Cru’s Letter

What if you wrote a book on your whole life story but you only had 3 seconds to convince someone to read the whole thing…

What would you do?

Would you put a ridiculous picture on the cover?

Would you give the book an absurd title?

Now, of course you’d want people to read your story if it was something you’re proud of but any method of that 3 second opportunity to hook them would probably feel disingenuous.

That is exactly what it feels like to create posts on short-form social media because the entire currency of those platforms is attention, not value or quality. For people that crave attention at any cost, this is great news because the more toxic something is, the more engagement it’s likely to create. Therefore, the quickest way to reach fame and fortune is to be as toxic as possible.

The problem here is that our culture still promotes the idea that money and attention is the solution to the discomfort of being a human. That feeling of “not enough” or having a non-existent relationship to the self can surely be purchased away right?

Wrong, yet most people will keep falling for it.

When the goal of social media, which is a fundamental part of our society at this point, is to grab attention as quickly as possible at any cost, it trains the brains of everyone to be less patient, more emotionally volatile, and less intelligent. Personally, I don’t think that’s good for us.

Unfortunately, that’s just the way it is now but if it wasn’t always that way, there had to be something that got us here…

Diffusion of responsibility:

a social psychological phenomenon where individuals are less likely to take action or feel personally accountable in a group setting. The more people present, the more witnesses assume someone else will intervene, leading to inaction or reduced effort.

Social media is a game and if you want to win that game, you have to play by the rules. Thing is, the rules are made not just by the game’s creator, but the players too because they can only be set in stone when players agree to follow.

There are SO many people on social media so it couldn’t possibly be up to you or me to change anything, right?

Well, imagine if every person thought that way…

We’d have a society of people that are self-centered and stuck in emotional survival, doing anything and everything to get ahead with no consideration to humanity as a whole.

Oh wait, that’s exactly what we have because we don’t want to take accountability for the fact that every action is not only a behavior of the self, it is an example that makes it’s way out into the world no matter how big or small.

When one person becomes okay with a shrunken attention span and toxic social media, it starts the spread to the rest of the world.

Having spent years creating on social media, it’s very easy to win. Here are a couple ways:

Personally, I think all three methods diminish the soul but when winning is the priority, you do what you’ve gotta do.

When you spend so much mental energy on winning, you often forget to take a few steps back and assess the game itself.

I’ve been doing that a lot lately and I know I’m not the only one.

I follow the CEO of instagram on instagram and he often creates posts sharing new features of the app. Every single time, the comment section is FLOODED with people saying how they don’t want any more updates, they just want their actual audiences to see the content they create and to essentially go back to a 10-years-ago instagram experience where it was based on community and connection.

It’s pretty funny to see how overwhelming the opinion is and how instagram continues to ignore it.

I guess all of this to say: YouTube is pretty sick and you should check out my channel lol.

-Cru