The Broken Promise of Social Media
Social media promised that sharing your expertise would attract masses and money. The reality: 3.5% organic reach and falling, while only entertainment and lifestyle content thrives.
Blogging Outside Format. Manifesto, post #10/14
There's a fantasy that lives in the back of everyone's mind: "I'll write ABOUT MYSELF AND MY WORK, a MASSIVE audience of interested readers will show up, and I'll make money on ads and products." It doesn't work.
If your blog is about you and what you do, your audience will be small. Because if you're a regular, normal human being — you're not interesting to the MASSES. Not an insult. Just a fact.
Give feelings, don't share yours
To be interesting to the masses, you need to trigger strong emotions. Not share your own feelings — deliver feelings to other people. That's a fundamental difference.
A popular blogger gives readers calm and outrage — while being charismatic and successful. Whether they're actually good at their job is irrelevant. Most readers don't even know what they do for a living.
A lifestyle blogger delivers desire and envy. When she goes through a public divorce or a very public fight with her partner — the outrage and schadenfreude spike, and the numbers climb. A good lifestyle blog requires constant breakups, makeups, and emotional theater. Meanwhile, at home: total peace, quiet, and the purchase of a third apartment.
Political bloggers trade in anxiety, schadenfreude, the feeling of "it's not our fault," and FOMO. When a political blogger starts talking about the actual necessity of work and risk — people unfollow. When they promise a secret way to cheat reality — people subscribe.
The masses won't go deep
If the masses are reading you, it means you're doing something mass-market and broadly digestible. By definition — basic, not particularly smart. As an expert, you might get bored repeating entry-level tips over and over. And the masses will never go deep. They won't dig in. Your post is sandwiched between a gadget review and war headlines.
I don't think about any of this. I just write. Sometimes I make readers feel something — hopefully the way a good book does, not by pushing you through engineered emotional arcs, but by giving you something closer to an intellectual high. A small audience is fine with me. But I have ambitions too.
The promise is broken
The numbers are brutal. Organic reach on Instagram: 3.5%, down 18% year over year. Facebook: 1.37%, engagement at 0.2%. LinkedIn: down 60% from peak. X/Twitter: engagement dropped 38%, even as impressions doubled. More noise. Less signal.
62% of people disengage when they suspect AI wrote the text. Social media promised: "write and they'll find you." Reality: 3.5% reach, and it's still falling.
Who this actually works for
Social media still works for entertainment and visual lifestyle. The problem isn't the platforms. The problem is the mismatch: expert writing isn't what the algorithms are optimized for.
Garbage hooks are mainstream now. They make me sick. But I get it: if you want to be found in this AI slop — sometimes you need a hook. Not a garbage one. An honest one.
