Lauren and Rachael discuss the importance of creating personal guidelines for navigating social media. You can think of these as 10 Commandments, House Rules, Standard Operating Procedures etc. They each share three of their own ‘commandments’ related to common scenarios they’ve encountered as artists and business owners with large audiences online.
Lauren and Rachael discuss the importance of creating personal guidelines for navigating social media. You can think of these as 10 Commandments, House Rules, Standard Operating Procedures etc. They each share three of their own ‘commandments’ related to common scenarios they’ve encountered as artists and business owners with large audiences online.
Special shoutout to Therapy Jeff!
The transcript for this episode can be found here!
Rachael: Say you're searching for your friend because you wanted to look up one specific thing, when you go to the search, it shows you the explore page that has all these tempting little clicks, and I find myself like, "Oh, what did that celebrity say?" I'm like, "I don't give a (beep). I don't even know who this is. Why am I clicking on this?"
[Music]
Rachael: Hi, welcome back to Chaotic Creatives, a show about embracing the chaos that comes from living a creative life.
Lauren: We are your hosts, two self-proclaimed chaotic, creative gals. I am Lauren Hom, I am a designer, letterer, muralist, and most recently chef.
Rachael: And I'm Rachael Renae, I am your internet hype gal, a creativity coach here to help you live a more fulfilling life, have more connection in your life, and be more creative.
Lauren: Hell, yeah.
Rachael: That was the first time I said it.
Lauren: I was going to say, I was like, "Can I say that I'm proud of you for calling yourself a creativity coach?"
Rachael: Thank you. I'm working on it. I'm working on it.
Lauren: Good. Great. I mean, earlier this season we talked about labels, and taking off the ones that were no longer helpful, but I think in reverse fashion, putting on new ones, or adopting new labels that we might not have felt comfortable taking on before, they can be empowering.
Rachael: Yeah.
Lauren: So good for you.
Rachael: Thank you.
Lauren: I'm proud of you for saying that you are a creativity coach because that is what you've been doing for the last year or two. It reminds me of how a lot of artists, when they're just starting out will say, "I'm an aspiring designer, I'm an aspiring illustrator," when like, "No, you can just be that thing too."
Rachael: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I've talked many times about how, in therapy, it took me years to be able to say that I was an artist. I was like, "I'm creative, not a creative," so yeah, we're working on it.
Lauren: Yeah, language is always changing. We always associate different words with different meanings, and it's so personal too, which is kind of what we're talking about today.
Rachael: Yeah, that was a good segue.
Lauren: Seamless transition, trying to be respectful of everyone's time, including our own.
Rachael: Yes.
Lauren: Today we are talking about setting rules or a framework for yourself to use social media, because this initially started out as a comment that I made earlier this season, about trying to come up with like 10 commandments of using social media for myself, because I was having a hard time navigating the boundlessness and infiniteness, infinite space of social media, and you likened it to house rules. Even before this, we're talking about how it's similar to a standard operating procedure, like a manual, a guidebook for how to move forward in situations so you have a calm, level-headed, like, "Okay, this is how I will handle this." And of course, you can't get in front of everything, but just knowing how you personally are going to engage, and use, and share on social media can be helpful in you getting more out of it, but it gets out of you.
Because we were just talking before we recorded, it can be anything you want it to be. There are people who have Instagram accounts that are just their dog. There are people who run businesses on Instagram. There are people who run comedy accounts. It really is in terms of what you curate and what you consume, completely up to you, very DIY.
Rachael: Yeah. We were also talking about thinking about who benefits when we're kind of scrambling in the abyss of the internet because-
Lauren: Yeah, in the moment.
Rachael: I likened it to a dating app. I have dated people that I met through Instagram. It can be news. It can be how you connect with your family, how you stay connected to your friends. It can be artistic inspiration or advice. It can be therapy. It shouldn't be therapy, but there are a lot of great internet therapists that give little snippets. It shouldn't replace a real professional.
Lauren: Yes, it's the surface level. It's just a taste.
Rachael: Yeah.
Lauren: It's just a little nibble.
Rachael: So I think as we're navigating it as two people who run businesses that utilize Instagram as a space to market our work, it can be difficult when something is triggering, or we feel overwhelmed, and so we were talking about these house rules, these 10 Commandments, standard operating procedures, to be able to set boundaries for ourselves, and understand what we should do in a certain situation. If we set those boundaries and rules for ourselves, because these are very personal, and-
Lauren: Super personal.
Rachael: Lauren and I each made separate ones, because we should. Making those lists when we're in a calm, cool, collected space outside of being reactive or emotional, let's say when a mean comment comes in, if we have something that we can refer back to and said, "Oh, yeah, if someone says something, I can do this." I feel like it gives a little more clarity to how we're approaching the internet space.
