A SOCIAL STRATEGIST’S PLEA: MAKE SOCIAL FUN AGAIN

Written By Maria Sagun

By Carla Hawkes, Social strategist and digital growth consultant

Every Thursday, THE BOARD brings you industry insights from our Members to your inbox.

THE BOARD asked member Carla Hawkes to revisit one of our favorite BOARD Briefings from the start of the year: THE INTERNET IS EXHAUSTED 

At the beginning of 2026, Carla Hawkes observed something many of us were feeling but hadn't yet named: the internet wasn't just crowded, it was exhausted.

Six months later, that observation feels even more relevant.

Since January, we've added more content, more AI-generated output, more platforms, more channels, and more pressure to keep pace. Yet despite an abundance of information, many leaders report the same underlying challenge: fatigue, fragmentation, and diminishing returns on attention.

That's why we wanted to revisit this piece.

Some ideas are tied to a moment. Others become more valuable as the story continues to unfold. This is one of those pieces.

As we reread Carla's original briefing, one question kept surfacing: Have these trends changed, or have they simply accelerated? The answer is likely both—which is precisely what makes this conversation worth returning to today.

WORKING IN SOCIAL IN THE MOST INSANE NEWS YEAR EVER

My plea to content people everywhere: let’s make social fun again. 

Well, here we are again – somehow in an even more chaotic news cycle than last year. And your social team is probably exhausted. But not entirely for the reasons you think.

Yes, the workload has exploded. Social is now a brand’s homepage, marketing engine, customer service desk, focus group, and comms department all rolled into one – and somehow still expected to move at the speed of news. On top of that, staying ahead of every new trend and tool – and deciding whether this time the “new Twitter” is actually the new Twitter – still requires membership to a club none of us asked to join: the perpetually online.

2026 HAS ADDED A FEW FRESH PLOT TWISTS NO ONE SAW COMING

First: Facebook…is it back? 

Against all odds, Meta’s elder millennial platform quietly became relevant again. Suddenly everyone who spent years pretending Facebook was dead found themselves firing up the ol’ app again. The biggest social surprise of the year so far isn’t a new platform – it’s an old one reminding us that maybe you shouldn’t abandon a platform just because it stopped being cool.

Second: Clipping has become an extreme sport 

Entire content farms have popped up, built around slicing one moment into 37 assets, posting them across hundreds of accounts, and flooding the zone with your brand. In many corners of marketing, clipping is replacing paid as the growth strategy du jour. Why blow your marketing budget on acquisition when one weird podcast moment, aggressively redistributed, can outperform your entire ad spend? 

Third: Social teams are finally getting the credit they deserve 

Meanwhile, the people who actually understand how all of this madness works – Heads of Social, Content Producers, Audience teams – are finally earning their keep. For years, content leaders were treated like executors. Post the thing! Chase the trend! Make it go viral!

Now? The smartest companies understand what many of us have quietly known for years: content strategy is business strategy. The best Heads of Content today are the CMOs of tomorrow. And we’re finally seeing salaries that reflect that.

BUT THE PART NO ONE TALKS ABOUT ENOUGH IS THE MENTAL TOLL OF SIMPLY… BEING ONLINE FOR A LIVING

The internet feels uniquely exhausting right now because every platform is optimized for urgency. Everything is breaking news. Everything is discourse. Every opinion somehow arrives coded as a five-alarm fire. More days than not, it feels like the Head of Social title should really just be Head of Doomscrolling. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

And here’s the thing: the internet is still weird in the best way. 

The same ecosystem giving us outrage cycles and existential AI discourse is also giving us deeply dedicated niche communities, hyper-specific humor, and total strangers making each other laugh in the comments section.

And every now and then, those moments break through – the ones that remind me why I fell in love with the internet in the first place. Because it wasn’t always like this. It used to be (dare I age myself here?)… fun.

There are so many accounts, creators, and communities online right now that are genuinely funny, uplifting, and thoughtful. They just get buried under noise. 

A FEW RECENT REMINDERS THAT THE INTERNET CAN STILL BE DELIGHTFUL

These moments don’t erase the dark corners of the internet, but they prove something important: joy still breaks through. Humor, connection, absurdity, and curiosity still win – even when the algorithm is trying to convince you otherwise.

Part of our job as digital storytellers – maybe the most important part – is to help reprogram the internet. To surface joy over rage. Connection over chaos. Curiosity over conspiracy. To design feeds that make people feel welcome and want to stay, not head to Tompkins Square Park on a Friday night to delete their social media with a bunch of strangers. 

And part of our job as an audience is to reward the creators and brands who make good things by sharing, saving, and subscribing. If we all engaged with hope as much as we did with outrage, the algorithm would be a much different engine.

My hope for 2026? Not just growth. Not just engagement. Let’s make social fun again.

Carla Hawkes is a social strategy and digital growth consultant. As founder of –And Counting, she has launched growth strategies for high-visibility brands including The Ellen DeGeneres Show, POPSUGAR, Dear Media, Crooked Media, Mattel, Harris for President, and more.

Access to this expertise starts here: www.wearetheboard.co

THE BOARD sits at the intersection of Brand, Business, and Culture—offering fractional leadership, project-based experts, and curated teams to help you move faster, smarter, and with far less risk. info@theboard.community

Maria Sagun
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