A Social Media Alternative: Scroll Your Own Life

The best social media alternative I have found looks exactly like social media. A vertical feed, a frame on the full screen, your thumb does the scrolling. There is one difference: there is not a single stranger’s post in this feed. Only my photos, my videos and everything I have ever saved.

My evening used to end the same way. I lay down, picked up the phone, opened a feed. Short videos, strangers’ vacations, strangers’ kitchens, strangers’ arguments. Half an hour, an hour. Then you turn the screen off and cannot remember a single post. Now I do the same thing. Only the feed is mine.

Why is a feed so addictive, and why not use that?

I made Spohad look like social media on purpose. It is not the content that hooks you, it is the mechanics: a vertical feed, the full screen, and never knowing what comes next. I thought: why not let those mechanics pull you into your own life?

That is how it turned out. The Spohad feed is put together fresh every time, from different years and different folders, all mixed up. Today a photo I had forgotten about suddenly floats up. Tomorrow, a clip I saved and never watched again. The scrolling habit is still there. What changed is what is left after it.

What is in my feed?

My photos from many years. But not only them. I love saving things: short videos I liked, pictures, interesting topics I wanted to come back to. Everyone has these piles of “I’ll save it, I’ll look at it later.” The “later” usually never comes. Why, I took apart in Save it so you don’t lose it.

In Spohad all of it comes in one feed. A downloaded vertical video plays the way it did where I found it, on the full screen. Next to it, a photo from a walk three years ago. After it, a screenshot of a recipe.

How is it different from social media?

At the end of the evening I am left with order.

I can settle every frame with one move:

• a warm memory: swipe left, to Memories;
• something I need for life, a recipe, a receipt, a screenshot: swipe right, to Recall;
• something unneeded: to the Trash;
• something I liked: a heart;
• something I do not want to decide on: I keep scrolling and the frame comes back another time. Scrolling past is a decision too.

Nothing is moved or deleted right away. Decisions pile up all evening, and I can review them. I press Save when I am done, and I see the result: how much space came back and how many frames found their place. It is a small summary of the day that I like more than a view counter on social media.

What my evening looks like

I lie down, take the phone in one hand and open Sort. After that it is all thumb. Twenty-five cards in half a minute if it is junk and screenshots. One card for five minutes if it is a video I want to watch to the end.

Sometimes I give a frame a name, dictating it by voice instead of typing. Sometimes I just scroll and decide nothing.

And here is what I noticed. After an evening in my own feed I remember what I saw. I remember what that day in the photo was like. I remember why I saved that video, and sometimes I finally do what I saved it for. And then I delete it: it has done its job.

Tens of thousands of files, and no need to hurry

My archive holds tens of thousands of files. I will not sort them in a week, and I do not have to. Each evening I put a little in order. Spohad does not ask you to finish: the feed does not start “from the same place,” it is new every time, so it does not get boring.

If there is no signal, on the subway or on a plane, the feed works the same: everything stored on the phone scrolls without the internet. More in Photos without internet.

Usefulness that hooks you

I am not against social media. But I wanted the time I already spend with a phone in my hand to leave something behind. Now it does. With every evening my archive looks a little more like an album and a little less like a junkyard. And every evening I remember my life a little.

Why I made this at all is in Why I built Spohad. And you can try such a feed right now, on the home page. Some evening, open not someone else’s feed, but your own.