Lauren: Yes.
Rachael: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah, because it can feel overwhelming to log on to any social media network, and just feel overwhelmed. I think the biggest ... The reason why something like coming up with your own guidelines for how to use social media is important, is because we've moved from a internet where you were going to surf the web and going to look for stuff, and you were in control of what you saw because you had to seek it, now it is, you open it and it's fed to you, like spoonfed to you. It's within your control who you follow, but in terms of what content gets pushed to the top of your feed when you open an app, that is out of your control. There are algorithms at play that are probably going to show you the thing that's going to get you hooked.
Rachael: Yeah, and also, you may choose who you can follow, but there are suggested people, if you go to try to search something, say you're searching for your friend because you wanted to look up one specific thing, when you go to the search, it shows you the explore page that has all these tempting little clicks. I find myself like, "Oh, what did that celebrity say?" I'm like, "I don't give a shit. I don't even know who this is. Why am I clicking on this?" So what we're trying to do is make rules for ourselves so that we can be very intentional about how we're using this tool, because it is a great tool, and it's a great community building tool, but we have to be intentional about how we're using it.
Lauren: Yes, I think we share all this to say, "Here's what we are implementing. Here's how we navigate. We don't necessarily want or need you to adopt these exact same rules, what we want this conversation to do is to encourage you to think about some of your own house rules or commandments when it comes to using social media that can just make your experience better." Which, I guess, brings me to my ... I can start, we'll go back and forth.
Rachael: Great.
Lauren: My first one of getting more out of social media than it gets out of me. This can be applied in so many ways. I think when I first wrote this one down, it applies to I'm not going to waste my time on this platform. I'm not going to just mindlessly scroll. One thing I've been trying not to do is bring my phone with me to the bathroom, because that's just like an impulse now. It's like, "Oh, I got to get my phone because I got to pee." That's not helpful.
Rachael: No, you don't need your phone to pee, in fact.
Lauren: Everyone has to come up with their own kind of rubric for this, but engaging in comment sections, sometimes it feels like you could be arguing with a bot. You never know. I try to calibrate the amount of care and attention I give to something based on if I have an existing relationship with somebody. It's not like I'm duking it out in the comments with people very often, I know they framed it so it seems that way, but I don't want to go down any unnecessary rabbit holes in the way that Instagram or TikTok, or any of these platforms try to trap you into, like lure you into the rabbit hole. I want to reclaim a little bit more of my agency and go, "No, I am going to only give this an hour of my day, maybe not even," like, "I'm going to get in, get out, do what I need to do." Because how many times have you logged into Instagram to look for something, and then an hour later you're like, "What was I here for?"
Rachael: "Why did I open this?" Yeah.
Lauren: "Why did I even open it?" I don't like that it distracts me in that way, and to me, that can look like time limits. It can look with choosing not to respond to every single comment or DM, that's a big one that I've absolved myself of the guilt of over the years. But just being aware of when Instagram is squeezing me dry a little bit emotionally, creatively, and then making sure that, "Okay, remembering I'm here to try to get something out of Instagram, which is to make creative friends, to promote my creative work," and those are really the main things.
Rachael: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah.
Rachael: I love that. I think that's an excellent one. It reminds me sort of this, before I share my first one, I'm thinking about the perspective of like, you mentioned this, who is benefiting when I get sucked into a rabbit hole? It's Instagram.
Lauren: It's Mark Zuckerberg.
Rachael: Yeah, and that guy's got enough money. I feel like this tool gives us this false sense of connection, and you've heard us talk about connection. One of the main things that I want to do with my work is help people connect with other people in real life, or if not in real life, because I do-
Lauren: In a meaningful way.
Rachael: In a meaningful way. I do have a lot of people I've met through the internet that I've never met in real life, but the way that we connect is a real connection. It's not like I throw you a like when I see what you're up to. So this isn't one of my rules, but I have been very aggressive in my unfollowing lately, because I've had Instagram since 2012 maybe, and so I followed people in college when it was like we were posting a grainy picture with a shitty filter of a beer at a bar, and put like, "Yum." There were no DMs. There were no comments. It was just like, "I love a pickled egg at the dive bar," which I still do. But those people, and I don't talk to each other in real life, I don't know what they're up to. I shouldn't know what their children are doing. I shouldn't know how they're spending their vacation because those are not real connections.
The internet gives this false sense of connection in this time when people are so lonely and desperate for real connection, so people go to the internet and they feel like they're connecting, but it's not, it's one-sided. It feels like you're getting something from someone else, but you're not interacting directly, you are consuming them sharing things about their lives. So anyone that I don't talk to regularly, I kind of unfollowed because I'm like, "If you have something to share with me, you should text me. If I don't have your phone number, I shouldn't know what your children are up to." So that's one of my sort of tangents, but not one of my rules, but I think it's a good thing that is helping me. If someone is offended that I've unfollowed them, they could text me about it. Okay, first one, if I feel activated by a comment or message and want to respond, mine are a little bit more specific than yours, I will write a response in the notes app and sleep on it before posting.
