I love reading you Emma. And have been very slow to get through the Green Design course. Curious... What do you think of the concept of minus.social? Kinda like a modern poem experiment. lol.
This issue is great Emma, I and I think many others agree. Honestly I'm just waiting for an alternative app to pop up made by some gen z person who cares about ethics
Thank you friend 💚 It honesty sucks to be like trapped between like... LinkedIn vs Meta vs Twitter. All suck big time lol 😂 I feel like so many of the attempted startup alt social medias fail or just get gobbled up by Meta.
Enjoyed reading this, I’ve lost any love for Instagram as the one platform that did feel a fit for me. I don’t really know how to get started with Substack but it’s got a fair amount of appeal as I too like writing long form and the community aspect. Good luck for your goals on here 😊 your course is great so I hope that more designers find it!
Thank you so much Kirsty. I totally feel similar, Instagram was fun back in the day but it’s been a few years since it sparked joy for me now. My recommendation for getting into Substack is to just snoop around at the variety of things people are posting about and see the possibilities! Obviously, there’s small business / female entrepreneurs spaces that are more directly business aligned for sharing that type of thing (I found the space quite nice- lots of content about slowing down and focusing on what matters) but my favourite Substacks are actually the ones related to my personal hobbies of art and nature! I myself started a separate substack for my own art and naturalist endeavours just for fun too. I don’t know if it’ll go anywhere and that’s ok. It’s been fun for me to document things that bring me joy without the pressure to monetize as well :)
Hi Emma, I recently found your page/substack, etc and I am so happy to be finding all these profiles talking about more important issues like the one you mention above. What you say makes me feel free. So, thank you :)
Hi again Emma! How are you? I am a junior graphic designer and I am very interested in green graphic design as well as designing for "animal" related non-profit organizations, and I was wondering if you could give me some advice? Could I e-mail you or something similar? Thank you so much, Anisha :)
One decent thing about covy is it exposed really shitty systems and platforms as well as shifted people's perspective on their time, care, etc. Social media was one of these things that really got scrutinized more so than ever and therefore people reevaluated their "relationships" (or reliance) with it.
And to note about your dense carousels feeling draining: IG was GREAT for social justice movements in terms of awareness but that drive to 'soundbite' everything really left out space for nuanced conversations (and worse, opened good intentioned people up to attack because they didn't write a full dissertation and people are apparently against doing independent critical thinking).
That said, a lot of those people felt drained because they were constantly putting out more and more and more, to explain and it just... SUCKS lol
"it feels incredibly cheap and dishonest to be basically gutting interesting ideas into a shell of themselves for Instagram." - Loved this
"I’d happily drop client work if I could be a full-time writer, researcher, and educator for design" - Cheering this on for you in the future! I hope this can happen for you in some way
Agreed! I totally feel like everyone is aware and burned out on social media. I didn't even mention in this post that when I did an informal poll on my Insta stories asking if people also hated Instagram like 15 people said "Yes I hate it too" and only one was like "I'm enjoying it!"
I also have had people come and critique my carousels for not discussing extreme nuance, and it's like "I literally cannot! I have 300 words!". I really agree with your critique that people are against independent critical thinking LOL I have seen just a huge lack of media literacy in the last few years and it's disheartening to see, to be around, to participate in. I would have thought that after 2016 and Trump there would be a general awareness of the media being unreliable/full of misinformation but everyone I guess seems to feel their "favs" of any kind (Insta followers, media networks, news platforms) are excluded from that. And yeah... it's super super super super draining. It's much more calming to me to write longer posts here than fret about the reduced content.
This is an intriguing analysis, Emma - but where do photographers (among which I count myself now) go? I hate all the emphasis on video (unless it's ethically obtained wildlife stories), so as a producer of static images I am definitely in a quandary too...
Yeah, I think it's really hard. I don't know about you, but any still singular photo/graphic I've posted on Instagram has had horrible reach lately (~20 likes), same as Amy. There's no easy answer-the social media companies are basically a monopsony, we don't have much choice with the death of anti-trust lawsuits in the USA. We're seeing the breakdown of Twitter right now with a lot of people being harmed professionally from it. Facebook already is a dead platform for business, everyone's moved away for the most part. I do know of photographers (and follow them) on Substack, they write about their photos while posting them/posting on the new Notes functionality. There's also just making the photos into reels on Instagram or focusing on a personal website/portfolio. There aren't really any solutions when it's not a competitive landscape: the essay is more of a foreboding of what's to come based on executive calls BTS. I think also it's evaluating time cost vs reward on social platforms: I don't get any clients off Instagram ever, so that's no loss for me, but I do need to be aware of the course marketing side, which is what I'm trying to re-establish elsewhere after some consideration of not enjoying being on the platform. Everyone's situation and/or loss from moving platforms will always be unique.
I love reading you Emma. And have been very slow to get through the Green Design course. Curious... What do you think of the concept of minus.social? Kinda like a modern poem experiment. lol.
