LinkedIn Post: You've Been Handed Responsibility for a System Problem

Source: NSFW Podcast Episode 127 — "Living in a World That's Bigger Than You" (with Greenhouse Gaslighting)

Timestamps: ~6:34–8:25 (paralysis + 70% emissions + insane production mechanism)

Topic: The structural move of assigning individual guilt for system-level failures

There's a conversation I keep having with venue owners and restaurant people in Atlanta and Albuquerque.

It goes roughly like this: they feel behind on their digital presence. They're not posting consistently. They haven't figured out the right platforms. They're overwhelmed.

And underneath that, there's this quiet guilt — like they're personally responsible for something that isn't working.

I was on the podcast talking with a climate organizer who made a point I haven't been able to shake. She said 70% of emissions come from corporations. And yet the last twenty years of climate messaging has been aimed at consumers — recycle more, drive less, bring a bag. She called it what it is: getting people to feel personally responsible for a problem that's happening at a system level above them.

The mechanism in digital marketing is the same one.

The platforms need you to believe that the game is fair and that the only variable is how hard you're trying. That if you just posted more, or figured out the algorithm, or hired the right person, you'd be reaching your audience. It keeps the pressure on the individual business owner and off the structural question of who the platform is actually designed to serve.

Most of the small businesses I work with are not failing at social media because they're not trying hard enough. They're operating a system designed for a completely different kind of operation and wondering why the fit is off.

The first useful thing we can do in that conversation is stop confusing "I feel guilty about this" with "this is actually my fault."

draft from corpus — based on NSFW Podcast ep. 127, pub. 2021