Lauren: So good.
Rachael: Because I feel like that is really ... If I feel triggered by something that someone said, that's a reflection of something that I need to work through, because I want people to give me a generous read just like I'm giving them a generous read. We talked about that before we started recording. If someone is saying something to me, and I'm triggered, it probably was in an accusatory way, or that person hasn't followed me or doesn't follow me, and doesn't understand the nuance. Nuance is really hard to share in a 30-second Instagram Reel or in a still video.
Lauren: Yeah. We have to distill things down to the simplest terms, which oftentimes means there's lots of room for misinterpretation and projection, and that is just the price of admission to be on social media.
Rachael: Yeah. I used to share a lot of outfit, Get Ready With Me reels, so I was in my underwear a lot because I started in my underwear, for two reasons. One, I work with brands that sell underwear, and I like working with them and want to show people like, "Hey, this is a cool brand. I like their values." Two, that we should normalize feeling good in our bodies. It doesn't matter what they look like, they're the only ones we've got. So just trying to make it feel like body neutrality was a goal for me, not trying to make it feel like that is a goal. But then, of course, if a Get Ready With Me reel goes viral, and then a bunch of creep men are like, "Oh, those tattoos are like putting bumper stickers on a Porsche," which is a comment that a lot of old men use on the internet.
Lauren: It just seems like bot comments at this point.
Rachael: Maybe it was.
Lauren: That's not yours to carry.
Rachael: No.
Lauren: I think that's an important thing to remember too, is the way that social media has changed is algorithmically your stuff can get spit out to so many more people, in a way that was different than when something used to go viral through email forwarding, or on Tumblr when people would reblog things. I think now it's just served up to whoever.
Rachael: Right. It's not because it was shared by a-
Lauren: Person.
Rachael: An overlapping.
Lauren: Yeah.
Rachael: Yeah, like a web.
Lauren: There's not that connection, the bridge anymore. So that can feel like it invites people who don't give you the most generous read, and are going to say pithy, sometimes mean or inappropriate things because there's no relationship there.
Rachael: Right. They don't see you as a person.
Lauren: Yeah.
Rachael: Absolutely. Yeah. So I've had a few interactions where people have said something, and then I've sort of snapped back, but I don't like being a person who snaps back. So then I'm uncomfortable with myself, and I'm mad that they were able to get a rise out of me, which is probably what they wanted anyway. My solution to that is that I will write a response in the Notes app and sleep on it, and if it still is bothering me, can I phrase it in a more eloquent way and share it? Is it providing value to my community on the internet if I share something like that?
Lauren: Is it a teachable moment or is it just you needing to journal for a second?
Rachael: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe I just am feeling insecure about this thing that they commented on.
Lauren: Yeah. It's tough because social media feels somehow private and public at the same time. I've heard the analogy that social media is like you're inviting people into your home, and if someone comes into your house and goes, "I don't like the way you laid out your living room," you would be like, "Get the fuck out of my house then."
Rachael: Yeah. Yeah.
Lauren: There's a lot of unsolicited feedback, unsolicited advice, and that just is what people do online, especially when you have a larger following, people assume that you're not going to see everything.
Rachael: We do.
Lauren: So be nice.
Rachael: We do. Yeah.
Lauren: At the same time though, the algorithm can spit your stuff out to strangers, and sometimes it'll spit your stuff out to people it knows your content will inflame because of the engagement.
Rachael: Oh, yeah.
Lauren: So the mechanisms are bad, and we can still navigate them, and again, block as needed. Make sure we're setting up parameters so it's a hospitable place for us to operate, but there are just going to be bad actors sometimes, and the platforms will kind of spike your cortisol levels at times, and so making sure that you have systems so you can navigate them. This is important.
Rachael: And this is one of the systems.
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely.
Rachael: Us building these lists.
Lauren: Someone else could have a, similar to yours, someone else could say, "If someone leaves a comment like that, that gets a rise out of me, I will block them." That's maybe more extreme.
Rachael: That's literally number one on my list. We sort of chose a couple to share.
Lauren: We're only doing three each because we could be here for three hours.
Rachael: Yeah. We're not going to do that to you. But that is my first one, if a comment or message gives me the creeps or makes me feel like shit, immediately block. I don't owe that person a response, like you said, this is my house. No one would ever come into my house and be like, "You're fucking ugly."
Lauren: Oh, my gosh.
Rachael: If they did, I would be like, "Why are you here?" I actually think I would rather hear that in person than reading it, because people say that.
Lauren: Yeah.
