"Join 100,000 of your peers!"

The number of people who consume or subscribe to something is often promoted by the publisher as social proof to encourage your participation. As a result, we see pop-ups encouraging us to "Join 100k of your peers" and LinkedIn bios professing that they are the creator of “the industry’s most popular podcast for marketers.”

True, the content could be topical to your industry or area of focus — it’s not like they’re publishing Buzzfeed quizzes or Top 40 pop songs. Still, they are essentially saying to us, “We are the Buzzfeed quiz of this niche. We publish Top 40 pop songs for our domain.”

Look, just because something is popular doesn’t make it bad or unworthy. But if we’re trying to learn and improve our work, if we’re trying to be exceptional (i.e. the exception), then shouldn’t we at least supplement all these popular industry blogs, podcasts, newsletter, and thinkers with the uncommon, the unknown, and sources from outside our echo chamber?

To build a big list, a publisher needs to play to the lowest common denominator. The bigger the growth goals, the lower an organization tends to reach.

What matters when we make our subscription decisions, then, isn’t how many subscribe, listen, watch, or pay attention. What matters is who subscribes. Today, information isn’t scarce — community is. The desire to surround yourself with the right people, whether overtly because you interact or implicitly because you share the same educational sources — that is worth using as a decision-making tool to opt-in or out.

Again, nothing wrong with opting into something that professes to be the most popular. Sometimes we need a good pop song in our playlist. But maybe do an audit of everything you consume to ensure it’s not all brain candy. Maybe look harder at what you’re consuming, and more importantly, why. Whatever goes in when we consume, tends to come out when we create.

Opt in because it’s the right thing for the right people, not the biggest thing for the most people.

— — —

If you haven’t yet, subscribe to get a few short ideas like this via email each week. You’ll also get exclusive announcements, access, and experimental projects once every few months. Or you can support what I do by purchasing a book.