Showing Up for Others

Real People, Doing Real Things, in the Real World.

I wrote about showing up for yourself:

So now I’m going to talk about showing up for others.

But first, I’m going to tell you what showing up IS NOT. Showing up is not transactional networking, which I wrote about for LitReactor —> HERE

Genuine, mutual support between people in a thriving community is organic. It happens when you keep bumping into the same folks and a relationship based on familiarity and respect begins to develop. Social media has co-opted the words “community” and “friendship” and fucked it all up. Your circle of mutuals on social media is not your community and those people are not your friends. It might transition into a real community and those people might become your friends but the fact that a stranger can parachute into an existing ecosystem and mask as a symbiotic partner when they are actually a fucking parasite is all the evidence anyone needs to safeguard against assuming social media passes as a community or that strangers are your friends.

Just because one can swim like a fish, and act like a fish, does not make it a fish. It might be fishy though.

And the funny thing about social media and confusing it with the real-life community is that we all know what real friends and community feels like. That high you experience when you’re actually hanging out with people and the vibe is…well, vibin’.

social media is really good at delivering a similar high in the form of the dopamine and serotonin rush we receive with those clicks and likes and hearts and gifs and attention in the form of ‘engagement’. But you know what sucks about that kind of engagement? The algorithms currently reward negativity, tragedy, and animosity. It trains engagement junkies to seek out what they need from others by causing some kind of damage.

Snarky subtweets

Interpersonal drama

Fear mongering

General negativity

Dragging a person or a company

and on and on. If you’ve spent any time on social media, specifically the bird app or Fakebook, you’ve seen it.

All of those things will get people’s attention and fill DMs with bottomfeeders who love to dish tea, cast shade, and gossip. It makes people feel valued, if only for a moment, for having that precious inside scoop.

But this is not showing up for ourselves or others. This behavior is not conducive to a thriving, authentic, healthy, community built on trust and respect. The only way to truly experience true community requires participation in activities that foster or promote relational growth.

And who has time for that, right? *wink*

Showing up for others starts with one selfless act of positivity a day. More can be added later, just start small.

Selfless acts of positivity have a few characteristics:

• No expectations of reciprocity; no strings attached

• Unexpected or “undeserved” gestures of kindness

• Nobody is watching or giving credit, applause, or accolades

• A simple act, not elaborate or expensive

Examples of relational growth, how to show support in meaningful ways

Someone is celebrating an accomplishment, celebrate

Someone is doing something that requires an audience, go

Someone is feeling low, pick them up

Someone has released creativity into the world, receive it

Let someone know you’re thinking of them, you care about them, and you’re hoping for good things for them however this looks like for you. A text, a note, a call, a message, meditating, manifesting, however, you show love & care. Just reaching out to people in a world that encourages compartmentalizing relationships is HUGE

Truly, if everyone was busy minding their own business and showing selfless acts of service by way of kind gestures, we would all notice a difference. And for the love of Horror, stop perpetuating negativity. If you see something needlessly shitty that doesn’t even need to see the light of day, do yourself and others the favor of burying it. Why the fuck do people see shitposts and then shove them in everyone else’s faces? Is this what people do in real life too? Someone let their dog poop in your yard so you pick it up and knock on all your neighbor’s doors and make them look at it, get a good whiff of it? Even worse, drop the poop off in their yard and make them deal with it?

You know, sometimes my social media feeds are so clean from curating them with blocks and mutes that I will get a little bored so I have like 10 people I know I can go scroll through their feeds and find all the dirt because they fucking love it. They’re always complaining about how much they “hate the negativity on this hell site” but they’re the ones rolling around in it the most. Do you know those people?

My objective is that if people scroll through my media feeds they will get a picture of all the work out there that could use more eyeballs. The stuff I’m showing up to and those who are showing up for me. A virtual representation of our actual, authentic, genuine, organic, community of friends, colleagues, and fellow industry contributors. The parts that make the whole. People who are seeing one another and being seen, not just online but offline too-real people doing real things in the real world.

Let’s show up for ourselves and then find space in our hearts to show up for each other too. We’re all in this together, we all want the same things and there is room enough at the table for everyone. Look at this photo and think, would I want to sit here and enjoy this beauty and this food and drink alone? No? Then who would you want next to you?
Across from you?

Make it happen.

Sadie

xx