This issue is great Emma, I and I think many others agree. Honestly I'm just waiting for an alternative app to pop up made by some gen z person who cares about ethics
Thank you friend 💚 It honesty sucks to be like trapped between like... LinkedIn vs Meta vs Twitter. All suck big time lol 😂 I feel like so many of the attempted startup alt social medias fail or just get gobbled up by Meta.
Enjoyed reading this, I’ve lost any love for Instagram as the one platform that did feel a fit for me. I don’t really know how to get started with Substack but it’s got a fair amount of appeal as I too like writing long form and the community aspect. Good luck for your goals on here 😊 your course is great so I hope that more designers find it!
Thank you so much Kirsty. I totally feel similar, Instagram was fun back in the day but it’s been a few years since it sparked joy for me now. My recommendation for getting into Substack is to just snoop around at the variety of things people are posting about and see the possibilities! Obviously, there’s small business / female entrepreneurs spaces that are more directly business aligned for sharing that type of thing (I found the space quite nice- lots of content about slowing down and focusing on what matters) but my favourite Substacks are actually the ones related to my personal hobbies of art and nature! I myself started a separate substack for my own art and naturalist endeavours just for fun too. I don’t know if it’ll go anywhere and that’s ok. It’s been fun for me to document things that bring me joy without the pressure to monetize as well :)
Hi Emma, I recently found your page/substack, etc and I am so happy to be finding all these profiles talking about more important issues like the one you mention above. What you say makes me feel free. So, thank you :)
This is the sweetest comment ever, oh my gosh! I'm really really happy you're enjoying my writing and Substack as a whole <3
Hi again Emma! How are you? I am a junior graphic designer and I am very interested in green graphic design as well as designing for "animal" related non-profit organizations, and I was wondering if you could give me some advice? Could I e-mail you or something similar? Thank you so much, Anisha :)
Of course!!! :) My email is emma@littlefoxdesign.com even though I am pretty sure you have it from the Substack 😂
One decent thing about covy is it exposed really shitty systems and platforms as well as shifted people's perspective on their time, care, etc. Social media was one of these things that really got scrutinized more so than ever and therefore people reevaluated their "relationships" (or reliance) with it.
And to note about your dense carousels feeling draining: IG was GREAT for social justice movements in terms of awareness but that drive to 'soundbite' everything really left out space for nuanced conversations (and worse, opened good intentioned people up to attack because they didn't write a full dissertation and people are apparently against doing independent critical thinking).
That said, a lot of those people felt drained because they were constantly putting out more and more and more, to explain and it just... SUCKS lol
"it feels incredibly cheap and dishonest to be basically gutting interesting ideas into a shell of themselves for Instagram." - Loved this
"I’d happily drop client work if I could be a full-time writer, researcher, and educator for design" - Cheering this on for you in the future! I hope this can happen for you in some way
Agreed! I totally feel like everyone is aware and burned out on social media. I didn't even mention in this post that when I did an informal poll on my Insta stories asking if people also hated Instagram like 15 people said "Yes I hate it too" and only one was like "I'm enjoying it!"
I also have had people come and critique my carousels for not discussing extreme nuance, and it's like "I literally cannot! I have 300 words!". I really agree with your critique that people are against independent critical thinking LOL I have seen just a huge lack of media literacy in the last few years and it's disheartening to see, to be around, to participate in. I would have thought that after 2016 and Trump there would be a general awareness of the media being unreliable/full of misinformation but everyone I guess seems to feel their "favs" of any kind (Insta followers, media networks, news platforms) are excluded from that. And yeah... it's super super super super draining. It's much more calming to me to write longer posts here than fret about the reduced content.
This is an intriguing analysis, Emma - but where do photographers (among which I count myself now) go? I hate all the emphasis on video (unless it's ethically obtained wildlife stories), so as a producer of static images I am definitely in a quandary too...
Yeah, I think it's really hard. I don't know about you, but any still singular photo/graphic I've posted on Instagram has had horrible reach lately (~20 likes), same as Amy. There's no easy answer-the social media companies are basically a monopsony, we don't have much choice with the death of anti-trust lawsuits in the USA. We're seeing the breakdown of Twitter right now with a lot of people being harmed professionally from it. Facebook already is a dead platform for business, everyone's moved away for the most part. I do know of photographers (and follow them) on Substack, they write about their photos while posting them/posting on the new Notes functionality. There's also just making the photos into reels on Instagram or focusing on a personal website/portfolio. There aren't really any solutions when it's not a competitive landscape: the essay is more of a foreboding of what's to come based on executive calls BTS. I think also it's evaluating time cost vs reward on social platforms: I don't get any clients off Instagram ever, so that's no loss for me, but I do need to be aware of the course marketing side, which is what I'm trying to re-establish elsewhere after some consideration of not enjoying being on the platform. Everyone's situation and/or loss from moving platforms will always be unique.