Here are the abridged highlights of the email for those of you in a hurry, but scroll down to enjoy my long screed about the belly of the social media whale  (and  the compromise I'm making with it) and/or click through to our blog.
  •  Click here to buy pies, cakes, stocks, rolls and pick up at MG ABQ or Santa Fe.
  • Reply to this email with your name, size of party and time of night to RSVP for our first Red Sauce Sunday Supper on November 25th at The Feel Good.
  • Click here to our Vinny blog to read more about this year's soup travels and this week's amazing stew Doro Wat, from Ethiopia (where two hundred thousand year old remains of Homo Sapiens have been found, and where we commence our travels). 
You may have noticed that until a few short days ago, tumbleweeds have been blowing through our social media pages. And even before this recent longish drought, our posting was always a little, err, erratic. This is because I have issues-with technology in general and social media in particular. I mean, I have a flip phone. Plus, I'm a farmer; I prefer dirt to bits.

And while I couldn't run my businesses the way that I do without technology, I have some concerns with the track we seem to be on and where exactly people and food and nature-three things I care a lot about-fit into our vision of the future.

So does Jaron Lanier, a tech nerd who has written 
You are Not a Gadget, Who Owns the Future? and now 
Ten Arguments to Delete Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Hear me out.


Wherever you are on the Luddite-Techie spectrum, this is a good read, and we sell it at Modern, along with some other pieces of well-argued tech criticism. Facebook, Instagram and Google (which Lanier dubs BUMMER companies-an acronym for Behaviors of Users Modified and Made into an Empire for Rent) have allowed us to connect in ways that were until very recently unimaginable, but the business model behind it, Lanier argues, is unethical and dangerous.

I kind of agree. As a business owner on social, you are regularly asked to enter into what feels like a stalkerish, invasive relationship with your customers. FB et al takes this pervy-ness for granted, because they make money by watching us all day, every day, with incredible granularity of attention and conclusion, and then selling that information to advertisers. Dats just what they do.


"....If we want to live a life of meaning and contribution,  we have to  become intentional about  cultivating sleep and  play. We have to let  go of exhaustion, busyness, and productivity as status symbols and  measures of self-worth. We are impressing no one."
-
Brene Brown, from Dare to Lead
 




Erin Wade

Lady Boss