A Digital Reclamation!

The What, Why, How of the reclamation of my relationship with social media and these digital streets!

I’ve never much cared for social media (the irony - I know - but humor me won’t you?).

I’ve never much cared for the ways we connect through screens. I’ve always been an “irl” person, even from the time I was a child. I mean, my love languages are physical touch and quality time, so you can imagine that social media feels fairly empty to me. 

Now, before I get too deep into this, I wanna be super clear. I believe many things can be true at once. I believe that something can be a tool for initial interaction and introductions to people, places, new ways of thinking and being and even social movements. I also believe that the same tool, like many other things, when left in the hands of a society rooted in lots of hierarchy, oppression and “isms”, can be misused and even weaponized. So, while I recognize this duality in social media, I also like to do a cost benefit analysis and as of June 2023, the benefit isn’t high enough for me.

Let me give those of you who may be new to the ATW community some context. I haven’t always had such an adverse relationship to the socials. I was on Facebook when it first launched while I was an undergrad at Berkeley and promptly jumped ship when it went “public” for the simple reason that it got creepy and it felt intrusive. Frankly, I was just too young and the concept itself was too new for me to know how to keep myself safe, or establish healthy boundaries with it. Then, instagram came on the scene and three years later I reluctantly joined. I soon changed my tune, I liked the OG IG, when it was pictures and short videos of the people you knew and cared for sharing snippets of the things that brought them joy, moved them, angered them, all of the little moments that made up their life experience. 

Fast forward to 2018 when I got back on Facebook for the “That’s Not How That Works” Podcast launch after Trudi (Trudi Lebron) my co-host and my homegirl Julia (Julia Wells) both simultaneously punked me into it AND showed me a whole bunch of new features that made it feel like a better (for the time being) space than it had been. Even then, I was absolutely that kid on FB complaining about the entire platform and the way people treated each other on it AND consistently participating because of the way entrepreneurship and brand development depended on social media for marketing etc. If you weren’t buying ads (never been my style) then you had to be talking about what you were doing literally all the time, so I found myself in a social sphere I resented because it was a “necessary evil”. Between y’all and me though, I wasn't great at it anyways. I would rather be talking about liberation, equity, justice, humanity, healing, boundaries, joy, protecting your peace, politics and everything else that I talk about instead of talking about the fact that I teach about it!

So here I was, doing the thing, that is, of course, until March 2020 and the pandemic forced us all online, all the time. I for sure didn’t have a choice then. Workshops, live speaking gigs, panels, working on site with orgs and non-profits, doing school visits and all of the other in person, community connected aspects of the work that I did were immediately over, so what was I to do?  

I did what everyone else did, I took my talents to facebook…until I got banned (read more here) and I took my very trivial instagram account that was meant for all things human Weeze and turned it into a business tool. This wasn’t a truly intentional choice, this was a choice of necessity. This was me trying to make sure that my work, my business survived a global pandemic none of us knew or understood. 

So, fast forward with me again won’t you? Here I am, 3+ years later, and never in a bajillion years would I have anticipated the wave of activism and the rise and fall of the great white awakening. I couldn’t have anticipated ANYONE caring more in 2020 than they had all of the years before that I had been committed to this work in the different ways I have approached it over the years. I couldn’t even begin the fathom that all of a sudden people would actually tune in and pay attention after nearly 100 podcast episodes, fb lives, workshops etc etc etc on the very topic. 

What I really couldn’t see coming was the length those who want to maintain our status quo would go to be harmful, threatening, demeaning etc etc. Granted, in retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised, I just told y’all how I believe that social media is a tool like any other that can be perverted by society, it should have been a “duh” moment for me. Nothing, no amount of social or academic training, prepares you to deal with that level of ugly and evil. You try to navigate it the best you can, have boundaries to the best of your ability, name how you want people to engage with you, in your space etc but there really are no rules out there, no social contracts or etiquette and the cost is basic human decency.

