What Is Your Social Media Goal? You Can Change A Life or End A Life, Which Will You Choose?

Each of us who consider ourselves Content Creators, has to step back and “remember our why,” every once in a while, and since I got caught up watching Hype House last night, I woke up this morning thinking a lot about social media, and what my goals are. Today I wrote a post about Kevin Samuels, who if you don’t know was a vapid narcissistic asshole who loved to tear down Black women on his platform, and made a lot of money doing it.

Last week I wrote about a woman named Suzanne calling WEOC a Hate Group because she didn’t like that we disagreed with the way she speaks to Black women. Mainly we disagreed with the fact that she’s using her website, named after George Floyd, to make money, or plans to do that in the future anyway. Instead of letting the family run the website, she’s taken it upon herself to own the domain and then tried to hire Black women to write for the website. Yeah, we’re looking at that shit sideways.

It seems there are a lot of content creators out there, who have absolutely no problem weaponizing their platforms to get likes and make money because brands don’t really care HOW you get those likes, so long as you can get enough to build an audience of more than 1 million people, there are those who will pay you to use your platform for their good.

I am not going to lie, I used to use my words like a whip. I used to enjoy getting mad and releasing my rage, because I did it so rarely that finally opening up and talking about what I was going through, was like breathing really fresh air, for the first time.

But when you come down from that high, you look at the damage you’ve caused and that’s the part that I don’t understand. We can go as far as Logan Paul or Shaun King, we can go to Kevin Samuels or this Suzanne lady who wants to call an entire group of Black and BIPOC folk a “hate group,” because she doesn’t like that we won’t be stepped on for a white woman’s greed.

There are bullies everywhere, I understand that, what I don’t understand is the need to support these bullies, in hopes that you might be the one person that they are going to be nice too.

That’s not how it works, bullies bully, that’s what they do, and they don’t give a flying flip about the people in their “inner circle,” you’re only there so they don’t feel alone, and so they can say they have friends, in reality, what they have are victims that are too afraid to stand up for themselves.

There are lots of friends that I have around the world, but we don’t talk about the fact that each of us puts in 10-12 hour days creating content that we often DO NOT get paid for, we have to promote our own work, and then at the end of the day, we have the shame and pain of knowing we’ve made maybe if we’re lucky $175.00 a year.

It’s not easy trying to capture the attention of millions of folks when there are billions of places for them to look, so I totally get the desire to turn your platform into an ever-growing hydra filled with toxicity because that’s what sells, and going “Viral” often means doing something TRULY good or ABSOLUTELY evil.

Some of the most famous Content Creators on the planet are also secretly some of the most toxic and disgusting people on the planet, but we don’t celebrate them for being good people. We celebrate them for being wealthy, evil, and downright mean, because they have fancy cars, and no matter what anyone tells us the fancy cars erase all their bad deeds.

“Oh look they’re a total douchbag but it’s okay because they have millions of dollars so I’m going to support them because clearly, they worked hard to get where they are,” this is not the flex you think it is.

I don’t get jealous of Content Creators who do good for themselves – Cardi B was a content creator before she became “Cardi B,” and while she’s amazing, she’s amazing because she’s talented, powerful, and most importantly kind. She worked really hard to get where she is and I celebrate her accomplishments because she didn’t win by being a jerk.

My social media goal is to use my platform to help people who need to know they are not alone and that life actually does get better sometimes.

I didn’t create Loud Mouth Brown Girl because it felt good, I did it because I needed to survive too many years of abuse to think about, and I needed the world to know that I existed and that my story matters to me. I didn’t care if my story mattered to anyone else, my story mattered to me, and that’s what I needed.

The idea of twisting my platform so that I can use it to cause pain for someone else – given all I’ve been through, doesn’t appeal to me. It doesn’t make me feel good to tear people down, or to laugh at their pain, it doesn’t make me feel good to see people with all the potential in the world, leap off a ledge into a pool of poison. But that’s just me.

Hype House is a really great show about young Content Creators who spend anywhere between $25,000-$75,000 a month making their videos. I want no part of that, I want to spend my money on getting massages, getting my toes done, and having my hair prettified, I absolutely have no interest in doing wild and crazy stunts for the entertainment of the masses. I leave that to the young kids, who are absolutely killing it at the game, without being cruel and awful to their audience.

It’s not just about being kind, it’s about knowing that when you’re waking up every day to greet your audience, you have to remember that YOUR voice can be the difference between someone staying alive, or choosing to end their life. Please don’t forget that.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall