On Tribes and Social Media

Back when entertainment consisted of mostly stories around a fire, humans roamed the earth in tightly knit groups. These communities would hunt together, live together and raise up baby humans together in-person.

Globalization has changed all of that. You can live thousands of miles away from your tribe and still communicate and achieve goals on a daily basis. In fact, there’s almost too many ways you can connect. You can start a group on Facebook, a group chat on Telegram and even a room on Clubhouse that others can listen in on.

There’s a pitfall, however, in that when you open up these tools they attack you with tons of content and try to divert your attention. You may fall victim to content and spend hours consuming it rather that using the platform for its original purpose of connecting with your tribe. Even worse, you may start conforming to the system’s algorithm and start posting pictures to get more likes.

If this has happened to you or you are currently suffering from loss of self, here’s a simple formula to follow.

1 minute of consumption = 2 minutes of creation

If you consume one minute of social media (scrolling, watching or exploring), you must create two minutes of content (DMing your tribe, posting things you care about or seeking out your tribe). You’ll find out very quickly how much you’re actually on social media not connecting with your tribe once you see your creation points racking up.

On the flip side, you’ll be using social media to bring you joy again. People will start reaching out to you about juggling (if that’s what you love doing) and start connecting with you about it. Sometimes, you’ll even make new friends that you never expected to like what you did.

That’s what social media is all about. Finding your tribe.