Wishes for a smaller internet

I stumbled across this article on the Verge this morning and thought it was important for us as writers to take note:

The Verge partnered with Reticle Research to conduct a representative survey of Americans’ attitudes towards tech’s biggest power players, 15.4 percent of Facebook users said they “greatly” or “somewhat” disliked using the product, while 17 percent of Twitter users said the same.

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The survey doesn’t reveal why Americans feel the way they do, but last December, writing about the impulse to call 2016 “the worst year ever,” The New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino articulated a pretty good guess as to why spending your time on the web’s massive, news-saturated platforms might feel so bad: “There is no limit to the amount of misfortune a person can take in via the internet,” she says. 2016 couldn’t possibly be the worst year in history, Tolentino decided, but it was the year that convinced her the promise of the social media had been false, and that “the internet would only ever induce the sense of powerlessness that comes when the sphere of what a person can influence remains static, while the sphere of what can influence us seems to expand without limit, allowing no respite at all.”

The article goes on to examine how a bunch of the major social media networks are starting to splinter into smaller, more conventional communities (ie. places that are harder to find, or invitation-only, and thus much smaller and more personal).

One of the fascinating things about the writing world is the increasing emphasis on tribe building, ie. finding the audience who you naturally "click" with and deeply engaging with them. This is the secret to so many of the successful authors, especially of the self-publishing variety. When you've established a loyal band of "true fans," they will support you and your work. The more you connect with them, the more deeply they'll care about what you're doing, the more they'll support it, etc., forming a virtuous cycle.

As I see it, this trend is only going to become more important over time. As people reach the point of saturation with the hyper-media world, people are hunting for positive, wholesome communities to engage with, and general-purpose click-bait online channels are fading away.

As an author you have a unique opportunity to be the steward of such a community, where your stories are the common interest that bring people together, and a tribe emerges from there. This is part of our vision for BetaBooks, to give you the tools to build your community in that way. We've got a long way to go, but we're chipping away at it :)

One last note, this post happens to fall on New Years Day, so I'll close by saying Happy New Year, and I hope you all have a wonderful 2018!