Reading time: 7.18

(yes it’s a longer one but I promise it’s worth it)

1,135 words

Hey Reader,

The clothes rail behind her was colourful with a hefty dash of leopardprint, and the extremely stylish woman on-screen was arranging them deftly, creating — as if by magic — dozens of extremely cool outfits from just a few items.

I was there because I’d decided it was finally time to ditch the jogging bottoms and find out who I was underneath all the baggy t-shirts and my giant, cosy, penguin-print Oodie. I’d seen Samantha Harman online. I’d been following her for a while on LinkedIn, reading her posts on clothes, style, and wardrobe and watching as she spoke her mind all over the place, attracting trolls, anger, and dismissal in her wake.

This type of coaching wasn’t at all a thing I’d usually do (may I point you towards the aforementioned jogging bottoms) but I was intrigued. So I signed up for Samantha’s wardrobe workshop.

But this workshop was not about clothes AT ALL.

Well, okay, it was tangentially about clothes; I don’t want to give you the impression Samantha lied to us to sell tickets because she absolutely didn’t. I learned a ton about how to create a brand new supercool outfit from clothes I’ve had for years and that was excellent.

By the time we got to the clothes, though, I was fully distracted because in the preceding 30 minutes, Samantha had blown my mind with a brief history of why women “have nothing to wear” in a world that has always sought to shrink us, objectify us, and ultimately control us.

It’s never just clothes. And we’re never dressing in isolation.

And so, after that workshop, I put on a pair of sassy jeans, bright pink boots, and a top I had forgotten I had but that suddenly made me feel like Dolly Parton on a mission, and I dropped into Samantha’s DMs.

“So,” I said. “When are you writing your book?”

“Excuse me?” she replied.

A little back-and-forth and a year later, and Just Get Dressed — which is remarkable in its depth, heart, and research — is published on May 1, 2026. Because Samantha’s ideas are far too big for social media.

Samantha’s workshop revealed something deeper: the limitations of social media as a platform for meaningful conversation.

If you’ve got big ideas, too, you might be familiar with what I’m about to share.

The problem with social media: dysregulation and distraction

The amount of shit Samantha gets for her social media posts is staggering. People get triggered AF, latch onto one tiny piece of her message, and go nuclear. Sometimes in the comments, sometimes in the DMs. And that’s the problem with social media: we read posts in isolation, in states of dysregulation (because social media is DESIGNED to dysregulate us), and without paying much attention.

So we miss the nuance.

If there even is any nuance.

We are trained, as Samantha says, to think platform-first. What do the algorithm gods want? What words will trigger a shadowban, and which catchy hook will ensure we go viral for a day? How many likes and shares will this post get?

The posts that look like they do best are mostly hot takes and ragebait, or regurgitated shallow motivational quotes that have increasingly been farted out by your local friendly AI gremlin. They could be by anyone, and there’s little substance behind them.

There’s no time or space for your reader to sit with your message for a moment, even if their message does piss you off.

We really are losing the ability to pay attention

The average attention span on digital devices crashed to 47 seconds in 2024, down from 150 seconds in 2004. Dr Gloria Mark, psychologist and Chancellor’s professor in the Department of Informatics at University of California, Irvine, studies attention. She and her team started researching whether our attention spans are shrinking back in 2004 — and what’s causing it. They can’t say for sure if short-form content is causing our shorter attention spans, or vice versa — but there’s certainly a correlation.

A study by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and Singapore-based research agency Research Network, in collaboration with U.S.-based AI platform ListenLabs.ai found that 68% of young people aged 13 to 25 surveyed struggled to sustain focus, and that the young people said “social media harms their ability to focus.” Many of these kids described their habits as compulsive, saying, “It’s like the apps are made to keep you hooked.” And in fact that has now been shown to be the case in the recent Meta lawsuit.

As Dr Mark put it: “…there’s so much content available. We’re talking about access to the world’s largest candy store, and we want to sample all the wares that are available. So of course you might want to speed up the podcast so that you can simply take more in and quickly get to your next favourite podcast.”

