Returning to the newsletter

Social media disappointment and life without them: issue #12

Hey everyone, it’s been a while, but I’ve finally decided to revive this newsletter. Let me tell you about the reasons for my comeback and what to expect here.

What’s happening?

For the last 6 months, or maybe even more, I’ve grown increasingly disappointed in the social media distorted reality many of us live in today, myself included. We all have different excuses: Some connect with friends, some try to elevate their branding or business presence, and some just do it out of habit.

I give social media the most precious thing I have—my time, so I started asking myself, what am I actually getting in return? After thinking a lot about this, I couldn’t find an answer. It seems I pay with my time for…nothing?

In addition to my personal disappointment, social media is literally running our society slowly but very successfully. All the information is becoming fast food and insanely polarized. I see it in politics, religions, and other opinions. Everything is black and white because that’s the only color we have time to squeeze into decreasing media formats in stories, tweets, and short videos. But the world is much more complex and exciting than we see on our screens.

To put the money where my mouth is, I’m conducting an experiment. For the next three months, I’m entirely stopping using all social media except YouTube. I don’t count it as social media per se; despite some classic social media features, YouTube can be consumed consciously and algorithm-free (except for YouTube Shorts). Of course, I won’t be posting there either since it would be hypocritical. Hopefully, after 3 months, I will never come back.

I aim to produce “calm” and sustainable content that I am genuinely excited about instead of constantly chasing new social media trends and serving algorithms.

If you’re curious about learning more about the “calm” approach, here is a great YouTube video (about an artistic calm approach) and blog post (about a calm approach in business) to learn more.

What to expect?

I still want to continue producing small snippets of content for people interested in what’s happening in my life, expat stories, useful tips, and travel. I have mainly been using IG stories for that purpose, but I remembered about this newsletter and think it would be a perfect replacement.

Instead of posting immediate IG stories, I plan to post periodic newsletter issues (I'm unsure about the schedule yet) with a summary of recent events or thoughts. The content will supplement the main long-formats like my YouTube channel and Blog. Of course, I’ll also share it here when the long formats are published.

For example, I spent the last three weeks in Cluj, Romania, and enjoyed the city. So, the next few issues will be about my adventures in this city, my crazy attempt to cross Europe from west to east without using planes, and how it turned into a disaster. There will be a video about Cluj, but it will be more of an overview of living in the city, and here, you’ll hear the details.

In addition, I’ll share some useful things I discovered along the way, such as films, content, products, and more.

I am super excited about writing regularly again, and I have always hated pressuring my thoughts into IG stories format.

Where to read

You can read this by simply subscribing to the newsletter on this page:

You can also read those stories using the Substack official app.

In addition, I’ll be cross-posting all those issues to the telegram channel. In case you prefer it to email.

Thank you, and see you in the next issue! If you have any thoughts or ideas, always feel free to leave a comment or reply to this email.