Algorithmic social is in tatters.
They're calling it "the death of the follower".
For years, social media could be a place that you discovered new people and connected with your community.
You found new things on a page For You, but also got to build deeper relationships with the people you already knew. The ones you followed. The ones you connected with intentionally.
Along came Facebook groups and changed the game again, this time making it easier to gather with new folx around shared interests (or enemies) and build communities in the same app you were already opening to watch funny cat videos and read the latest post from James Fell, the Sweary Historian.
It was bliss.
But like everything else on the internet, it would not last because there was a teeny tiny bit of additional profit that could be clawed from it by making it infinitely worse. When TikTok launched on scene, it created a whole new way for people to be found via the For You page and algorithmic social - and it ended the community, the connection, and the entire idea of the follower.
Now, even the groups you love the most are gone from your feed unless you actively seek them out. Replaced by groups you're not even in, boomer rage bait, and Temu ads for suspiciously-shaped decorative items.
I've been wanting to create a space for our community that isn't on social for a long time, but it always felt like it wasn't the right time. People are attached to their Facebook feeds, after all. It's the dopamine slot machine of last decade, the first app many in my community open when they're either avoiding the real world or checking in with the digital one. Muscle memory carries us there faster than intention ever could. And as everyone told me...
Nobody will visit a community that's not on Facebook.
But now? Here at the end of 2025, when everyone I'm talking to is getting OFF of social as much as they can?
Where every feed is so filled with trash and rage bait and literal doom and AI slop that people are breaking deeply ingrained neural pathways and turning to literally staring at the wall instead for entertainment? (I hear the youngins are referring to this as "raw dogging" and I morally object to that, but I digress.)
F*ck it, I'm getting us off Facebook.
It's time to return to what many millennials would consider the ✨Golden Age✨ of the internet. When forums were forums and websites were websites and the Dancing Baby hung out with the cat from ICanHasCheezburger while you downloaded your tunes from Napster and Limewire.
With real email notifications every time someone replies to you.
Threaded, searchable conversations.
Rich text editing.
Some level of freaking privacy, where your mom won't accidentally see your post because the privacy settings were "Public" this whole time and you didn't know.
And a place to go for advice that has literally zero risk of pulling you into doomscrolling, because there's no doom, and no scroll.
Our ND Founders Community is now officially live, hosted on our Solo School platform. It is completely fr'ee for everyone who wants to participate, though we do want to limit it to Neurodivergent Folx of course.
(Unless you're already a Solo School member - in which case, you're already in and can just come hang out with us!)
Now, while I was building this out, I also finally got all of my workshop replays, mini courses, private trainings, and other resources set up for you to be able to access individually - without having to get the whole Solo School membership if you don't want to.
You can learn how to sell with consent and enthusiasm (and without the ick), or write copy that lets people choose for themselves how they feel. You can learn about Notion, or FB Ads, or lead gen, or building Five Figure Packages. Anchor clients, social selling, even how to build your own AI-based SaaS - a clone of your brain in AI form - that you can monetize.
Since they were first held live, I've always priced these at $222 or higher. But to celebrate the start of our little corner of the non-algorithmic internet, I just lowered the pri'ces on a bunch of them - and you can use the secret code word
COMMUNITY
to get an additional 50% off any (or all!) of them until Friday.
Here's how to get started and come join us for fr'ee:
- Click this link to create an account: https://learn.soloschool.ca/login/signup.php?
- Confirm your email. Look for the subject line "Confirm your Solo School account and come hang with us!"
- Head over to the Free Resources section and introduce yourself to the community.
- If you want to snag some of those snazzy discounted resources, visit The Library and check them all out! Remember to use the code COMMUNITY to get them for half off til Friday.
Social media has done a lot of good things for society. And I won't lie - it was revolutionary for my business once I figured out how to use it.
But it's changing for the worse, and me? Well, I don't want to lose my big group of cool friends to the enshittification of the internet.
So if you want to come hang out, I'll be waiting for you right here.
- Cheryl
P.S. I'm also debating signing up for Neocities, a Geocities clone where people intentionally make ugly '90s websites for themselves. If web 4.0 is actually just web 1.0 and the bots take over the rest, I think us Millennials and GenX will be just fine. 😂
