Platforms - Not the Shoe Kind.
-the invisible float through day - by Xavior Geis.
We Live on Invisible Platforms. 🤔
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If you have ever caught a train, then you know what it’s like waiting on a platform.
Sometimes there might only be a few other commuters, all distinctly distant and you wonder if you’re the only one who wants to smile anymore.
Other times the platform is swamped. Suffocating and cramped.
It’s stuffy on the train once you board, and as more and more bodies squeeze in you wonder how fixed the windows actually are if you required a quick escape.
They’re detailed in graffiti and areas that have been cleaned but are left stained.
Fragments of some yesterday for somebody perhaps screaming from within, begging to be heard.
Is that what we’ve become on social media?
Fragments of yesterdays and hopeful tomorrows when the platform doesn’t feel so stuffy and we can breathe a bit easier?
Perhaps you have been the one with the spray can.
You’ve jumped across suddenly and leaped onto one of the windows, spraying your words out in hot yellow and red.
Yes, now they’ll know. People will take notice, you say.
But Social media algorithms don’t show you what’s true.
They show you what keeps you scrolling, what keeps you where you are.
This means that what you think will be the way to go and some freedom assured because of it, is just the opposite.
Your train keeps going around and around without a stopping point.
You become frustrated, bewildered. 🤷
What should you do to make your own traction?
News for you, X marks the spot.
Outrage gets more engagement than nuance.
Conflict gets more clicks than consensus.
So that’s what you see. All day. Every day.
Your worldview isn’t shaped by reality anymore.
It’s shaped by what makes tech companies the most money.
And along the way there’s you caught up trying to share your own voice.
Sound familiar?
Step Back, Take a Broader View.
Avoid getting the two types of travel confused.
If you want to be heard and you have something to give, then you will need to break through that window after all.
Stop spray painting and find the fresh air.
Do it for you.
Analyze what it is you want and adapt your thinking independently.
Here’s to you.