I've spent the last six years on social media and in the digital realm observing, questioning and taking action against the unbridled harvesting of our data and attention.
As a parent, I've studied and created my own frameworks on how to safeguard my young minds. so they can have the very best possibility of survival, growth and the ability to be anonymous.
Yet I've adopted digital production and showmaking, find most of my work and podcast guests through being online.But I also have an extremely strong driver for ethical tech, privacy and also sharing authentically.It's a delicate dance.
Today we're going to unpick some of my observations most recently
that will help you discern what's good, what's rot, and truly important things to consider right in this very moment that will help you experience more joy, courage, and freedom to show up online and show the world who you are and what you stand for.
For those that shrink hearing this, how about discovering where you might step up so you can be seen as a thought leader, an expert, or the next big thing in your industry? Be not afraid, these are all things to chew on as we navigate social media.
There's no escaping it.So let's break down some of the most pressing observations and ideas for you on socials.I'll see you in just a few moments. Hello and welcome to today's episode.
I'm your host, Joy Pereira, and I'm so pleased to be bringing you the very best ideas and interviews in this podcast, Nerds of Joy, to broker and grow your digital strategy, amplify your business, and broadcast yourself with less fear, to create real life opportunities for greater success, and intentionally design the life that you deserve.
It's long overdue, right?So sit back, listen curiously, and enjoy the show. So I thought I'd share this episode with you, just my musings and my thoughts over the last couple of days on some of the things that I've seen on social media.
And I really think it's something that we need to highlight or focus or spend a little bit of time ruminating about because we really need to stop the rot.I think that's my new slogan, stop the rot.Because it's not just opinions of what others say.
But it's the total inaccuracies that has bred this whole new industry of takedowns.So, have you seen someone who might takedown someone else who has posted something?
And it's really difficult to understand exactly where you sit or who you should follow on social media.In this whole new industry of takedowns, it's happening.And it might be good, but it's also often toxic.
layering with even more disinformation or misinformation and the pile-on of comments only revs our collective nervous system.Ask yourself, where are you spending your time?
The other day I saw this raging bro who was very angry about this husband who was sitting there as the rest of the family out at a restaurant were eating.The mum had three kids on her lap, the kids obviously were struggling, the mum was struggling
And the father was just sitting there with a pizza, having a bit of a look into space and eating quietly.
And this raging bro took it upon himself to not only take down the whole family, not tag them, but also make a big scene about the whole situation.And for me, that was disingenuous because I felt like this person maybe doesn't even have a family.
he showed this absolute outrage and anger to an audience of females.And so, of course, I clicked and fell down a rabbit hole just to discover a little bit more because in my mind, I thought, why is this guy really upset about this situation?
And I thought maybe he has baggage, so let's explore a little bit more.And on his profile, I didn't see any family.I didn't sort of see any potential of wanting kids or anything like that.
But he was serving this audience of all of these beautiful women who might have been neglected or were definitely single mothers.And to me, that was a difficult buy to truly feel like he was serving this audience.
All of these great women were sharing their stories, their empathy, They were pouring their hearts out, essentially, in the comments section of all of the videos that he created.But for me, it was disingenuous.
I don't know if I'm the only person, female on the planet, if you stumbled across this feed of this dude, whether you would feel the same, but it really made me question
what his ethics were in creating this following, amassing this following of all of these single mothers out there who've gone through trauma, heartbreak, abandonment, really living in difficult circumstances.
And you can be from any place in society to be in that circumstance.And what I felt like it was just this breeding ground of people coming in, potentially
scammers, finding these vulnerable women who might be disclosing a little bit too much information on social media, and they were easy targets.That was my first thing, safety.I was concerned about the women that were actually following.
I put a comment up just to say, be careful who you follow.And there started to be this outpouring of people, including women, who were supporting this person, saying they would rather have a man step up and speak on their behalf.And I thought,
I understand that.We've all done it.We often have let men go first.It's a conditioning that we may potentially have.
But I also thought in my mind, if they can find influence from this person who was pretty much raging on social media, then I wonder if they truly can represent themselves.
Or they're still sitting in too much disruption in their current circumstance that they are able to step up or have a voice or fight.No disrespect at all for the many thousands of women following this person.
A lot of caution, I think, is necessary when you do have people that are building communities essentially on heartbreak
pain points and overwhelm so that they can get people to buy their program or feel more connected with them or feel like they're a hero.I think we all need heroes.We all need champions.We all need people to look to and aspire to.
I think that's only human nature.But you've really got to be careful with who you follow.
because a lot of these people are purely doing it to gamify their audience so that they can get what they want to get, which essentially will always end up not just, it's not just about a following, but it truly is about monetization.
