Talking offline community building with Joi Katskee

Social media companies want you sitting on your couch consuming as many ads as possible. It feels like a leisurely activity, but really you’re working very hard to increase shareholder value for massive corporations.Sara Eckel wrote about this in ‘The People Who Don't Want You to Sleep,’“Social media companies don’t want you to go out and have fun with your friends—they want you to look at pictures of your friends having fun without you.”Eckel references the the book Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--And How to Think Deeply Again, in which former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris says “You can try having self-control, but there are a thousand engineers on the other side of the screen working against you.”Breaking this habit takes more than just deleting the apps. It takes intentional action, which is what Joi Katskee is doing.Joi (pronounced Joe-ee) runs Electric Radio Club, a weekly two hour radio show. But she also started bringing people together in real spaces to talk about music (watch the video above for the whole story).Sure, it’s always going to be hard work to get the word out and get people to come out, but whoever shows up, well, that’s who shows up.This is the work worth doing because it builds real world connection, unfazed by algorithms or “reach.” Social media platforms fear this, since now they are the ones missing out, unable to monetize our gathering and sell our data to advertisers.So how could you apply this to your work? How do you get closer to the people who enjoy your art? What does it look like to do that in s sustainable way?Years ago I ran a Patreon for my heavy metal trivia project called Skull Toaster.That was bringing in $240/mo, and I was sending out a lot of stuff every month. Zines. Mystery metal CDs that I’d buy at the local music store. People could sponsor questions, and I’d make those hand written THANKS images and put them on social media.I did a few virtual metal trivia hang outs, but I should have done more. I hid behind the social media posts because I was terrified of getting my questions wrong in a live space.But like Scott Perry recently told me, “fear is a compass. It only shows up when we’re pointed in a direction worth exploring.”What would happen if you did a Zoom call with the people who follow your work? Or if you planned a small dinner with other creative people in your orbit?Say we use the internet as a tool to make the plans, and then we close the laptop and build with the handful of people in front of us - then what?What could we do that we’re avoiding because we’re scared?Raise our rates? Fire that client?Post that musical performance from our bedroom on YouTube?Delete your music from Spotify? Delete Instagram from your phone?Join that class. Teach that class?And what are we hiding behind?Making a dozen more vertical videos for 2% of your fans to see?Updating our About page for the 20th time this week?Spinning our wheels trying to get our website to look just right?Waiting to reach a certain number of followers before we believe in ourselves?You know what the scary thing is. Now go do it.