Escaping the Attention Algorithm: Reclaiming Our Collective Stories

Introducing Underground Transmissions: A Pirate Signal Podcast for the Fight Ahead

We are living through the defining crisis of our lives—an unfolding coup, a moment where repression is escalating, and the systems we once took for granted are unraveling before our eyes. So many people I know feel frozen, unsure of where to put their energy. But in times like this, we have to lean into what we’re good at. What are you good at? For me, it’s storytelling, human connection, and radical imagination. This is my response to the current moment and an invitation to join me.

I joined Facebook in 2008, and within a few years, I was sharing ideas and stories all the time. The format worked well for my kind of mind: I love being connected to many different people and knowing how they’re connected to each other. It replicated something about my imagined idea of clan life—a sense of knowing I can call on others in good times and hard times.

I thrive in groups because I like being watched, and I also like watching others. People fascinate me, and I often need some kind of reflection from others to remember who I am and what’s important to me. In my 20s, I wrote zines filled with personal stories that helped me connect with fellow travelers. Later, I spent years moderating the Icarus Project discussion forums, where I shared intimate details of my life with others who were navigating their own struggles. By my mid-30s, that same contemplative writing energy had mostly shifted onto Facebook.

But now, in 2025, the world feels different. The political situation grows absurdly more dystopian by the day, and social media platforms are clearly no longer just tools for connection—they’re tools for surveillance and control. Algorithms amplify outrage, misinformation spreads faster than truth, and corporations profit from every interaction while eroding our relationships and movements.

These platforms don’t just shape how we connect; they infiltrate how we see ourselves, how we interact, and even how we remember. Facebook’s “memory” feature might seem like a sweet reminder, but it’s really a form of digital colonization—feeding our stories back to us on their terms, as though they own them.

As a writer, I fucking hate this shit. These stories—our stories, our history—doesn’t belong to corporations. They belong to us. We should control how we tell them, when we share them, and with whom.

Reclaiming My Spiral

This month, February 2025, I celebrate journaling for 30 consecutive years, filling notebooks with my thoughts, stories, and reflections. Those journals sit in my office now, a physical, tangible, archive of my life. Handwriting has always been a deeply personal way for me to process the world, but as technology has evolved, so has my relationship with writing. These days, I often use voice-to-text, feeding my words directly into Google Docs that I can easily search. It’s a shift that feels freeing in some ways but also highlights the tension between convenience and control.

In a sense, I see my years of journaling as a spiral—constantly looping back to old ideas while building new ones. I am the person who I am because I’ve been having a conversation with myself for decades. And for many of those years I documented the the dreams and collective projects of my friends’ as if they were a really important adventure story. Now, I want to take that same approach to reclaiming the stories I’ve posted on social media over the years. I’ve been archiving my Facebook content, pulling out the pieces that matter most, and organizing them chronologically. By the end of this process, I’ll have a digital spiral of my memories—one that belongs to me, not the algorithms.

Underground Transmissions: Building the Next Chapter

This process of reclaiming and organizing my personal stories ties directly into the project that’s keeping me sane and grounded as our political and social climate unravels before our eyes: the Underground Transmissions Podcast. I’m working on creating a space where ideas can take root, grow in the shadows, and build power for the struggles ahead. I see it as a continuation of the work I’ve been doing for a long ass time—connecting with people through storytelling and creating spaces for collaboration and resistance.

I imagine the podcast as a forum for amplifying voices, sharing lessons from organizing and creativity, and building connections across movements. But I see it as more than just a podcast—I want it to be a way to cultivate community, to collaborate with old and new friends, and to keep our stories alive on our own terms.

Platforms like Substack give me some hope for how we can share our stories outside the grip of corporate social media. I’ve been experimenting with it as a newsletter, but I want to expand its role as part of Underground Transmissions. I see this as my personal way of taking back control of the narratives, in my extended community, weaving them into something collective and powerful, and planting seeds for the future.

So here’s the plan: I’ll keep archiving my stories, journaling my thoughts, and getting myself detangled from the social media platforms that have defined so much of this last chapter of some many of our lives. Meanwhile, me and a small crew of people will be building Underground Transmissions into a space for connection, collaboration, and resistance. It’s one spiral escape from the algorithms, a way to reclaim what’s ours, and a chance to write the next chapter—collectively.

Don’t be surprised if you get a personal message from me asking you to record a short message to play on the Underground Transmission Podcast. Project collaboration is my love language.

With mad love and creative resistance,

Sascha

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