And that really makes me very sad.I think women can play small often.We can't step up.We can't explain ourselves.Sometimes we need permission.This is just the inherent nature that I try and knock out of myself on a daily basis sometimes.
And I think that that's something that I really want to cultivate in my little girl.How to step up and how to feel comfortable in your skin without outsourcing the ability for you to Step up and represent yourself.Advocate for yourself.
Be stronger in your position, even in a place of weakness.
Find community with your like-minded people and don't outsource it to people that don't even have, from what I can tell on social media, have the children or the experience or the life experience or the women's perspective and lived experience.
Please be aware of this ladies in particular. And gents, support your ladies or partners, support your ladies because we all need a little bit more support in treading gently and navigating on social media.
Now, one of the things that I discovered last week was a video by Mazari, who's the head of Instagram and I guess threads as well.And he has been talking about the fact that videos will be downgraded on Instagram.
videos that don't perform quite as well, videos that haven't had significant reach, all of these things.And there's a couple of problems that I find with this.The fact that women's voices can often fail.
Women's voices are not heard in the way that male voices are.And I hate that there has to be this sort of delineation between male or female and, you know, everyone else in the mix, because it's just like this
everyone trying to dive in to gain followers and for what purpose when the reach on Instagram is minuscule compared to the old golden days of the platform.
Women's voices aren't heard and so many of us in the efforts of trying to garner a following or get attention end up downgrading our own creativity. I'll give you an example of this.
There was a person that reached out on threads and they were wondering if it's worth it going to the Blue Mountains.The Blue Mountains is a beautiful, picturesque place outside of Sydney, about an hour 20, depends on the traffic.
and it's a World Heritage listed place to go.
This person on her profile said that she was an explorer and so in wanting to reach out and having been to and spent time in the Blue Mountains many times, my message was that, you know, as an explorer, that's what she called herself, just hop on a train or do whatever it takes to get there and discover a new experience.
There's a lot of amazing things to see and do there and it's a good escape from the city. I don't know and I can't actually recall whether she was Aussie or if she was a tourist, but in her title on Instagram, it said, I'm an explorer.
So me basically giving her the permission or the enthusiasm or the endorsement to go, I thought was a beautiful thing.And then I think she realized that we didn't actually know anything about her.
Her comment after that was, I've been there five times, So yeah, this is that thing about engagement farming.We thought that she wasn't from Sydney, perhaps, or that she actually had a genuine question on social media about it.
Lots of people were chiming in, listing all the best spots to go to, the tourist destinations, the best food to eat in the area.
I just encouraged her to actually just go get on a train, hire a car, do whatever you need to do to get up to the Blue Mountains to check it out because you're an explorer.And then she'd actually been there five times.
So to me, that was a complete waste of time, energy, brain space to cater to actually offer that human connection of endorsement and of support for someone you think might just be a little bit shy or timid or insular.
So yeah, I really dislike posts like that.And it's happening a lot on threads.I think threads is doing quite the best reach out of the meta platforms at the moment.But there is a lot of that kind of click farm engagement that's going on from people.
Another one that happened, another beautiful lady was that she was asking the question, would you go on a podcast?And she was unsure about herself and she didn't know and blah, blah, blah.
And so I offered my advice as a podcast producer and I've been making a podcast for five years and I'm actually a judge on the Australian Podcast Awards.So in generosity, I left a message for her as well.
And it turns out that this person has a podcast.
So once again, we fall down this rabbit hole of being human, wanting to help another person, a stranger on the internet, and your goodness is basically harnessed and used for their clickbait and engagement.
Another one, it just really, it didn't boil my blood or anything like that.It was probably another five minutes of wasted time in the day and also a disrupter to the
way that you map out your day and the day that you plan and the headspace that you have at that time and how much energy you have at that time and focus.So really try and vet these things.
I think when things like this come up now, I will immediately put in not interested or I will just block because if they're going to do it once, then they're going to try and engagement farm and harvest again and again and again.It's their strategy.
It's their method.And if you know nothing about social media, just please be aware of these sort of things.I think it's kind of like my mission these days to really just outline what is happening on social media and how it really affects us.
You can listen to podcasts and they can give you all the best strategies at the time, which it becomes completely irrelevant at the flick of a switch by Meta for your reach and what the best practice is.I don't think anybody can really know.
And the only way, as we do know, the way to get engagement and followers is to be controversial.It's about creating a vision splendid, but actually giving no premise behind it.
In my time on social media, I have seen people or influencers that I've followed thinking, wow, they've got some solution there.They've got a method.They're obviously doing well on social media.
They've got thousands or tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of followers.And then they've just disappeared off the face of the earth.
I don't know whether they'd bought those followers or what the situation was or circumstance, but it was just glossy veneer that they'd put up and it wasn't sustainable.And it's not sustainable for anyone.
