Social Media Is Dead
Sara Wilson on Digital Campfires, Gaming Avatars, and the Death of One-Size-Fits-All Marketing
In May 2020, as the world was locked down and glued to screens, Sara Wilson published an article that would reshape how we think about digital culture. "The Rise of Anti-Social Media" didn't just predict a trend-it named a revolution already underway.
Wilson, a former magazine editor turned Facebook executive, had noticed something the marketing world was missing: while brands obsessed over follower counts and engagement rates, their audiences were quietly slipping away into WhatsApp groups, Discord servers, and gaming worlds. She called these intimate spaces "digital campfires", places where people gathered not to perform, but to actually connect.
The timing was prophetic. As pandemic fatigue with performative social media set in, Wilson's "anti-social" thesis felt like the marketing gospel to explain the already saturated brand ecosystem. Five years later, her predictions feel less like trend forecasting and more like a roadmap to the future of digital culture. Gen Z has indeed retreated deeper into niche communities, heritage brands struggle to find their audiences, and unknown labels build devoted followings in spaces most marketers don't even know exist.
Having helped launch Instagram's dominance in fashion during its early days, Wilson recognized the signs of another seismic shift. Now, through her Community Catalyst program, she's become the translator between brands desperate to reconnect with audiences and the hidden corners of the internet where culture lives.
The question isn't whether social media as we know it is dying—it's whether brands will follow their audiences into the digital campfire glow, or get left behind in the algorithmic cold. In that, Sara has one thing or two to say, and we are here to listen.
You come from an editorial background—how did that help you understand the world?
My background in magazines and journalism is a huge part of what I do and how I think. I didn't go to journalism school, but I started my career writing for magazines and newspapers, ultimately becoming a magazine editor. It helped me learn to look at culture, ask questions, and listen.
Honestly, that's what journalism taught me—listening. If we take that up to the present day, listening as a brand or marketer is one of the most important skills, whether it's listening to customers or listening to culture, really taking the pulse. As a journalist, that's just inherent in what you do.
From traditional media, I went to HuffPost. For me, the through line was really just wanting to be where the zeitgeist was happening. It was originally happening in print, then it shifted to digital media, and that's where I went. It was from that original journalistic desire to be where conversations were happening.
Then you took a deep dive into social media and partnerships. What excites you most about social media?
It shifted again to social media. When I went to Facebook, Instagram had just been acquired about a year earlier, so it was pretty early on. At Facebook, you really had to shape your own career. You had to identify the biggest opportunities.
When I got there, I saw that Instagram had this traction within the fashion industry. It had been embraced in a nascent way, not massively, but there was enough action that my team and I saw an opportunity. If we threw fuel on the fire, we could help it explode in terms of attention, relevance, and loyalty for Instagram's brand. I really saw it as a big opportunity, a calculated bet, you could say.
You coined the term "digital campfires." Is this where people go when tired of traditional social media? Can you give me some examples?
I'd been in the social media world for a long time, working at Facebook and HuffPost, developing social-first brands. I had this instinctive understanding of where audiences hang out online, because if you're not in touch with what audiences are doing, you lose sight of culture.
After I left Facebook in 2018, I started seeing a shift where audiences were moving toward smaller, more intimate online platforms—anything from WhatsApp groups to Snapchat, DMs, Roblox, and Fortnite. Video games are part of that, too.
I saw this shift happening in disparate ways, but there was a through line: intimacy, desire for connecting with real people you know, or at least people with whom you have more intimate connections. People didn't want to be performing all the time in that open social way.
I started researching it, and the numbers backed it up. That's when I developed this thesis about the rise of "digital campfires." I divided them into three types: micro-community campfires, shared experience campfires, and private messaging campfires.
Essentially, people were connecting in more intimate ways on these smaller platforms, but no one was talking about it. I decided to not only talk about it but name it, because naming it is important for helping marketers understand it. That was in 2020, and we've seen explosive growth in those digital campfires since then.
What I think is even more significant is that the entire internet has become a version of a digital campfire; it's atrophied and niche-ified. The way people connect is very much driven by small communities. In that sense, small can be relative and sometimes very powerful.
