“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes” is a quote from @naval.
What I think it means is this: you should think about the final result of your actions before deciding to do something. And if the final result is stupid, then the game is stupid (and, you probably shouldn’t be playing it).
I experienced this in full force the other day.
On X (twitter) I had a post go viral. It wasn’t necessarily political, but a political twist made it triggering for people who have strong opinions about politics.
It got over 20M views on X and millions more on other platforms.
For years I have been building my X audience, somewhat hoping that it would be a good source of traffic for any businesses that I make in the future or projects I start.
But, lately, that’s just not the case.
I have a sizable audience, almost 20k followers, but unless I am pushing out expert educational content every day, it basically results to no value at all to me.
It would be one thing if I made friends on there, which I have, but most of it isn’t physically real. I don’t have anyone’s phone numbers, or have met any of them in real life (except for @jackbutcher).
It would be another thing if it was entertaining and fun, which it is sometimes, but other times it’s depressing and stressful. It’s a very serious and polarized platform. There are people who post jokes and irony all the time, but even that becomes polarizing.
And so at the end of the day I was basically trying to post in a way that I thought was entertaining to other people and something that would drive engagement.
The goal was to get to the point where I could get paid to post. The X creator program. You had to get 5M impressions in the last 3 months.
When I posted that latest post, I got that many impressions and more, and I was invited to the program. Awesome. Mission accomplished.
But, what was the actual prize?
I was basically attacked by thousands of people for no purpose. It’s not like the post made me rich, or saved my life, helped anyone, or anything like that.
And so when I think about the final result of constantly publishing on Social Media, I get the sense that prize is stupid, since, when I got to my “goal” it was essentially meaningless, and therefore the game is stupid.
This reminds me of another @naval quote (I suppose he’s pretty wise). He says, “You want to be rich and anonymous, not poor and famous.”
Which, if you look at that viral tweet, the full extent of that game is being poor and famous.
More people know about me, but I’m not getting anything of value as a result.
Stupid prize == stupid game.
BUT. I still think helping people and providing value for people is the most valuable use of my time. That’s what actually leads to me being “rich”. Providing real value.
And so I ask myself a question that I have actually asked myself many times, “how can I help lots of people without social media?”. Or, “If I didn’t have social media, how would I build a business on the Internet?”.
And it always. ALWAYS leads me back to writing and using SEO & email as a marketing channel.
There are so many advantages to operating in this way.
- You’re not distracted by a feed that’s designed to hold your attention.
- The people searching for stuff are actually interested in reading what you have written.
- You’re providing value to people who actually need it.
- You own all of the data and assets on your own site, rather than it all being on another platform.
- Billions of people are searching every day. Only millions are using X.
- Social media platforms are for entertainment. Search is for getting real work done.
The list goes on.
And so, what I am going to do is switch gears. No more posting on social media. Only posting on my own websites, providing value the best way I know how, and building real businesses that provide real value to people who actually want to receive it.
The trouble is, I’m out of a habit of writing, so I need to get back into writing every day. Starting with 1000 words a day, and increasing from there.
I love all the great people on X, and I wish you all the best. For me, the value isn’t there. And it’s time to take life seriously again.