I have to say, I think I'm some weird unicorn where I'm able to sustain myself and work virtually in isolation, but still obviously meeting people online and interviewing and doing all of those kinds of things.
to have the tenacity to continue to show up and to create works by yourself is really difficult for a lot of people.
It's a game where I think people can lose hope in the work that they're doing or in what they're trying to do because they're trying to be purpose-driven or they're trying to get to the next level.
They're trying to broker something, put out something in the world.It could be a product, it could be a service.And that's all great, but it does take a lot of energy.And I think that that's something that I was never told about.
You know, when I released myself on social media, I looked around, I saw all these people that were doing these things that looked really interesting.They looked like they were the authorities, the experts.They knew what to say.They knew what to do.
They knew the perfect edits.And then they'd sometimes disappear.
Or then they come back with their trauma story and something that's just happened to them for the last six months, let's say, and they were ranting to build up their following again or their engagement again.
And it's like, I had no idea that you suffered this certain thing and whether it's actually real or not, I don't know, because it becomes disingenuous and you don't know what is real and what is confected for story.
I have seen recently the passing of someone who was of quite high influence.
I went to a seminar of this person, maybe it was very close to the six-year mark, I'd have to say, and in those days they were talking about how they were hospitalized as a child and this happened and then this happened and this happened.
You know, it's shocking to see the passing of someone so young, but then also the outpouring of emotion from people that had followed them.A lot of them were people that I follow in my sphere as well.
They had a lot of beautiful things to say, but we actually don't know and we don't need to know why this person passed away.But I think what I'm trying to get to here is that the stories of their life in passing were
different to the stories that were being told to me on the stage as I watched them.And so I really don't have a clue what happened.I honestly sent my thoughts to the family of this person.
It's pretty devastating to lose someone so young, and we'll probably never know the true story with that.
But I think for me, it felt like a cautionary tale because there are certain things that we put out on the internet, and there's certain things if you are a person of influence, or if you have a digital profile that goes out.
And I think the further that we get away with storytelling, and storytelling to the max, which can actually, I guess, some people, you know, blur the lines between storytelling and gently telling white lies, and then it can propagate into more and more and more.
We have many years ago, the downfall of Miss Bella, if you remember who she was and what she was about. So yes, once again, be careful who you follow.I think for me, I just want to stop the rot.I think it's so important for us to do this.
As the Centre for Humane Technology, they talk about it being the race to the bottom of the brainstem and absolutely that is what social media is.
We are primped and primed to be gamified, to spend the most amount of time on social media, to be engaging, to be tethered and slaved to something that can offer actually no value or solution.
If we are not monetizing, if we're not actually making money and using it as some sort of broadcast machine or marketing machine, then we want to be here
And we were told that social media was to enable people to access other people from around the world, like it was some big, beautiful, virtuous thing of democratizing communication.
Like it was some big, wild thing to be explored where suddenly hundreds of countries around the world, you could reach out and talk to someone and connect with someone else.What a wonderful and generous vision splendid was that.
fast track a couple of years and what did we get to?
I remember being a part of a talk circuit and it was a tech, essentially it was a tech talk circuit and we built this beautiful speaker showcase and one of the guys was talking about how data is the new oil.I'm talking maybe eight years ago
And he was so right.But I was like, what are you talking about?He obviously had his hooks in Silicon Valley.We had the godfather of the internet there.There were so many people from high tech caliber bro land out.They were lovely.
We were able to just get the very inkling, the very beginning of what does data mean and what is the new oil about it?I think we all know now, right? data.Our data is being harvested and sold to third parties.Our data is being used to train AI.
And for me, a creative person from a creative industry working professionally on creative platforms and on stages for over the last 20 years, I can see the devastation of the artist.
I can see the toiling, because I've been a part of it, of something big where people come together to build shows or people come together to shoot films.It's a truly collaborative process.
There's so much creativity within it, but then there's also so much technical as well to do that.And what I found recently With just looking at AIs, it just breaks my heart.
I don't want it to break my spirit, but it breaks my heart to know that 100 years of filmmaking has essentially been sucked up in a vacuum to then spit out stuff where I could get George from accounts to type in something as a prompt and get something to be made.
That's pretty sad.I'm looking at a picture of Brendan Fraser on my desk at the moment, and I'm thinking about how when ChatGPT first came out, I thought, I'll just have a little stab, let's see what the potential is.
Two of the things I did was I asked to write me a play in the theme of Shakespeare, and I listed three plays by Shakespeare, and ChatGPT fused those stories together.Some of it was a little bit inaccurate,
but it did read like a Shakespearean play, and it was so shocking to me at the time.That was over a year ago, I think.In regards to Brendan Fraser, I had just watched The Mummy, and I am a big fan of The Mummy.
