Why community media will consume social media

Forget social media. Welcome to the age of community media. People often ask me, what’s the difference between community and audience? Imagine someone shouting through a megaphone on a stage unaware of who they’re talking to in the crowd, this is how I view an audience. Now, imagine sitting around a fire or at a dining table having an intimate, deep conversation and discovering you’re kindred spirits. This is community. This is where media is headed. This is where the world is headed.

Algorithms targeting and hunting you down with ads? Got anxiety from updating multiple apps to let people know YOU ARE HERE and ALIVE and DOING SOMETHING COOL WITH YOUR LIFE? Not caught up on the latest feud between Kylie Jenner and her ex-boyfriend? Not in on the latest hashtag joke that broke this morning? Wait, you don’t know what millennial pink is??? It’s flashy, it’s loud, it’s an overwhelming bubble full of distractions and attractions waiting explode. It’s a carnival of social media noise, a distracted trance of things to buy and eat, and the never-ending ride of advertisements you can’t escape.

In reaction to the chaos, people are beginning to behave and mobilize in smaller circles. This is a cultural shift. People are sending funny baby elephant videos through text messages, they are sharing political memes through FB messenger — otherwise too afraid to post on their walls for fear of internet trolls — they’re forwarding their favorite podcasts and music playlists via email, and setting up private channels on Slack. A lot of people have escaped the carnival and have fled to the woods where the fire is kindling and real conversations are happening.

Even more, you’ll start to see complete strangers connecting and engaging, deeper and for longer periods of time. Let’s say — like virtual reality to understand what it’s like to go on an adventure in Antarctica with likeminded travelers. This type of digital intimacy will also spread to physical intimacy — social media has created isolation and depression among prolong social media use, as many studies suggest — trading unrealistic expectations of becoming the next fashion Instagram star to connecting with people through authentic interactions. It’s intimate, it’s quiet, it’s real. It’s how communities are created.

I was in a New York Uber two weeks ago and the driver told me about a secret WhatsApp group where drivers list their grievances to console one another. I was at Cafe Wha? in West Village last week and everyone was gathered to celebrate Jimmy Hendrix birthday — 30 people strangers are bound by their love for his music and his symbol of love; it’s lived on decades after his death. That’s community.

Finally, I was on a train this morning holding a Phantom 4 DJI drone and a man named Johnny walked up to me and said, “Is that a Maverick?” I said, “No, it’s actually a Phantom 4!” The next 30 minutes were filled with show-and-tell stories back and forth about the eco-system of the creative community in NYC. Instead of being regaled by the local showman, we were sharing our own knowledge and passion.

Johnny is an architect engineer by day, but has an unwavering passion for photography — it shows when he gets nervous talking about it like a overexcited 12-year-old. He told me about secret communities in the photography world, later concluding that anything good that goes public gets ruined. Duly noted.

But how is a true community created? Through trust and personalization. Why should we create communities? Because we’re human beings and we crave connection, and even more so after our smartphone battery dies.

Before smartphones, we had sat around fires. Now, smartphones and screens are the center of our focus and we’ve forgotten what it’s like to have true kinship. While technology serves a great purpose, we have also allowed it to dive us, letting the flames of human interaction and connection dissipate like smoke in the air.

If you look back on history and how communities were created, they are always woven together by a common interest — and in many cases under a shared mission.

Here’s what’s happening now and how people are communicating in the underworld of communities:

Through private communities: 2.8 Billion people are registered to a messaging app, that is expected to go up to 3.8 but 2018. That’s 90% of the internet enabled population. That’s huge.

Through combining the real world and the digital world: a new element of “phygital” connections. Not many people have figured out how to do this quite yet. It’s tough, but with real collaboration it can happen. How do you combine the breadth of social media’s reach with the depth of human physical engagement? Something to think about for your next quarterly marketing meeting.

Community resources through shared knowledge and tools: What also needs to happen is this level of master apprentice model for young people. My generation was thrusted into the worst economy since the Great Depression with no guidance, no money, and no idea what to do with ourselves while trying to survive and create a respectable career, simultaneously.

Some call us whiny, entitled children. And yes, I would agree many of us are still stuck at the carnival. This has caused turmoil in the workplace, depression and mental health concerns, and even animosity amongst our own peers. The fact is there is a big problem and the solution is simple. Hard but simple, like most things in life. We need to work together in our communities. Show each other there is another world outside riding the ferris wheel all day.

Share your knowledge, expertise, and thoughts on what you think with others. This is what social media intended to do but couldn’t. It’s turned into a massive organism in disarray, “parasitic” in some cases. Social media allows people to connect but often lacks the ability to create meaningful conversations and discourse in open-air. We simply become pawns in an industry consumed by advertising dollars, startling headlines over information, and candy over true knowledge.

The airwaves are often filled with sound bites, divisive commentary, smh shade, and one-directional communication. The mission of community media is to understand people better through conversations and interactions — both ways.

Through immersive technology: What’s it like to be in a Syrian refugees’ shoes through virtual reality, for instance. A Stanford study showed that reading something will not change someone’s mind. Watching something will still not change someone’s mind. But actually experiencing something has a more likely chance to change someone’s mind. How does this create community? People come together through empathy and understanding one another just a little better.

Through user-centered design: Putting the user at the focus of a problem sounds easy. But, many companies struggle with this. It’s crucial that creators become researchers and researchers become creators. They need to be able to put themselves in the user’s shoes. You can solve some of technology’s biggest problems through design. Apple is the king (or erm, queen?) of this. They build community around their user-centered design. People are indexing more and more on how is this useful to an individual? To a community? Airbnb does a good job at this.

Updated (1/18/18):

Through block-chain technology: with the emergence of block chain technology we’ll begin to see new forms of communities being built in virtually every industry with more transparency and responsibility. Let’s say, fashion designers logging information about environmental and labor practices into a ledger or a smart contract between individuals to pay for services after a promise has been met, not before a service is rendered.

Through entrepreneurship: courses from Udemy, YouTube videos, Masterclass, and people like Shane Parrish have found a way to build community through selling their skills or knowledge. We will see more and more of this as people become their own entrepreneurs using the power of the internet at their disposal and starting their own performance shows. With automation of cars, jobs, and services happening now — think: What will you do with your time? How will you make money?

Democratized education: Again, through classes, we might one day find that teachers can have their own private practices. Think, using blockchain to work with a person rather than an institution to teach your kids specific lessons that are unique to them. This could fold into the master and apprentice model I mentioned earlier, which people are in dire need of — have you ever heard someone say something and you thought, “if only someone had told me that when I was a kid”.

The carnival is built to get you to stay for longer, spend more money, and crave funnel cake and popcorn. But if you can manage to escape and find that the world has much more to offer and you have more to offer the world, than you will begin to feel more fulfilled and so will society.

Sooner than later, that bubble will pop — if it hasn’t already.

We are all driven by emotions like fear, despair, anger but what if we could use hope, inspiration, and joy to bring people together rather than ripping them apart?

What if you could save the poverty crisis by crowdsourcing experiences through a technology like AR. What if you could openly talk about your political beliefs without losing friends? What if you could be virtual pen pals with a complete stranger on the other side of the world? What if you could create a business out of your unique skill and never have a job again — you could have a business and a life you designed. What if you no longer had to be just a customer at a carnival spinning the rest of your life?

Goodbye audiences. Goodbye social media. This is community media.