Rachael: Old men feel entitled to say that.
Lauren: I'm so sorry, I'm actually thinking of someone standing outside your window right now when you're just trying to-
Rachael: You're ugly!
Lauren: Oh, my gosh.
Rachael: That's right, I am. I'm not for you.
Lauren: Actually, that's a good point you bring up because it's not one of my commandments because it's not even a rule to follow, but I'm sharing this because I think it'll be helpful for other people too. Anytime I am triggered by something online, or I have a weird interaction with somebody, with a person, I try to take a step back and go, "How would this actually play out in the real world?" Which is why it's ridiculous to think that someone would come into your home and be like, "You're ugly."
Rachael: Yeah.
Lauren: It makes it funny to me, and it also gives me some perspective of like, "Oh, this person is acting this way because of the cover of the internet."
Rachael: Absolutely.
Lauren: No one would ever do this in real life, and so I either have to block and move on, depending on what they said, or just ignore it.
Rachael: Ignore it.
Lauren: Because this is not this person acting like-
Rachael: A real human.
Lauren: Yeah, like a real person.
Rachael: Yeah. I think, thinking of that, I just had an interaction that was weird. It wasn't like that. It was just someone commenting on something and giving me the least generous read, and it just rubbed me the wrong way, and I was like, "Ugh."
Lauren: Yeah.
Rachael: Ultimately, I did respond and I posted a story about it, and I tried to respond with grace. I am happy with what I said, but I also was like, "Ugh," I don't feel better, and that's why I made this rule of sleeping on it because responding in the moment, I'm just sort of worked up.
Lauren: We live in a clap back culture too, where it's dunking on people in the comments gets you engagement.
Rachael: Yeah, absolutely. I think someone sending that message, now I can look at it and see, now that there's space that, "Okay, I triggered something in someone." It's easy to just throw out your opinion because you're sending it into the void when you're sending a DM or a message, whereas if someone said something in real life and triggered you, you would be like, "Hey, actually I didn't have that experience. Can you talk about that a little bit more?" There's no social norms. Well, there should be on the internet, but there aren't, so people are willing to just fire it off in this accusatory way, and thinking about it from the perspective of like, "If this person acted this way in real life, how would I act?"
Lauren: Yeah.
Rachael: If someone came at me after something that I said, I would just ignore them.
Lauren: Yeah, because it's really just a product of the mechanisms of the internet. It's like what we said in one of the most recent episodes about getting real-time customer feedback of like, "Your stuff is too expensive," or, "I don't like this." That doesn't happen in the real world as often, unless you're vending face-to-face at a market, and even then, people have the decency to not say that in front of your face. Once in a while you might get like a, as someone's walking away, they turn to their friend going like, "Oh, too expensive," but again, we have those reactions too. There are plenty of inside thoughts that I have when I scroll on social media that I'm not going to type out.
Rachael: No. Oh, my gosh.
Lauren: Yeah. Unsolicited feedback or advice, I don't want to give any of it, but everyone has a different approach to social media.
Rachael: Oh, man, I knew that this was going to get us going. I just have so much to say because thinking about the unsolicited advice thing, something that I used to do before I had really worked on my self-awareness, is I used to want to feel like I was adding value to the conversation. So someone who's posting something impactful, let's say, and I think I know about that thing, so I'm going to comment and challenge it because it's like, "Oh, well, I know about this thing. This is a topic that I care about." I very specifically remember that there's this one person that I followed when I was vegan, who was also vegan, but was frequently shopping at Forever 21 and Zara, and fast fashion is something that I have always cared to work against, I guess. So I would be like, "You're doing this for the animals and the environment, but you're shopping at fast fashion. How do you reconcile that?"
It's like there's a place for all of us in activism, and so that person just didn't know about that thing, but me being like, "How could you do this too?," is never going to change their mind or even make them curious about it. So I feel like when people feel that they have something to add, they want to shout it out in that accusatory way because it comes off for them as giving authority over something, but then, ultimately it just rubs the reader, the recipient the wrong way. Does that make sense?
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely.
Rachael: Okay.
Lauren: Thank you for sharing that, because social media has evolved, it evolved so fast, and the way that we ... Again, we were given no guidelines on how to use it, like what you were saying, people used to post whatever, their lunch, their dinner, just stuff, and I think that we all have done stuff like that.
Rachael: Totally. I mean, of course I'm embarrassed, but that was the information that I had then.
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely.
Rachael: I'm sure there are cringey moments. I'm not holding current me to former me, or former me to current me standards, I guess.
Lauren: Yeah. I think a lot about how ... I understand the desire to chime in that way. I also think about the limitations of social media, of how, we were talking about this before, the overinflation of the importance of a post, or if someone's posting that they're shopping at, like, "Oh, I got this dress at Forever 21." Hopefully, they know fast fashion is not great, or maybe there is a way to educate them, but I'm not sure if that's the space, unfortunately.
