You don't have to play the social media game the way everyone else is playing it.

You don't have to chase virality. You don't have to exhaust yourself creating content that feeds the algorithm instead of your business. You don't have to hope that Instagram will finally take you seriously.

You can quiet-quit. You can do the bare minimum and have the most impact. You can focus on your mission, your people, and your business can still thrive—maybe even more so.

TLC means Traffic, Leads, and Customers. I learned this framework from James Wedmore, and it's one of the most clarifying models for understanding why your business feels so dependent on social media.

Why? Because without traffic, you cannot generate leads. Without leads, you cannot create customers. Without customers, you don't have a business.

Digital economies don't have to be extractive. They can be regenerative.

When we build from the foundation of Ecological Digitalism—when we create coherent relationships between our digital, physical, and spiritual lives—new possibilities emerge.

What does it look like to build online in a way that actually honors life?

And not just our individual lives, but the animate, relational, interdependent nature of existence itself. What would it mean to create digital economies that function more like marketplace ecosystems rather than crazed bazaars? That value regeneration over extraction? That measure success by depth of connection rather than scale of reach?

Ecological Digitalism is a philosophy and practice of bringing three dimensions of existence into coherent relationship: digitality, physicality, and animism.

Most of us have been conditioned to see these as separate—or worse, hierarchical. Physical life is "real." Digital life is "virtual" (meaning not quite real). Spiritual life is somewhere off to the side, reserved for meditation cushions and ceremony spaces.

But the truth is simpler and more integrated: Your digital life impacts your physical and spiritual (soul-animate) life. And your physical and spiritual life enriches your digital life.

Ecological Digitalism is a philosophy and practice of bringing three dimensions of existence into coherent relationship: digitality, physicality, and animism.

Most of us have been conditioned to see these as separate—or worse, hierarchical. Physical life is "real." Digital life is "virtual" (meaning not quite real). Spiritual life is somewhere off to the side, reserved for meditation cushions and ceremony spaces.

So what does it mean to rewrite your internet philosophy in this moment?

It means acknowledging that opting out completely isn't really an option anymore, not if you want to build an online business and if you’re saying “yes” participate in the systems that structure modern life and work (banking, cell phones, paying your rent, civic amenities). But it also means claiming your agency within this reality. You get to decide how you engage, where you draw boundaries, and what your values are as you navigate this landscape.

Instagram is no longer the community-building tool it once was. It has become a crazed bazaar where your consent has been systematically violated on multiple levels.

The algorithm force-feeds you content you never asked for. You follow 200 accounts of practitioners, artists, and friends and yet, the platform shows you content from 2,000 accounts you've never heard of, prioritizing what keeps you scrolling and not what nourishes you, not what you chose to see. Your feed is no longer yours. You've lost agency over what you consume.