Our Social Media Sites Are Up!
Our Social Media Sites Are Up!
Plus, our ambivalence about social media platforms in general
Twitter: @Leadership_Land
LinkedIn: Adventures in Leadership Land
Mastodon (SDF instance): @Leadership_Land
Reddit: Leadership_Land
If you’re on these networks, please follow us!
We have a decade of experience in audiovisual editing/creation/narration, so we may return to YouTube/TikTok/podcasting if readers also want to be listeners. We have no plans to join Instagram, Facebook, or Snapchat unless there’s high demand.
Our Philosophy on Social Media for Personal Use
We were early adopters of social media. The likes, thumbs-up, dings, and notification bubbles distracted us from deep work. Yet, they were addictive, like little hits of dopamine injected into our brains. The standard practice of “displaying your highlight reel, hiding your behind-the-scenes” created a skewed perception of our place in society, exacerbating our imposter syndrome and self-doubts. And when advertisements started following us across the internet, we realized that we had become goldmines of data.
We were serving social media companies more than they were serving us. Tim Cook would later condense the epiphany into a rule of thumb:
When an online service is free, you're not the customer. You're the product.
So we became early quitters, too. We began treating social media like cigarettes for the mind; they were electronic drugs that make you feel good now but cause chronic mental health problems with long-term use.
Social Media for Promotion and Connection
With Adventures in Leadership Land and other side projects (that are now dormant)1, we still believe the utility of social media outweighs its toxicity. We can connect with you through social media. We can use the platforms to send you mini-epiphanies and commentary that are too brief to deserve their own posts. Linking to our Substack publications helps with search engine optimization and word-of-mouth.
We’ll try to make our social media presence serve:
You first,
Us second,
The platforms’ owners last of all.
But we come from a place of mistrust. We treat our social media platforms like cursed tools with minds of their own – like the fantasy trope of the One Ring abandoning its wearer, or magic swords that house powerful spirits.
Why Mastodon?
The main Twitter account that we follow, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, is joining the mass exodus from Twitter following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform. Taleb is transitioning over to Mastodon, and we’re jumping on that bandwagon too. We’re still new to Mastodon and will withhold judgment until we spend some more time on the platform.
In the meantime, we will continue using the Twitter account, cross-posting between that and Mastodon. You can find more of our thoughts on the Elon Musk takeover sprinkled throughout the comment section of this reddit thread.
This is a quick update post that does not disrupt our weekly posting schedule. The ETA for the next Adventures in Leadership Land article is Tuesday morning (11/22). While you’re waiting, come find us elsewhere on the internet!
This is why our Twitter profile is ten years old. We’re rebranding an old account we used for a different project.