I Don’t Want Social Media to Be a Stage. I Want It to Be a Table.

I don’t have an idea problem.

I have a choosing problem.

There are too many things I want to build, test, learn, say, teach, try, document, and understand.

That used to feel like a weakness.

Now I think it’s only a weakness if I keep the ideas trapped in my head.

Because an idea in your head can stay perfect forever.

It never has to survive friction.
It never has to answer questions.
It never has to prove that it matters.
It never has to encounter somebody who knows more than you do.

That kind of idea is safe.

And safe ideas are overrated.

I want ideas that meet reality.

I want them challenged.

I want them misunderstood.

I want somebody to poke a hole in them.

I want somebody to say, “That worked for me.”

I want somebody else to say, “That absolutely did not work for me.”

I want a person with twenty years of experience to show up and say, “You’re asking the wrong question.”

That is not a threat to the idea.

That is the point.

For too long, we’ve treated social media like a stage.

Stand here.
Perform.
Post.
Grow.
Get followers.
Build an audience.

I’m not interested in that version anymore.

I don’t want followers.

I want participants.

I don’t want social media to be a stage.

I want it to be a table.

A place where ideas sit down with experience.

A place where somebody brings a problem.

Somebody else brings a story.

Somebody else brings a mistake.

Somebody else brings a solution nobody else saw.

And by the end of the conversation, the idea is better than it was when it arrived.

That is the kind of internet I want to use.

That is the kind of audience I want to build.

That is the kind of work I want to make.

Years ago, around 2015, I had a long list of things I thought I wanted to do.

Write a book.

Learn photography.

Build this.

Try that.

Become this kind of person.

Become that kind of person.

So I created an experiment.

Every month, I picked one idea and did it every day for thirty days.

And something important happened.

Some dreams died.

Good.

They needed to.

Because some things sound beautiful from a distance and become painfully boring when you actually live them.

Some ideas aren’t dreams.

They’re fantasies about identity.

We don’t want to do the thing.

We want to be the kind of person who can say we did the thing.

Reality exposes that difference very quickly.

Photography survived.

Other things didn’t.

That experiment saved me years.

It taught me a lesson I still believe:

Ideas should earn the right to stay in your life.

Not by sounding impressive.

Not by looking good in a notebook.

Not by making you feel ambitious.

By surviving contact with reality.

Today, I think the process can go even further.

Because now the experiment doesn’t have to happen alone.

Now we have access to thousands of people carrying experience we don’t have.

We can listen.

We can build.

We can explain.

We can learn.

That is the loop.

And I want to use every platform for what it’s actually good at.

Facebook is where I listen.

People tell you what they’re struggling with all day long.

They call it a post.

They call it a complaint.

They call it a question.

They call it an argument.

I call it signal.

If the same problem keeps showing up, pay attention.

If the same question keeps getting asked, pay attention.

If people are confused, frustrated, stuck, wasting money, or making the same mistake over and over, pay attention.

That is not noise.

That is an invitation.

Build something.

Explain something.

Create a checklist.

Create a guide.

Create a tool.

Create a framework.

Create a better question.

Then take that idea and put it into words.

Post it.

Tweet it.

Say it out loud.

Make the video.

And watch what happens.

Because the moment you express an idea, it changes.

You discover where the logic is weak.

You discover where your language is sloppy.

You discover what people misunderstand.

You discover what part makes people lean in.

You discover which sentence gets remembered.

You discover which assumption you never questioned.

That is why I don’t think YouTube is only a place to share what I know.

I want to use it to figure out what I think.

Not privately.

Publicly.

Out loud.

In conversation.

I want every video to become a room that never closes.

A place where somebody can hear an idea tomorrow, next month, or three years from now and add something I never considered.

That is more valuable than applause.

Applause tells you people liked the performance.

Conversation tells you whether the idea has legs.

I want the second one.

I want the comment that says:

“You missed this.”

I want the comment that says:

“I’ve been doing this for fifteen years. Here’s what actually happens.”

I want the comment that says:

“I disagree, and here’s why.”

That is useful.

That is how ideas get stronger.

That is how people get stronger.

And that is why I’m done pretending that choosing means deciding what I’m going to do for the next ten years.

That question is too big.

It freezes people.

It turns possibility into pressure.

It creates this ridiculous belief that every experiment is a permanent identity.

It isn’t.

Choosing can be much smaller.

Choose what gets the next ten reps.

And by reps, I don’t just mean doing the same thing ten times.

Ten real conversations.

Ten attempts.

Ten interviews.

Ten videos.

Ten questions.

Ten chances to hear from people who already walked the road.

Ten chances to be corrected.

Ten chances to discover that the idea is stronger than you thought.

Or weaker.

Both are valuable.

Because I would rather kill a bad idea in ten conversations than spend five years protecting it.

And I would rather discover a great idea through real use than polish it forever in private.

This is the framework I want to follow:

Identify.
Develop.
Express.
Adjust.

IDEA.

Identify something worth paying attention to.

Develop it into something useful.

Express it clearly enough that somebody else can understand it.

Adjust when reality responds.

Underneath that, the behavior is even simpler:

Listen.
Build.
Explain.
Learn.

Then repeat.

That is the process.

Not guru mode.

Not certainty theater.

Not pretending to have all the answers.

Work in public.

Think in public.

Learn in public.

Get sharper.

Build better.

And let other people into the process.

I want ideas with fingerprints on them.

Ideas that have been handled.

Ideas that have been questioned.

Ideas that have been argued with.

Ideas that have been improved by people I haven’t met yet.

Some of those ideas will become businesses.

Some will become videos.

Some will become hobbies.

Some will become tools.

Some will become stories.

Some will die.

Excellent.

They should.

Not every idea deserves your future.

But every worthwhile idea deserves a fair fight with reality.

That’s the standard.

Not, “Does this excite me?”

Not, “Would this make a cool brand?”

Not, “Can I imagine myself doing this?”

The better questions are:

Does it survive use?

Does it solve something?

Does it hold up when challenged?

Do I still care after the novelty wears off?

Do people become better because it exists?

Do I want another ten reps?

That is enough.

I am not trying to build a perfect plan.

I am trying to build a better feedback loop.

I am not trying to look certain.

I am trying to become clearer.

I am not trying to collect followers.

I am trying to collect better questions.

I am not trying to win every argument.

I am trying to create ideas worth arguing about.

And I am not building a stage.

I am building a table.

So if you have experience, bring it.

If you disagree, say why.

If you see a blind spot, point at it.

If you tried something and failed, tell the story.

If you found a better way, share it.

If you think the whole idea is wrong, make the case.

Pull up a chair.

Bring what you know.

I’ll bring the next idea.