Rachael: I've had the experience where I wear wild outfits, and I'll be at a wedding, for example. I was at a wedding a handful of years ago, and someone was complimenting me on my outfit. Great, thank you so much. It was a vintage polka dress, which I would love to find the makers of, like polka dancing dress, not polka dot. Those are great, very much my style. Then I returned the compliment with this person that I had just met and been like, "I love your outfit too," and they said like, "Oh, yeah, I got it at Shein," or Shine, I don't know how to say it.
Lauren: I don't fucking care.
Rachael: I don't care either. I don't want to know how to say it, and my whole body just went like —
Lauren: Your asshole clenched.
Rachael: Yeah. It's like, "No, don't we know that that's bad?" But of course this is the area that I care about, and the sort of pillar that I educate in, so of course I know that, and lots of other people don't, and I hope ... but me saying in that moment like, "Eww, don't you know that that's bad?," would've been terrible, and I was just like, "Oh."
Lauren: Time and a place. Time and place.
Rachael: Complimenting someone, and then being like, "Oh, well, that was a shitty choice," that's not going to do any good.
Lauren: You know what? Actually, I retract my compliment.
Rachael: I retract it. It's probably going to fall apart before the night's over, but I didn't say that. It wasn't necessary, and it was not an educational opportunity. So I think that's an in real-life example of how we should maybe think about the internet too.
Lauren: Yeah. We're also all just walking contradictions.
Rachael: Absolutely.
Lauren: We hope everyone's trying. Sometimes you're trying your kind of best, sometimes you are trying your best. It brings me to my next one.
Rachael: Yeah, I was going to say, "Let's do the second one." I'm glad you have us only pick three, because-
Lauren: One of mine is as a user of social media, I want to give everybody the benefit of the doubt, give everybody a generous first pass at what they are saying. Because I recently saw this one interaction, someone had commented on someone else's post, and they said something that was just slightly misinformed, and people were flaming them in the comments. This person had the gumption to jump back in, and I was like, "Oh, shoot." Again, this is wasting my time on ... Why do I care? So this is before I set my rules.
Rachael: People who you probably don't know.
Lauren: I don't even know them, but I did catch a glimpse of something nice that happened. Well, something I took inspiration from. This person jumps back in and went, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. I understand where you're all coming from. I see that my take was misinformed. I didn't mean it that way. I've commented, I saw this post and I commented before I had my coffee. I'm so sorry." I was like, "Oh." We're human, right? Sometimes we feel sweet, sometimes we feel salty, we can share all of those emotions online.
Rachael: We are human food.
Lauren: Yes.
Rachael: Sweet or salty, those are the only two options. Savory, get the fuck out of here.
Lauren: I realized that if someone posts something salty on one of my posts, or someone else's posts, or even just makes a post of their own that is venting, that is okay. There's space for all those emotions, and I don't necessarily need to respond. I'm going to give them the generous read that they're just frustrated, or they haven't had their coffee, however you want to frame that. I was like, "I need to give people a generous read," otherwise, I start worrying that people aren't giving me a generous read. The only way I feel comfortable posting on social media is if I assume people will give me the benefit of the doubt, and until they don't, I just have to operate like they will, and if they don't, then we'll deal with that. But I trust myself enough to share things that are true for me, and I trust my voice with the information I have now, and if people don't give me the benefit of the doubt, then I don't want them following me.
Rachael: I think that's really beautiful. I also feel like it kind of is a segue into your third one, so I feel like maybe-
Lauren: Yeah, I'll just do my last. Oh, wait.
Rachael: Your before noon one?
Lauren: Yes, yes, yes, yes. I thought you were talking about my other point of being misunderstood, but that's segueing into your next one, right?
Rachael: Oh, in my head, I was still on the like, "I didn't have my morning coffee, so I was on the internet before I was ready."
Lauren: Okay. Yup.
Rachael: Yeah. I didn't explain that line of thought. I just was like, "Segue into your next one."
Lauren: It's fine. Let me just say it. My last one is no using social media before lunch. Obviously, I won't always abide by that.
Rachael: Sure.
Lauren: But it's a good reminder for me because my brain just gets pulled in all sorts of ways if I just open up my phone in the morning. So to give myself the best chances of taking the reins of my day into my own hands, I don't want my thoughts to be pulled in a million different directions that weren't of my own choosing by just happening to open up Instagram in bed, because it's kind of at the algorithm's whim what is going to be served to me in those first couple of posts.
Rachael: Absolutely, which can tank your whole day.
Lauren: Yeah. I got to keep the slate clean. My nervous system cannot handle it. So being mindful about when I log into Instagram, it's like I'm going to go to this place with a bunch of random things being thrown at me, and hopefully I see some cool stuff, but I might see some stuff I don't want to see either.
