Thank you for not reading
And fighting a potential enemy of community joy
Thank you for not reading this blog.[1]
Writing it — and hearing it helps in some small way — brings me joy.
This blog advances my purpose: building a movement to significantly, measurably increase joy the only way we can (in community). For the blog to support that purpose, I need people to read it.
So why “thank you for not reading”?
There is something relieving when a post doesn’t have much engagement. I don’t check the stats nearly as much. I move on.
Medium (the English-language-version of this blog’s platform[2]) provides detailed tracking of post views, reads, claps, comments, and fans[3] — for each post and all posts, by day, updated in real time. It tells me the number and percentage of viewers and readers who came from Facebook, LinkedIn, Medium, and other sources.[4] All with colorful graphs.
When daily numbers are tracking up, my “stats” tab seems to remain open. I refresh it periodically. I feel nervous and excited, wondering as I prepare to check again, if the post has now taken off.
I have a love-hate relationship with these stats. Maybe you feel similarly tracking engagement with some of your social media posts (I do when I track LinkedIn and Facebook engagement as I promote the blog).
Building more joyful communities starts with building awareness — so engagement trends matter. Maybe engagement trends matter for your work too.
But maybe also, as is true for me, you’ll never be satisfied with any specific level of engagement. Even still, the uncertain reward of engagement can make that quest for engagement addictive — like gambling.[5] In several ways, then, tracking the metrics subtracts from happiness.
How could this reduce community joy?
We are wired to deeply desire in-person human acceptance and love, and to fear rejection. That wiring helped us survive; human connection still does.[6]
Social media (or Medium) stats can tap into this deep wiring and desire for validation. It’s useful to receive support for (and constructive feedback on) ideas — but the human validation we all too naturally seek from these platforms is much shallower.
The combination of potential human validation with the aforementioned uncertain rewards is a potent cocktail that can ultimately leave us individually less joyful.
It can reduce community joy too by displacing real-world real-time connection. Content creation can advance our purpose and contribute in meaningful ways to joy — but when we seek connection and social validation from reactions to our posts, we risk substituting virtual, time-interrupted, shallower connection for in-person connection with friends and family. As many people do this, our communities — and our world — have less real human relationship.
We haven’t sought to spend more time alone or to become more lonely, but loneliness has been consistently increasing since the 1970s.[7] Social media isn’t alone; a variety of technologies and social change have had unintended consequences.
While they have brought much good, technologies — from cars (substituting for walking and interacting in person) to televisions (substituting for in-person entertainment) to social media and smartphones (substituting for conversation and connection) — also have taken away time we would have spent interacting in person, strengthening human relationships.
What can we do?
These Medium posts, and LinkedIn and Facebook sharing of them, enable us to advance community joy work in a new way that wouldn’t have been as possible or accessible in the past. We need to maximize such benefits and mitigate the risks of tools like these. Here are some ideas:
Technologists, policymakers and regulators:
· Carefully consider unintended consequences of new technologies. Roll them out slowly and test them. Develop policies, technologies, and tools to mitigate negative impacts — from the beginning and before negative impacts become too widespread.
· Continue to review impacts of technologies and use policies, technologies, and tools to course correct (e.g. adjust algorithms to amplify unifying, rather than divisive, content).
Content creators:
· Maintain our close relationships with family and friends to lift us up when we are getting content out there — and keep us grounded when we succeed.
· Remember the purpose of content creation. Our dreams are big enough to keep us grounded. (Even if everyone in the world read this blog, that would only be the beginning of work to increase community joy). But also, we can look back at our progress to keep us going.
· Use fitness (exercise, nutrition, sleep) and meditation to stay happy, calm, focused, and (if needed/ relevant), humble.
· Have fun! Don’t take ourselves too seriously.
Individuals and community members:
· Be mindful: when can we change an activity to incorporate more live connection? We aren’t just doing it for ourselves. We’re building more joyful, connected communities together. Each of us has the power to catalyze more relationships, purpose, fitness, mindfulness, and fun!
Everyone:
· Shameless plug — confirming I didn’t mean the title: follow/ subscribe to this blog. Give me feedback.
I’ll try not to refresh the stats too much.
This is the 33rd post about boosting joy the only way we can: in community. Please share, subscribe, and join our movement by emailing me or supporting East Boston Social Centers. Stay joyful, East Boston.
[1] Although also, please do read it.
[2] Spanish version is on the Social Centers website.
[3] So many fun ways to engage!
[4] Thank you for subscribing to the newsletter!
[5] Learn more, including the role of dopamine, here.
[6] Maybe you’ve heard: loneliness has health impacts equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes per day.
[7] Learn more from Laurie Santos here.
