So first of all welcome to Guild of Dads.

Some of you will be completely new to my world and some of you will be men that know me from years gone by.

That makes me sound old………but I’m not, well not really.

I first started Guild of Dads back in 2020 as a podcast and online mens community alongside my day job but it had to go on the back burner in the last couple of years as life conspired against me.

In short I had a shit ton of stuff to deal with in my own life and something had to be jettisoned so I paused Guild of Dads for a while.

The podcast remained up, I dabbled in a bit of social media and other mens projects I was involved with at the time, but in the main took a breather. I also started a monthly in person hike for dads called the Guild of Dads Hike, the experience of which I’ll write about on here in the next few months.

Which left me a with a bit of quandary as I went on my family summer holiday this year. What do I want to do with Guild of Dads?

Do I want to bring it to a close entirely?
or
Do I want to change it’s format going forward?

I’m going to level with you.

When I first started Guild of Dads everyone and I mean everyone in the men and dads space had a social media presence on either Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. In fact growing your community, following or presence was pretty much dependant on singing to the tune of the social media behemoths.

But as time progressed I became bored and frustrated with social media in equal measure. I hated it and felt it something I needed to do, rather than something I wanted to do. I became immersed in spending time learning about these platforms, finding out about what the platforms wanted creators to do, following what others were doing and keeping up appearances.

Social media not only became a massive distraction to what I wanted to achieve with Guild of Dads but a massive distraction to my entire life.

Taking time away made me realise that the majority of the protagonists in the men and dads space (along with many other “influencers”) are simply validation seeking dopamine addicts, and are creating audiences of men who are also equally addicted to social media. They also have a very fixed, rigid and unrealistic ideal of how men “should” be which they themselves fail to live up to.

It really is a case of do what I say not what I do.

More and more social media became a barrier to:

1. Being myself and sharing my story
2. Gaining value from creating something meaningful
3. Creating value that other men would find useful and relatable
4. Talking about what I wanted to talk about (as opposed to what was trending).

What had started as something enjoyable became a chore.

As you’ve probably guessed, I’ve decided to radically change Guild of Dads going forward.

This time I won’t be active on social media with the exception of the in person hike which is promoted on Facebook.

This time I’m prioritising blog & later podcast contact (audio only).

This time I’m going to be ultra selective about people I feature or collaborate with.

I’m also going to advocate the benefits of reducing and eliminating social media for men, and how doing so enables them to reconnect with themselves and what is important to them.

Being totally honest most men I speak to give a hell yeah to kicking social media to the kerb in favour of more meaningful forms of communication.

Let me make one thing clear – I am neither a tech phobe or against technology as a means to communicate with one another, but I just don’t think social media serves me or the men whose lives that I want to add value to.

I don’t want to be a dopamine addict and I’m pretty sure you don’t either.

By the way I’ve got a shit ton of stuff to write about whilst pausing Guild of Dads for a while so expect to hear more about this in the next little while.

Joe

PS: I’m pretty new to this blogging lark so I expect my writing to get better in time, well I hope it will.