Rachael: Yeah. Yeah. Sorry that I made you prematurely share your third one, because now I'm going to go back to the second one, because you talked about how giving people ... assuming that people are giving you the benefit of the doubt will allow you to give people the benefit of the doubt or vice versa. I feel like that is a message that I share in the PRIORITIZE PLAY Workshop, sort of in a broader sense, of like, "If you start looking for things that are going to excite you, that are playful, that are joyful, you'll start seeing more of them, but if you're looking for things to complain about, you will notice more." It's just like that's neuroscience, that you notice the things that you're paying attention to.
So if you're always looking for a reason to snap back, or post a mean comment, or do a got you on somebody that you follow on the internet, you will find those opportunities. But can you challenge yourself to give someone the benefit of the doubt, and treat them how you would treat a person in real life? Then you'll see more opportunities, and also assume that people are giving you that. Oh, my gosh, this is another example of this exact thing is in the Dress For Yourself Course. I promise I'm not just trying to pitch my offerings.
Lauren: That's what this is for though, isn't it?
Rachael: Yeah, that's true. That's true.
Lauren: We don't have sponsors yet.
Rachael: No, please buy our courses. But one of the things that I talk about when I had a major mindset shift in terms of my own style, was when I actively worked to stop judging other people for what they were wearing. Because I would find myself in a situation where I'd be like, "Oh, that girl looks really cool. She's probably dumb or something." I would make up some story in my head so that I felt better about myself. It wasn't that simple, but I would be like, "Oh, well, that girl looks like she has cool style and a hot partner," and I'm jealous, so I need to come up with something in my head that makes me feel superior.
When I first noticed that I was doing that, and second, made active steps to be like, "Hey, you're trying to judge that girl because you're jealous of this life you've projected onto her, even though you don't know anything about this person, stop thinking about her. Start thinking about yourself." It's an active effort that I'm constantly trying to do, is to not judge other people, but once I was aware of that, then I stopped worrying about other people judging me.
Lauren: Yeah, because when you start the surveillance and policing you're doing internally of other people, it ends up hurting you because you assume people are doing it to you. So we're all in this heightened state of like, "Got to watch what we say, don't want to do anything that someone could judge," but then it keeps you stuck. So it is more helpful to assume people will give you a generous read, and those who don't will quietly leave, most of them will.
Rachael: Hopefully, they'll quietly leave, yeah.
Lauren: There's going to be like 0.1% who will be the vocal minority, and that's whatever.
Rachael: Then you welcome.
Lauren: Exactly.
Rachael: Now that I've taken us on side quest, that's my scorecard account, I will share my other two. So I said if I feel activated by a comment, that was the one I shared. I circled a bunch, but then I also put arrows by other ones so I'm like, "Which one am I actually sharing?"
Lauren: The one about, I think I was trying to segue to the one about labor.
Rachael: Yes, I got it. If someone asks me to help them address a very specific problem or issue, I have the right not to answer, because I want to be mindful of the labor that I'm choosing to give on the internet, and be mindful of how I'm spending my time and resources. I feel like, especially as my audience grew online, I felt obligated to answer every single question, and help every single person with a problem. For example, because I am an enthusiastic style gal, people ask me a lot of questions about very specific instances related to style. I don't claim to be a stylist. I like dressing for myself, and I give people the mindfulness tools to be able to dress for themselves, but it doesn't excite me to help someone else get dressed, like their actual clothes. I want to give people tools to understand if they feel good in what they're wearing ... Is what I'm saying making sense?
Lauren: Yeah. The same way we're not giving up prescriptive 10 commandments of social media for everybody.
Rachael: For everyone, yes.
Lauren: Yeah. We're giving you a way to think about-
Rachael: I want to ... Yeah. I want to inspire people to find what works for them.
So sometimes a reel will circulate outside of my audience, or people will be new to following me, and they'll ask me for very specific style advice. Like, "Oh, I'm going to this. What would you wear to this?" My answer is like, "Well, what do you feel good in? You don't want to wear what I would wear."
Lauren: Yeah, that's also not even a service you offer.
Rachael: No. Exactly. So I think I get those here and there, and I feel obligated to help because I like to be a helpful person, but what that actually is, is you're getting sort of free labor from me, and labor that I don't enjoy giving.
Lauren: Yes.
