exhortation from the platform to be loud, topical, or entertaining. Imagine that?
The thing is, I can’t do that for free. And I have been struggling this whole time with the idea of charging a fee for something like that. This feels super risky to me. It feels like a betrayal of why I started this whole thing to begin with. But I am running out of options.
If I try to operate primarily on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, I lose a bit of me. If invite you guys to a new platform - even if its dirt cheap - I lose a bit of me. So I have to choose the most productive of two uncomfortable paths, right? Which one leads somewhere? Which one does not? I have to suffer in the right direction!
It’s what I would tell you to do, and who am I if I can’t follow my own advice?
So … heads up. I’m getting much closer to the point where I can offer a better place to do this thing we do together. I might find that lots of people are excited and want to come along, or every time I sneeze the echo through the primarily empty halls will mock me. But whatever. Ima roll those dice.
Rant over. Thanks for listening.
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” - Maya Angelou
Every Friday I’ll share one of my favorite quotes. They’ll often have direct application in recovery, but sometimes they’re just generally funny, inspiring, or thought-provoking. I hope you enjoy them.
166. Why I Need To Build Something Better