Screen detoxes, device-free and silent retreats, being unreachable becuse you’re in an exotic, isolated location without internet connection are all high net worth coded. Logging off is becoming a luxury good.

People aren’t moving to different social media platforms. All the earnings calls say the same thing: people are just logging off. They aren’t trying your New App, they don’t want to learn new patterns. They just want to talk with their friends and hang out in their group chats.

People are decentralizing and moving away from open digital public spaces. They are moving into curated, often gatekept, networks of value creation and accrual — freer spaces to exchange ideas. This is happening right now. In the near future, how will we connect, find new things?

The thing about this is, we don’t have a discoverability mechanism in that world. We don’t have a way of being reached about new products and services that we would like. Products can’t find users, can’t share innovation. Information becomes more valuable - precious, even.

This breaks traditional “marketing” playbooks, especially the digital ones. You can’t rely on SEO if no one is Googling. You can’t do a brand twitter account if no one is on the timeline. These things are dumb now, but they’ll become actually useless soon. So what do you have?

You have the modern salon in the group chat. You have the need to create spaces where you can talk to these people, because they are where the ideas spread from. People will always want to connect IRL, especially as it becomes harder to tell who’s human and what’s real.

This is where Soup helps. Come talk to me, tell me what you’re after. We will find the right people to invite to the right kind of gathering, and tip the scales back in your favor. The catch? Product has to be good - the erosion of trust happens quickly and slop cannot be allowed

This is the easiest it will ever be to tell if someone is real or AI ever again. This is the easiest it will ever be to tell if something is a deepfake ever again. We do not go back. We must prepare for a strange, alien world. We must prepare for the shift and what comes after.

Weirdos dunking on things they truly don't understand is data too. I appreciate all engagement, especially the type that teaches me about how people outside of my network engage with new information. It turns out most of you are bad at following along. It's ok, I'll fix it