Other people pay the (highest) costs when we prioritize posting on social media over long-form publishing

What if the true costs of how and where we publish our work revealed that other people—a.k.a. our friends, families, communities, and the clients we want to help—pay the biggest price in the form of lost impact and transformation?

You may be familiar with a concept from economics and sociology called externalities.

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A person buys and eats highly processed foods . . . foods that have been designed to bypass the brain's signals that the person is full/satiated . . . foods that have been laced with sugar or other addictive substances.

The initial cost is the $5 snack or $10 meal. The food company or fast food restaurant receives the full payment upfront. The person eating the food receives the full snack/meal. The exchange is over, right?

Not really. At all.

We now know these foods are designed to keep the person coming back for more. And we now know that consumers will likely deal with many negative long-term health consequences.

Consumers often suffer for decades with a reduced quality of life from all that processed food.

So, the true cost to the person wasn’t all those 5 dollar bills. The true cost to them is not revealed until months or years later.

But the externalities? Those are all the negatives & costs (or positives & benefits) that happen to people outside of that initial transaction/exchange . . . the costs to society, to our communities.

The person’s family may have to take care of them at great financial and time costs. The person may lose days/weeks/months/years of being able to earn a living or pursue a creative passion that benefits society.

The person might not be able to spend as much time with their kids. The company the person works for (or built) may have to operate without their skilled guidance, and may therefore have reduced impact on society.

Economists and others (especially in countries like America) even make an argument about the toll on the healthcare system and the rising costs of health insurance triggered by so many people who are sick from ultra processed foods.

To understand the true costs or benefits of an initial action or exchange, we need to know the long-term effect on the person . . . and the ripple effects on their families, communities, and society.

What art, scientific advancements, ideas, and other meaningful or beautiful projects have been lost to fast food, or to smoking . . . or to excessive social media use?

The true costs of a thing are often hidden from the very people being asked to buy the thing.

Or, in the case of social media, the true costs of it are hidden from us—the people who are being told we can sign up and benefit from these great platforms for "free."

And the true benefits of other ways of publishing our ideas and reaching/helping people (like well-thought-out essays and articles, or books, or even longer-form videos and audio experiences, etc.) are obscured for the same reason—they’re not immediately apparent.

The positive externalities of pursuing evergreen publishing in spaces where we can lay our ideas out fully (not in limited characters or space) and the negative externalities of publishing on social media in ways that disappear or on platforms that constrain our ideas to a few characters are both hidden from us.

So, we often opt for the easier “fast food” way of publishing. Because at least we get an immediate hit of dopamine in exchange for our time, right?

But the thing is . . . over time, it slowly adds up to a body of work that has mostly disappeared into the ether.

Or a body of work that exists entirely on the rented land of a company that was never upfront with us about:

• the immediate costs to us—data collection, using our content as the value of their systems, turning our attention into the product

• or the long-term costs to us—“do all this work for us so we can make all the money and please, please, please neglect your lasting body of work”;

• or the externalities—“prioritizing our bottom line and pockets means not deeply impacting society as much as you could have; it potentially means people continuing to suffer without your solution; prioritizing us means your friend/child/coworker/parent/partner never getting to be inspired by the fact that you published a book or held a gallery show or created a community garden to provide fresh produce to the neighborhood; but that’s okay, because at least WE made money . . . because we didn’t have enough already.”

The Very Backwards Trade

Social media is sexy. It’s advertised as this entirely “free” way we can connect with our community and get our work out in the world. The best-case scenarios are in our faces or on our feeds all day (“this person went viral.” “that person makes millions per year from social.” “soandso grew their entire business on Instagram!”).

We’re trained to think in benefits and best case scenarios with social media, and we’re conditioned to undervalue the reward of a lasting body of work.

This is backwards, and I believe most of us will think back on this era as the years we lost to handing over our best work to other people’s pockets—OPP 🤣. Pockets that needed no help from us. The years we let our work fade. When we moved it to the backburner, and that burner got turned off, and all the food spoiled.

We will think back and wonder what the heck we were thinking because the motivation of these companies is so ridiculously clear when we really pause and consider it.

My Plea (Is Still the Same After 12+ Years)

Publish the book on it. Write the well-thought-out article. Create the long-form training or video.

Basically, let’s eat whole foods that deserve our attention and keep the snacks to a minimum. Prioritize the long-lasting books and pieces.

Just use social media to the point where the benefits are real . . . before the extreme costs to you and negative externalities for the rest of us (who lose out on the strength and transformative power of your ideas) take over.

My plea simply echoes or reinforces what you already know to be true:

Your ideas deserve more.

And whether you DIY the publishing of your first/next book, learn YouTube more in-depth and publish your first/next several pieces, start pitching and publishing in reputable publications, or re-commit to your blog/articles in a new way, I hope you give your ideas the attention they deserve.

Regina out.

P.S. My top programs to help you create more positive externalities with what you publish are (1) ​Intellectual Property OS​, and (2) ​Publish One Year of Bold Ideas​.

P.P.S. If you want to have fun generating more ideas for transformative pieces you could be publishing, you might want to try a ​DIY Big Idea Game Night​.