Alert Marie Kondo
This term does not spark joy
Illustration by Mykyta Dolmatov
Alert Marie Kondo: This term does not spark joy.
What is the term in question?
I’ll admit: I don’t want to tell you.
I know: pretty weird of me, right?
But here’s the thing: you don’t like this term. You don’t open my emails when I put this term in the subject line. It doesn’t spark joy, and in fact, it fills many of you with an icky feeling—feeling of “should,” of ugh, of blech.
…And yet, if only you could see how shifting your relationship to this term could make a huge, paradigm-shifting difference for your own life and career, for women and, yes, for our democracy, in this critical historical moment.
So here goes.
Are you ready?
Ok, here’s the term…..
Keep scrolling….
”Social media.”
There. I said it.
Don’t go!! Because the irony of that will be too much for me. Because here is the point I want so desperately to make:
We have an opportunity to make social media a force for good — and I want more women to get involved.
Let me explain.
I want to live in a world where amazing women have the power to shape not only their own lives, but also, our collective experience, unhampered by patriarchal gatekeepers or norms. And right now, the #1 tool that can help us get to this promised land is the internet—which is why we need to make it our personal business to shape the internet, and the technology that fuels it, as a democratic, constructive tool for good.
As a wonderful article from Katie Notopoulos, How to Fix the Internet, recently laid out in MIT Technology Review, we are at a moment of transition where we have a real opportunity to save the internet, including social media. I've really valued some of Nilay Patel's recent conversations on this topic via The Verge, including one with internet policy legend Lawrence Lessig, and another with this dude you may have heard of named Barack Obama. In his episode, Lessig observes,
"I think that the worst part of social media’s place in society is people not understanding, in fact, what it is. People have a naïve view: they open up their X feed or their Facebook feed, and [they think] they’re just getting stuff that’s given to them in some kind of neutral way."
Nothing in media just "is" — someone is always behind the curtain, shaping the media itself, as well as our experience of consuming that media. Too often, in the fields of both media and technology, that someone is a white male, which is why we have such devastating examples of algorithmic bias — facial recognition software that doesn't recognize the faces of Black people, for example, and voice activation technology that doesn't understand a woman's voice as well as a man's. And it's why still, in 2023, despite the "summer of Barbie," our entertainment features far more white men both behind and in front of the camera than people from any other demographic. The same goes for the news business.
Amid all of this doom and gloom, there is hope. There is a tool at our disposal that, despite its flaws, despite its dangers, represents a way to shift the balance of power in our culture by infusing our lives with the ideas and voices and stories of people that media and tech have traditionally excluded: People of color, and women.
I have personally witnessed the powerful ripple effects that occur when a woman starts using social media in more intentional and consistent ways. In fact, I witness these ripple effects every day, as founder and CEO of Mighty Forces, a company that helps women and the organizations that invest in them to share their voices, ideas, and stories in more authentic and consistent ways, especially online.
Think of an amazing woman you know — what it feels like to be in a room with her. Now imagine if people all over the world could experience that.
They can.
Think of an amazing woman you know — what it feels like to be in a room with her. Now imagine if people all over the world could experience that. Thanks to the internet, they can.
When women show up more authentically and consistently online, they channel their incredible innate power in ways that impact their own lives and careers, those of other women, and the wider world. They get promotions and speaking opportunities. They find new jobs. They grow their businesses and sell their creative work. They make their networks aware of important work that women colleagues are doing (before a man can take credit for the idea), building recognition and opportunity for women leaders, as conference panels and pundit lineups continue to lean male. They expand their networks in strategic ways, bringing interdisciplinary perspectives to bear on the social problems they're trying to solve. They connect dots. They inspire, and they become inspired.
I will be candid: For years, the "online" part of my mission has been the most challenging part to champion. Talk about women's voices, and you get a "hell yeah!" Start talking about the internet, or, god forbid, social media, and you lose a few people. The word "online" part can trip people up, for so many reasons, from feeling like they aren't tech savvy to recoiling from the toxicity that social media has come to represent in so many people's minds.
And yet.
And yet, the power of social media is undeniable, and opting out is no way channel its power in the direction of equality, or a better world. Because, despite all of its foibles, the internet still represents such a powerful tool for amplifying diverse voices and, in so doing, reshaping our individual lives, as well as our culture and society at large.
Thank you for reading Mighty Forces Express. This post is public so feel free to share it.
Obviously, biased algorithms, trolls, and other dangers pose a threat to the internet's true democratic potential, but we don't need to just take it lying down. We can consider it a sh*tty opening offer. We can work to solve the necessary technical challenges, and we can devote ourselves to getting more diverse people into tech leadership and creation and governance. We can be the change.
Many organizations, some of them my clients, are doing just that. I am so honored to work with organizations like Pivotal Ventures, which is increasing women's power and influence, including by investing in innovative solutions that get more women into both coding and leadership roles in tech.
I adore Judith Spitz and the trail she and her team are blazing with Break Through Tech, which is creating new pathways into tech for women and non-binary people — especially people of color, as well as many from low-income backgrounds and/or who are first-generation college students. As AI dominates the headlines, Break Through Tech's work opening up pathways for these students into careers in this fast-growing, lucrative field is especially inspiring. And getting more women into these high-paying jobs has ripple effects for all of us: As my client Beth Bengtson of Working for Women reminds me every chance she gets: When we invest in women, we strengthen the economy. Period. Full stop.
While not clients, organizations like Ada Developers Academy and Last Mile Education Fund are also on my "admiration radar," for the work they're doing breaking down barriers that keep women from tech careers. I was also incredibly inspired to learn about the Applied Social Media Lab at Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, "a new home for technologists and practitioners to reimagine, rebuild, and reboot social media to serve the public good." HELL YES. They are hiring, including for the lab's director. Let's send amazing women candidates their way.
And let's all make it our business to increase our own social media literacy, and to build our tolerance for being more active on social media — more than tolerance, let's leave ourselves open to the possibility of experiencing the joy and inspiration that can come from doing so. So many women come to me thinking of LinkedIn as this onerous "should" (one client called it "the swimsuit shopping of personal brand"), but they leave "crackling with energy," as one client put it.
Because at the end of the day, social media isn't about social media — some esoteric phenomenon that exists off in a silo to the side of your life. It's about connecting with other human beings. It's about being seen, and heard, and letting your authentic presence serve as a beacon, helping you find the people who are trying to find you, and attracting meaningful opportunities your way. It's about being present in the world. It's about participating, on a platform that happens to connect you with potential best friends and collaborators all over the world.
Don't let the trolls take this away from us. Don't let cynical businessmen win. Let's take back the internet, and take back social media — and then, let's light up the world. Because we are, every single one of us, a mighty force.
- Amanda