Still decompressing from two whirlwind weeks of Fast Company and the podcasting-community circuit, Matt surfaces the theme that kept coming up: human connection and real-life experience are only going to grow, and social media’s role in delivering that feels increasingly uncertain. He points to a TechCrunch piece that gives the trend teeth. These aren’t first-timers chasing a fad. They’re founders who already built and sold real companies, now putting their money and priority into getting people physically together. Brynn Putnam sold Mirror to Lululemon for $500 million and is building Board, an interactive gaming table designed as the philosophical opposite of a solo screen. Tristan Walker, who sold his grooming company to P&G, is scaling Heirloom craft schools where people learn skills together, screens down. Bonobos founder Andy Dunn has turned Pie into a “social life operating system” for run clubs and watch parties. The Wing’s Audrey Gelman runs a countryside inn with monthly murder-mystery dinners that force strangers to actually interact.
Matt’s read: when people who’ve already won are betting their next chapter on connection, that’s a signal worth heeding. A Harris Poll (sponsored, he notes, by a hotel, so grain of salt) found two-thirds of Americans now prioritize experiences like travel over material things. People want to go and do things together. Social media still has a place in this, as a way to find the people who want to belong around a topic, but Matt’s growing conviction is that it has to convert into something more, something real, or the fatigue wins. He’s candid that he opens his own feeds now and feels no pull at all. So he closes not with a lecture but with a genuine question he wants to talk through with listeners: what’s your relationship with social media right now? Is it nutrients or just distraction? Has it changed? He’s asking sincerely, and inviting the conversation onto Substack.
