Do barbershoppers need social media?

I'm not oblivious to the fact that having a blog, as a barbershopper, is weird.

Barbershop, just like every other community in our lives, is largely centred around the major social media platforms; primarily Facebook and YouTube, but a bit on Instagram, TikTok, and Discord as well.

This is fine, except that an awful lot of folks out there are choosing to opt out of social media completely. It's increasingly understood that algorithmic social media causes all kinds of harm, so it makes sense that lots of folks are deciding they want no part in it, or at least that they want to reduce their consumption.

That said, social media can be an incredibly powerful tool for barbershop groups. It's an amazing way to connect with fellow singers, and keep up-to-date with your favourite groups.

So is it possible to have the best of both worlds: a connection with the wider barbershop world, without being tied at the hip to harmful social media platforms?

What did we do before social media?

Before social media, there were blogs.

Blogs were created by nerds who wanted to be able to share their thoughts, feelings, and news on the internet. At the time, social media didn't really exist, so if you wanted somewhere to post, you had to build it yourself.

This led to an incredible diversity of independent websites, created by individual people, for fun, all over the internet. They didn't rely on a tech giant; just a few HTML files hosted on a lil server somewhere (often on a computer in the blogger's house). The bloggers would reply to each other's posts by email, and link to each other's websites in their own posts. A decentralised network was born, and thrived.

Then social media happened, and consolidated everything into a few homogenous mega-platforms. Now, in order to share stuff on the internet, all you needed was a free Facebook account or Twitter profile, and to give up your right to own anything you posted. Blogs, for the most part, died.

The "golden age" of social networks

Fast forward a decade or so. Tech companies, including Google, Meta (which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), and TikTok, have consolidated utterly dominant positions in their markets. The entire media industry has needed to reinvent itself around the new world order.

If you still have a website, you have to share everything you make on Facebook and Instagram as well, and shape your content according to Google's opaque "search engine optimisation" rules to ensure you appeared in search results. (Ever wondered why all the recipe websites have several paragraphs of waffle before getting to the actual recipe? Yep, that's Google's fault.) Some new businesses skip the middle man altogether, choosing to just have social media instead of their own website.

And as the pressure grew on the tech companies to make even more money, their targeted advertising platforms became more and more advanced. They follow us around the internet, whether or not we have accounts with them, and learn everything about our online behaviour in order to ensure we click on as many of their ads as possible.

Their platforms are optimised for engagement above all else, and they have discovered that the most engaging stuff is people posting angry, controversial opinions. It actually doesn't matter to Meta whether what you say is true or kind or helpful; they actually make more money if it isn't.

Now, in the age of AI, the platforms are being flooded with slop: AI-made content which can be produced at alarming rates for very little cost, drowning out the voices of real people with stories to tell.

But there is hope. As the world is becoming more fed up with tech platforms, there is a quietly determined rebellion taking place behind the scenes. It's called The IndieWeb.

The IndieWeb is a people-focused alternative to the “corporate web”.

We are a community of independent and personal websites based on the principles of: owning your domain and using it as your primary online identity, publishing on your own site first (optionally elsewhere), and owning your content.

In other words, blogging is coming back.

What's in it for barbershoppers?

I get it — this all seems a bit "fringe". But let's be honest, barbershop has never been exactly mainstream, has it? And as ubiquitous as it has become, social media has largely not been able to keep its promises when it comes to growing barbershop. (I asked Claude AI to research this hypothesis for me — it's full findings are available here.)

To me, this comes as a huge relief. We are free to put our efforts into other strategies. And we can find new ways to stay connected to one another. As well as important things like optimising the first-rehearsal experience, encouraging members to invite guests, and cultivating an inclusive culture, I would like to suggest that barbershop groups should all put more effort into having a great website with a blog and an email newsletter.

But where do I start?

The good news is that, unlike in 2001, you don't need any special technical skills to get started. There are some wonderful independent platforms where you can set up a blog very cheaply, including Pika and Bear. If you're interested in digging into the technical stuff, IndieWeb has some great guides.

You may even find that your existing website already has features which support a News page or a blog.

I'm not saying that barbershoppers should ditch social media entirely. Anecdotally, it has worked tremendously well for some groups (particularly groups which have formed recently, and for recruiting female singers). But it's clear that we don't need to rely on social media, and a blog is a very fun, much more personal substitute.

If you're a barbershopper and you set up a blog or a news page — whether it's for yourself or your quartet/chorus — please email me with a link and I'll add it to my list of barbershop blogs.