Millennials are craving in person businesses instead of ‘personal brands’ and ‘digital communities’.

You don't have to prostitute yourself online.

Had lunch with some friends this afternoon and we got chatting about how much Instagram has changed (amongst other things, I mean, we really popped off— our convos would have been great entertainment for the tables around us).

We ate at one of our fav spots— a winery/restaurant with two massive nature playgrounds. Australia does this well. Parents can eat casually and kids can play. Given we each have a child on the boob on and off while watching to make sure one of our babes hasn’t fallen off the slide, we sure get a lot of convo in.

These are friends I have known for over a decade, so we can look back on ‘those days’ with equal parts cringe, innocent reflection, comedy and wisdom. We’ve all had a lasting personal brand that has endured many changing opinions, expressions and interests. All of us are at a point where we’re considering very new directions in our lives and ‘work’.

I told them that my husband and and I are considering some new business ventures that require no social media- no personal brand- and no fancy new IG with our ‘founded by *personal brand* in the bio.

They let out a sigh as if to say ‘ughhhhhh us too’.

One of them is changing direction completely and moving from online to property development.

Two of them are changing direction into in person pop ups and village style living concepts.

I live for these stories. LIVE FOR THEM. Plot twists. New passions. Becoming a beginner again. Honouring the end of a cycle and having the courage to be a ’nobody’ after being a relative ‘somebody’.

I myself (with my amazing husband) am very seriously considering the pursuits I’ve long had the courage to pursue, which require a bit of a 180. The idea of them invigorates me.

I don’t think we’re alone in yearning for more real life touch, and new challenge.

Is it a rite of passage as we approach 40? Maybe Are our thumbs sore? Likely. Are our eyeballs worn out from forgetting our blueblockers and staring into the abyss for too long after our kids have gone to bed? I dunno.

I sense our generation is feeling a spiritual exhaustion from over a decade of being chronically online, evolving personal brands and jumping through algorithmic hoops.

I sense we are approaching the kind of maturity that reminds us that while online community is nice for connecting us and helping us feel seen, especially when you feel like an outcast in your real life— nothing, and I repeat NOTHING replaces your real, in person community.

I read recently too something that Brandi Potter shared in this piece, “When care, service, and responsibility are carried too long inside structures that cannot withstand the threshold you are ready to cross, the cost eventually shows up physically.”

To me, this can mean that you can be trying to serve, and offer your gifts in places that refuse to be renewed— this can include social media.

People are so used to getting content delivered ad nauseum and for free, that it’s lost it’s value. Substack is WAY better for this— at valuing others writing and content…. but Instagram isn’t. Instagram consumption is like pacman monsters just chewing through content— with reduced sensitivity for the fact that some people are sharing their freaking SOULS on there man. You know?

My point is that sometimes, you can be pouring yourself out in a place where it’s not ripe for reception. This will affect you spiritually and physically too.

I think as early internet adopters we’re far too grown now to whinge about algorithm changes. We have lived through too many. We are wise enough to know the goodness and beauty that social media has gifted us too. Let’s never, ever forget this. It has enable any everyday individual to have whatever success they can dream up and strategise.

It’s not so much that Instagram, for example has changed that bugs us, it’s how it’s changed us.

It’s how it’s changed how we create, how we can believe that everything has to be online now.

Write a book? No! Make a digital product!

Build a cafe? No! Make a digital community!

It’s this idea that digital everything is better because it’s faster and easier.

It’s the way that, many who are really going for it online can start to prioritise their online ‘community’ and pay little attention to their actual neighbourhoods.m

It’s the way we want to document everything.

It’s how easily accessible fame is, and how the mass attention everyday people can receive now, affects relationships, makes people self indulged, and encourages god complexes in people who don’t know how to talk kindly to waiters.

(I will write another piece about fame, and how fame being so accessible is hurting us).

I’ll let it be short and sweet today— you can be magnetic and dignified. I’m guessing as a reader here you already know that, but I want to remind you.

When I was toggling my paid subscriptions on and off over the years, one of the things I’d say to my husband is “Sometimes I feel like my having my paid subscriptions on, I feel a pressure to share really personal things.”

I needed to differentiate and decide that my paid subscription was for my writing, my ideas, art— not for intimate information about my life.

That’s not to say I won’t share personal stories and vulnerable tales— of course I will. I love memoir style writing and I love being piercingly honest. Nothing less will do.

But I will only ever do so from a place of sincere offering, for creative expression, and for nothing in return. I won’t prostitute my personal information. I know you know, but you don’t need to either. Keep it dignified.

And if you’re chucking your phone in a bin and buying a local plumbing company or opening your dream bookstore— I’m cheering you on 1000% too.

Love, PK XX