Rachael: I made that rule for myself because if it's a very specific problem that is like ... it's not like, "Hey, how do you help me reflect on if I feel good in something?" Or, "How do I know what colors work for me?" Or whatever. I don't like that question either. I can say like, "Oh, well, I talked about that in the Dress For Yourself course," or like, "Check out my style challenge, and try a bunch of things and figure it out." It's easy to circle back to some of the work that I have already created in a format that I enjoyed the labor, but yeah, very specific. It's kind of like you wouldn't ask an internet therapist, like my friend, TherapyJeff, you wouldn't DM him and be like, "Hey, what should I do? My boyfriend's doing this." He won't answer that. He says in all of his things like, "I'm not your therapist. I am a therapist for my clients, and I'm also sharing information that might help you start to think that you need therapy," basically.
Lauren: Yeah. It's really just the entry point. I think an Instagram post is the entry way or the gateway, but when I think about the labor that you put into responding to DMs, it's always like if someone chooses to respond, cool. Sometimes I'll respond once and then not again, depending on my bandwidth. Ultimately, especially as you're growing an audience, the platforms incentivize you too, and tell you, "Hey, if you want to keep growing, engage with your audience." But again, at the end of the day, who benefits? The platform
Rachael: If it's not meaningful, it's only benefiting the platform.
Lauren: Yeah. I think about the way that you could say, let's take it to the other extreme, like, "I don't want to respond to anything," that's also not helpful for your business. You should provide some answers that are relevant. It's like me answering emails. There's some admin that comes with running a business, no matter what platform or channel. However, when it starts to feel like you're exhausted, or you're starting to feel resentment creep up, you can absolve yourself of having to do that extra labor that no one required of you from the get-go, especially because, again, getting realistic about what are our intentions using this platform, if it is to run your business, you can't just be providing free labor all the time because also the ... It's like a store, opens and closes in real life, that doesn't happen online. You could be answering questions or DMs up until you go to sleep, and that's not healthy either, which is why these guidelines are helpful to be like, "No, I close at this time."
Rachael: Yeah. I used to answer all of the DMs. One of the boundaries that I made for myself, I didn't put it on here because it seems very, very specific, but if someone is responding, because I post a lot of outfit videos, if someone's responding and is like, "This is so cute," there's no question, I used to go back and say, "Thank you so much." But that was exhausting to me, and so I don't need that.
Lauren: Yes, that's great.
Rachael: They don't need my thanks for giving me a compliment. I appreciate everyone who's engaging. Then I had a weird interaction, or a weird sort of example of this that happened this weekend, where I posted an outfit video from a different angle in my house. I have a pink bowl on my counter, and how I started the video, it looked like the bowl was like my arm bent on the counter, but my arm was down here. I would say I got a hundred messages of people being like, "It looked like you had a third arm," and that's funny, but at first I was like, "Ha, ha, ha," and then I'm like, "I don't need to say ha, ha, ha to everyone." Then I'm like, "Oh, but am I an asshole because I'm not responding to this thing that they are pointing out?" It's like, "Nope, a hundred people noticed that same thing."
Lauren: No, I think social media, the platforms prey on people-pleasing tendencies.
Rachael: Yes, which I have. Okay, I'll do my last one. I'm sure we're getting close on time.
Lauren: We are actually. Yeah.
Rachael: Oh, perfect. Okay, so the third one I have is if at any point Instagram no longer feels fun, I give myself permission to either take a break or stop using it entirely. I don't ever want to feel obligated to be on there because the growth, the excitement, all of that comes from when I'm posting things that are fun for me, and when it's not fun, and it's just this tool that I resent, what's the point? Who's benefiting?
Lauren: Yeah. When it's filled with more shoulds than actual, "I want to do this," then it starts to become tiresome.
Rachael: So that's my third one.
Lauren: I love that. Before I even finished my 10 Commandments, I put as number 10, I reserve the right to change these commandments at any time.
Rachael: Yes.
Lauren: Which is important because the fast pace of social media, you have to update your own agreements to yourself all the time of like, "Is this working for me anymore?" There was an era of Instagram, I don't know, five, six years ago, where the common advice, and it didn't feel so bad because we weren't so online, was to respond to every comment, even with just a bunch of heart emojis, or engagement was like, "Love this. So cool." It wasn't really deep, it was just engagement for engagement's sake. I think we've moved away from that now, and maybe there are people out there who don't feel drained by that, but I think creatively, most of the creative people I know do feel drained by the empty engagement tactics. So you have to do things that make you feel good about being there, and it's up to us. The thing I wrote in my journal was like, "It's like parenting yourself. You have to set your own bedtime, your own rules."
Rachael: Yeah. Sometimes we're bad at that.
Lauren: Yeah.
Rachael: Yeah, I love that. So I guess our takeaway here is do take time to reflect, and figure out not only how you're using Instagram, but how you're living your life. You're allowed to change your mind. You're allowed to alter the path that you're on if you find that what you have been doing isn't working for you anymore, and it's beneficial to create some guidelines for yourself, and that comes with reflection. I had to think through what things have bothered me about using Instagram, and same for you, like the inundation.