The cutting edge of culture is happening in these niche spaces and communities. That's why I made it the center of my business with the Community Catalyst program, where I help brands show up in niche spaces to drive attention, relevance, and loyalty. It's the same mechanism I used at Instagram with fashion—throwing fuel on the fire of a specific community.
Where do you see fashion and avant-garde fashion thinking happening right now? I'm not talking academia—I'm talking about real people engaging with other people.
A lot of that is happening in the gaming space. You're seeing experiments with self-conception and reinventing the self using avatars and dress-up, getting to inhabit multiple versions of yourself.
I don't think many brands understand this imperative, especially with young audiences. It's very normal for Gen Z and Gen Alpha to have many different versions of themselves online—different avatars, different ways of showing up. Some are playful, some serious, some attuned, some just experimental.
This is their norm. There's no separation between real life and online life, which is hard for older brands to understand. But it connects to fashion because when you're showing up in these spaces, you want to look a certain way, adorn yourself a certain way. It's a real opportunity for brands to help accessorize those different personalities.
Fashion is such a leading-edge category and a culture driver. Other brands that aren't technically in fashion need to look to fashion for what they're doing and how they're embracing technology.
Is it always beneficial for a brand to engage in these conversations, for example, in gaming? Or does it depend on the brand?
It always depends on the brand's audience. There's never a one-size-fits-all approach. That's why I'm so focused on really defining the audience.
I even reject the word "gamer"—I hate it because it's painting with a broad brush. Gamers are as multi-layered as readers. If you say "you're a reader," well, what kind? Do you like romance or Norman Mailer?
It's really important to get granular about who your audience is, who you're trying to reach, and which platforms they're on. I think a lot of brands do it backwards; they see a hot new platform like TikTok and think, "We need to be there." But let's take a step back and ask: What are we trying to do? Who are we trying to reach?
How do you identify existing communities that are ripe for brand collaboration, and what makes one community a better fit than another?
I have a three-part process. First, FUEL UP: get clear on what you stand for and who you're for, beyond just the product you sell. What's the bigger belief? That belief taps into a transformation you offer that people will be attracted to.
Second, CALIBRATE: define the communities where those people show up. Once you're clear on who you're for, identify the organic communities they inhabit. Are they in sororities? A specific fandom? It should be a direct line from your audience to those specific communities.
How you determine that is a mixture of art and science. I work with researchers, sometimes use AI tools, and it's usually a combination of all available tools. There are new companies creating marketplaces for communities, but I'm suspicious of some because the most interesting communities aren't necessarily on people's radar yet.
And finally, the third, ENGAGE: Activating in the communities in brand-aligned ways that prioritize participation.
All three of these steps -- 'fuel up', 'calibrate', and 'engage'-- comprise my Community Catalyst process.
Do you have a favorite community platform? How do you use it?
I love Reddit. I was recently working with a womens' athletic wear brand and identified an interesting Reddit community: FIREy Femmes. "FIRE" stands for 'Financial Independence, Retire Early," and while on the surface this had nothing to do with fashion, once I dug a little deeper into the specific affinities for that subreddit, I saw interests emerge that connected it deeply to fashion--from capsule wardrobes to thrifting and well beyond. That intel says so much about who's in that community.
But none of it would be actionable if I didn't know what type of people this brand was trying to reach -- and therefore what types of fashion communities would resonate.
The take-away here: You have to understand the basics about your audience before you start looking for communities.
How can brands show up in communities in ways that the communities welcome them?
If I can connect the brand belief to something you believe, we're already ahead. The way to do it is to show up in communities where people are already primed for your message. I focus on four parts of a community-powered flywheel: social content, creators, IRL events, and partnerships. You're embedding in that community holistically. You're not just coming in saying "buy my product", you're offering value first and foremost.
That could be as simple as entering a Discord channel and bringing in talent that the audience would otherwise never have access to for an AMA. You're delivering value, then developing a relationship. The community is a vehicle to help your brand develop a relationship with the exact audience you want to reach. If you're in a real relationship, each party brings something to the table. Brand relationships should mirror real relationships as closely as possible, which is crazy because most brands don't think like that.
Loved this piece.