Remember how I told y’all I felt the pressure to stay engaged on facebook because of the huge role it played in business? Well despite all of the ugly I saw on instagram and recognizing the ways it was impacting me, I felt stuck between a big ass rock and a wildly hard spot. I found myself chained to a social mechanism that allowed me to reach people, tell them about my work, amplify messaging and movements while simultaneously killing my energetic battery and I simply couldn’t keep up with it. I couldn’t recharge my battery fast enough day to day to combat the ways in which IG was draining me, taking from me, negatively impacting me.

What was worse than that (for me) was the way in which I found myself beginning to censor my posts, certain language, not posting certain opinions etc either because I didn’t have the capacity to deal with the trolls I KNEW would come OR because I knew good and well that I would get kicked off of IG the same way I did FB and that was my mechanism for both education and marketing, it literally was not something I could afford. I really was trapped between what was best for not only my authentic voice/self and mental, emotional, energetic well being AND “following the rules” in order to maintain my livelihood, my business (and yes, there’s a larger conversation on capitalism here that we can have at a later time).

It wasn’t until I was forced to take a step back when I lost my vision due to a congenital eye defect that I had enough space to realize that I had slowly gotten thrown into the box of “social media educator” over the course of the last few years and had allowed this to happen to me simply by continuing to participate, regardless of the “why”. I allowed myself to be commodified and reduced to what I could offer the world. I fell into the trap y’all!!  I allowed my entire humanity to be erased and simply became a resource. 

Sidenote: Some of you may be feeling a kind of way about my use of “allowed”, using this word is a very intentional choice that I am making. By taking ownership of the process, by saying that I “allowed” it, gives me power over the process, if I allowed it to happen then I certainly can deny its continuation and make some changes. 

I’ve since had eye surgery and recovered my vision, but I haven’t been able to recover my desire to be a part of the instagram, tik-tok, facebook machine. Instead, I've decided to reclaim my relationship to social media. I’ve decided to be more mindful of how I show up and where. I have exactly zero desire to be a part of “business instagram” or “brand instagram” or whatever it’s being called now. What I do have a desire to do is to use MY instagram as a reflection of my life, sharing snippets of the things that bring me joy, move me, anger me and all of the little moments that make up my life experience. Some of those moments may still be me sharing my work but Instagram is my whole human space and the work, the education, the business is such a small part of what makes me me.

Maybe it’s something in the stars (I’m a Scorpio and if you’re following along, things have been popping for us these last few months) or maybe it’s just a part of my evolutionary journey, because healing and growth are not linear or finite. Either way, I’m moving into a season of deeper reclamation and clarity (more on that later).

What that means for now is that I am completely changing the way I use and relate to all different digital avenues. So if you want to be in community, get alerts of all the cool things I’m doing (cuz I’m bout to be doing a whole lot more cool things), see what makes me tick, get Lola sightings and experience me as a whole human, then dope, keep following me (or start) on instagram.

If you want the longer format social breakdowns, the insight, the nuance and duality (y’all know I love my multiplicities) and the calls to action/to stay socially plugged in, then make sure you subscribe to this very substack (it’s taking place of the newsletter, so if you got this, you don’t have anything else to do!) AND subscribe to That’s Not How That Works wherever you listen to podcasts (According to Weeze, the podcast, is going to become solo episodes on TNHTW fyi).

If you want to be in closer community and want to be doing low commitment liberation work and education, then make sure to join The Collective at whichever membership level you’re feeling (you can join here).

If you’re feeling like you want to get spicy and dive into your own personal liberation journey you got options this summer:

• PYP 2.0: That’s right, protect your peace 2.0 is coming, all the same boundaries and so much more! More Here

• 1:1 or small squad work: I’ve got 1 on 1 spaces opening up OR you can get a small group together and work through your liberation with your besties! Apply Here

Regardless of how you chose to stay connected with ya girl, I appreciate you, the support, the love and the connections I have made with so many of you!

Here’s to the next book in the anthology that is my journey - hope to see you around! 

W/ Joy & Ease,

Weeze