Lauren: Yeah, like what adjustments can you make. For example, if you're overwhelmed with story replies, and you're finding it to be, like it makes you tired to respond to stories, you can turn off the ability for people to even respond to your stories. I limit my comments to only people who follow me, and it took me so long to do that because I thought people would assume like, "Oh, well, what is she protecting herself against if she has her comments limited?" Nothing, I want to make sure that there's some level of reciprocity happening where, sure, I might be taking a hit in "engagement" from all the random people who could comment whatever was on their mind, but I would rather only allow people who have decided to follow me, and it's not that hard. The bare minimum reciprocity of like, "Okay, you're a little bit bought in, and I'll hear you out."
I know plenty of people who the only way that makes it tenable for them to use Instagram is to turn the comments off. There's no shame in curating or setting up mechanisms to use the platform in a way that makes it usable for you now, because if you just go to the default settings, they're going to want everything to be served to you all the time. You can snooze your suggested reels and your feed if you want, that's what I do. I'm trying to keep my attention more focused. Unfortunately, it's up to us as individuals to do that because the platforms are going to operate in their best interest, which is to keep eyeballs there for advertiser dollars.
Rachael: Yeah, absolutely. So it's just all about being intentional.
Lauren: Yeah. I think most people I speak to now, overall, don't feel great about social media, but I still think there's a desire to want to figure out how to use it because there's still some juice left to squeeze out of it. A lot of good can still come from it, but we need to facilitate that good happening, we can't just let it be.
Rachael: Yeah. I think that's one of the most frustrating things I hear from people, is like, "Oh, I hate the internet," and it's like, "Well, one, you don't have to participate. Two, we have to curate it to be what we want out of it." We have to be intentional with our use, just like we do with any other thing. So when I hear people say that, I kind of always, I don't bite back, but I say, "Oh, have you muted the things that make you unhappy? Have you unfollowed people that make you feel jealous? Are you following inspiring accounts? How are you using it?" Because how we used to use it is just follow anything that's interesting, and like you said, you just get inundated, you don't get to choose what you're seeing in the morning, or in the afternoon when you're using your hours appropriately. So yeah, I think it still has potential to be a wonderful, lovely space, and tool for us, but we just have to change how we're approaching it.
Lauren: Yeah, I think we have to do it with our eyes open, being realistic about the limitations of the platform, and the incentives of the platform, and then using the tools that they built in because they probably had to, to make sure that the experience is closest to what we want it to be.
Ultimately, it's their private ... not a private company actually, but they are a corporation whose goal is to make money, and so just realizing that they don't have our best interests in mind necessarily, but we all have congregated there, and how can we still have some positive experiences, or get something out of this? Because I started to use social media as a way to just share my artwork, and the people that I connected with early on in my career, I'm glad that we met on the internet.
Rachael: Yeah. Oh, I've met such wonderful people.
Lauren: So there's still some good that can come out of it, and we just got to do a little thinking and reconfiguring to figure out how to use it.
Rachael: Yeah, absolutely. I guess this is one thing that I'm sure your business coaches have told you, and mine have as well, is like, "Also, get people on your newsletter list because that's what you have ownership over." So Instagram could decide to boot us all off tomorrow, and we have no choice over it, and we lose our following, so it's like building our own communities so that we can share. I also really love my newsletter because I can provide so much more nuance, just like here we can have a ... it's conversation, it's not just-
Lauren: Yeah, bite-sized content is not for everybody.
Rachael: Definitely not for this [inaudible 00:47:12].
Lauren: Humans were not meant to be interpreted that way, and so just the way it's set up, it makes it tough to use, but you got this.
Rachael: Yeah. Yeah. If you feel like sharing any of your commitments with us, or house rules, or-
Lauren: Yeah, after listening to this.
Rachael: SOPs. Yeah.
Lauren: If you come up with your own little handbook, we'd love to hear anything that you came up with, that might be helpful. Because in Rachael and I having these conversations with each other, I've oftentimes needed to talk with someone to work these out of like, "Okay, I'm feeling this way. What can I do to change this?" So hopefully, if you don't have anyone to talk to about this, this episode can be a stand in for getting the gears turning on what you might want to do with your page.
Rachael: Absolutely.
Lauren: Yeah.
Rachael: This is our penultimate episode.
Lauren: Of season two.
Rachael: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I love using the word penultimate, and so I will-
Lauren: It sounds so intense.
Rachael: Yeah. Cool. Anyway, we're almost done.
Lauren: Rachael just did two. What are these “rock on” signs?
Rachael: The metal horns.
Lauren: Oh.
Rachael: Yeah. Metal, tough. Anyway-
Lauren: All right, we got to go.
Rachael: We got to go. See you next time for our last episode.
Lauren: In the finale.
Rachael: Bye.
Lauren: Bye.