I have watched it many times before the trilogy, as well as the Tom Cruise version.I am yet to see the Abbott and Costello version.
But in regards to that, I thought, wouldn't it be great if we could build a film synopsis of what the Mummy film would be after?I think it was Aztec.I don't know why, but Antonio Banderas brings to mind.And so I put a prompt in ChatGPT.
And I asked it to write in the theme of the mummy written by blah, blah, blah, directed by blah, blah, blah.And here are the parameters of it.And it was basically just to follow one from the mummy, the last episode of the Brendan Fraser series.
And it came out with this stuff that was just so accurate in terms of Imhotep and, you know, how they would weave in Aztec culture.It really shocked me, but it was also exhilarating slightly.And it's fine for someone like me.
I'm never going to make a huge Hollywood blockbuster.A lot of people are talking about whether Hollywood is in full collapse right now, and will it exist?And I don't really think it is going to go anywhere.
They're looking at putting up some guardrails so that production is kept within the United States, but hey, with the dollar, they will be coming out to Australia, they'll be going to Canada, New Zealand, there'll be lots of different places where they can shoot.
for much less.And I guess that that's what's happened with streaming and digital.It's just really killed the industry.They have given up their rights.There's no residuals or barely any to sustain life.
And people are unable to live well or have a living wage in Hollywood, which is pretty upsetting for those of you that may have worked in that industry.And it was certainly something that I aspired to in the 90s.
So, you know, I could have had my glory days in Hollywood.I've certainly met and spoken with many people from that realm.And I think that I don't want to say it's dead.
I think Justine Bateman said that it's pretty dead, but that there is some sort of hope and that there will be some sort of like lash back through the engagement with AI.
And once people are over the fact that they can put their face on, let's say, the mummy,
Let's say they face off and they chuck a Nicolas Cage and John Travolta and they put their faces and they're the star of their show, they're the star of their feature film.Once the novelty wears off, then where are we after that?
What are we going to do?And where will it be?Filmmaking. In a lifetime, we have lost celebrities that were highly celebrated, that were at the top of their field, that were adored.And my children, Gen Z, wouldn't have no clue who they are.
So even in a generation, all the old golden stars of Hollywood have been wiped essentially by a new generation and I wonder if that's what potentially will happen to those on digital media.
We are just a footprint on this algorithm and where will we be remembered?Will there be a legacy or will there not?Are we just screaming into a void
and inputting all of our creative works and our data sets for other people, people with the monetary means to monetise and to amass and for the rest of us to fall away into the abyss, used and abused and discarded. It sounds so terrible.
It sounds like I'm being over the top, but the worst thing about it is kind of that's the reality of what's happening here.It's really, really tragic.It's very sad.And I really hope that we all can somehow navigate our way through.
It's what we've had to do.I feel like we've been on this massive world journey, all of us, since COVID hit. navigating how we're doing things, what's been happening, trying to be agile.
Often some of us being agile and moving ahead, finding our own paths and paving our own way, but there is a whole lot of people that are unable to do that for so many different reasons and no fault of their own. So I don't know.
I think I'm just calling out all of big tech.I'm calling out the bros.I'm calling out for women to be included in how they shape and inform AI.
I'm calling out creative artists to somehow continue to do their creative works and never give up in the collaborative process.Never give up trying to seek that expert mastery.And whatever that you do, I don't think that it's going to be lost.
Yes, things are changing, but what can we do in this moment to sort of lift and continue adding to our skill belt?We have got to clear our thoughts.We've got to think about our wellness journey.
Obviously, we've probably got to eat well and sleep well. We've got to engage our babies, engage our families, engage our friends and build community.And that doesn't always have to be on the digital realm.So what's your plan with digital?
Be offline in the real world or fall down greater rabbit holes of inattention or dumber content, dumb voices that devastate.
We've only gonna look stateside as to what's playing out during elections and see the ignorance, the lead, the polarized and the erosion of community. What's your offer in this world?What do you hold personally, your values, your priorities?
What might you do today that lifts others, that still sees you having a good living and a good life, to feel more comfortable in your skin to create and work for something that brings you personal success?My three-word slogan, stop the rot.
Forget the social bloat. curate your attention and your time extremely well, and of course, who you follow.I'll see you next time.If you like what you've heard, then please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or subscribe.
If you know this episode could help a friend, please share it with them right away to spread the joy and follow me on my Instagram at joypererecreative to see what I'm up to and to find out how to work with me. Thanks for listening.
I love producing this podcast, and I really want you to have the digital gains you deserve.
I'll be bringing you more of the very best conversations and stories to exchange ideas, nail your time, and hit your goals for optimal results in your work, life, and business.It is within you.Don't just sit there.Be curious.Curate your life.