This isn’t deep work. There is no time for reflection on what we’re consuming. And much of what we’re consuming isn’t designed for thought anyway — quite the opposite. It’s designed to produce a fast reaction — most often rage or fear; sometimes delight — and make us move on as quickly as possible to the next thing, decided for us by the algorithm. Thus are our opinions formed for us, without us even realising it.

People react fast to our social media posts, rarely taking the time to do anything but skim them, and missing any nuance that might be there.

Why books endure

​Sophie Jane Lee has been fighting the same battle. Her work has been focused on using our voices for a very long time and her work is complex, reaching into history, sociology, anthropology, our nervous systems, the systems in which we live and often struggle. She always knew her message was wider and deeper than, “Use your voice, grow your business,” but it’s hard to get that across in short-form content. So Sophie started speaking on stages, on podcasts, and putting her journalistic skills to use to create a deeper body of work that led to Beyond Palatable: A Manifesto for Unapologetic Women — which is one of the best nonfiction books I have ever read.

That book is already changing people profoundly, and you simply cannot do that with social media posts — even over a sustained and loyal following. There isn’t the space for it and social media is explicitly designed to make it difficult for us to share more nuanced messages. It’s designed to make users NOT think.

Books, by contrast, create a space for depth, for critical thinking, and for sustained engagement. Not to mention removing us from the grip of giant corporations who trade in our attention and profit from our distress.

These books — and your book — become part of our cultural fabric. They become part of the lasting store of human knowledge and wisdom, safeguarded in whatever the modern-day version of the Library of Alexandria will become.

Social media posts, on the other hand, have a half-life of 52 minutes on Twitter/X, 1.43 hours on Facebook, 18.27 hours on Instagram, and 23.22 hours on LinkedIn. Pinterest has a half-life of 3.99 months. And blogs are the most enduring digital platforms with a half-life of 2.03 years. “Half life” means “the time it takes for a post to receive half of its total engagement.”

Books aren’t quantified in the same way, but they remain relevant for years, decades, and centuries in a way that digital material rarely does. This is especially true for nonfiction works that contribute to cultural or professional dialogues. Think about the books that are still read, used, and cited today (even if they really should be shelved in favour of more up-to-date thinking).

I’m not saying don’t use social media or digital channels. I’m much more chronically online than I’d like to be and I often use my voice on socials to have a little fun.

I’m saying: don’t make it the only place you’re using your voice. If it is, your voice WILL be lost, especially if you’re using to spread a message the keepers of the algorithms don’t want spread (which is most of the people I work with).

Your legacy: random posts or a body of work you can be proud of?

When I got my autism diagnosis, I spent a lot of time on social media and quickly got disillusioned with the squabbling, screeching, misinformation, and hot takes on offer. So I immersed myself in books instead. I’m working my way through every book I can find on neurodivergence — from the science bits to funny memoir-style work. Because I want as complete a picture as I can, and I want to understand how brains work as best I can. That won’t come from the digital world.

We can’t expect people to engage more deeply with our ideas if the only place they see them is fleetingly on social media. They simply don’t have the time or attention for it.

Your book becomes your legacy, a record that you stood here, you believed this, and you made it your life’s work. It’s a contribution to our shared long-term conversation and it shapes our cultural and social landscape. It doesn’t have to sell 10 million copies to do so, either; it just has to reach the right people at the right time and hit them in the feels in just the right way. Then it has to stay with them. And I promise you, if you get your book into the hands of the right people, your message WILL stay with them and it WILL change them.

And isn’t that profoundly exciting?

(That’s a rhetorical question because the answer is a resounding and excitable DAMN RIGHT IT IS.)

Ultimately, when I’m dilly-dallying over whether or not to crack on with my book, I ask myself this: do I want to die with a few shitposts on Threads and a handful of LinkedIn posts that got a little traction? Or do I want to be laid to rest on a body of work that shaped the global conversation?

Books are not just vessels for ideas, they’re conversation starters. Time capsules. Cultural artefacts. They will outlast algorithms. They resist shrinking and dumbing down. The best ones will outlast us all.

So ask yourself: what do you want your legacy to be?

TTFN,

Vicky 🫡

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