What is Eigensocial?
We are living with social media for about two decades now and pretty much every living human being on earth has at some point in time become a slave to the daily grind chasing likes and followers.
Yet this time is about to end.
We used to binge on dopamine filled experiences of viral activities. For a while it replaced the boredom of our daily existence with the faint yet exciting chance of becoming a hero just for one day.
Recent changes in recommendation algorithms have altered our online shared experiences and we feel that increasingly our online lives are replaced by the awkward feeling of yelling at the clouds.
We have grown tired of the crass outrage porn of Twitter, the disconnect of friends and family on Facebook, the perfectly filtered pictures of Instagram, and the professional promoters on LinkedIn. Although most of us have not fully realized that yet.
Social Media companies have betrayed us.
In their quest for continually increasing profits these companies have walked further down the slippery road of surveillance economies of scale, content exploitation, and outrage porn than any autocratic government.
Now, as we have reached the end of the road and layoffs are inbound, we the people ask us if it was really worth it.
We have given up so much privacy and community for the privilege of looking at memes and cat pictures.
We have been misled by social and legacy media to a point where we can’t talk to our neighbors anymore because they belong to the wrong political sports team.
We can’t imaging having a normal family dinner without constantly checking our phones for WhatsApp messages, TikTok notifications, or YouTube videos.
We have succumbed to the notion that once the lords of social like Donald Trump and Elon Musk post, we the peasants have to scurry to every content breadcrumb they throw at us to feast in their glory and catch a small share of their engagement for our own dopamine infusion.
We have become slaves under the banner of ad-revenue driven engagement.
This needs to stop.
We need to return to a social online experience that is not build on a viral engagement cycle.
We need to build a social media landscape that amplifies opinions of relevant thought leaders not because their posts are engaging, but because they are insightful and created out of validated expertise.
We should listen to people who really have something to say and not to people who only hop on it for the sake of ad-revenue driven engagement.
A social landscape like this needs to give these thought leaders the time to properly research and present their thoughts without forcing to optimize their end of the recommendation algorithm.
It also needs to allow for these high-clout knowledge workers to monetize regularly without relying on advertising and subscription begging without having the stand on the engagement pedal all the time.
A social experience where the users own wants and needs are in the foreground of the user experience of the app.
This social experience is “Eigen Social” .
A calmer and healthier online social experience.
