Welcome to The Social Universe.

The practice of what is popularly called “social media” is evolving. For over thirty years I’ve been creating things to entertain through digital and social content, platforms, and communities. The Social Universe is my exploration of the emerging and developing fields of social storytelling and narrative architecture that have come to define my professional artistic and creative practice, crafting community-oriented creator-driven campaigns and platforms that drive action through stories at scale.

I stay pretty busy between my work at the Berggruen Institute and Wonder Valley Projects, but I spent my twenties writing for places like OUT, Queerty, Salon, The Advocate, and others and this Substack is my return to that form.

For paying subscribers, each week you’ll receive a new column by me exploring a wide variety of topics, personalities, projects, and ideas through the lens of reimaging social networks as tools for communities, rather than exclusively as tools of capitalism and control.

In addition, subscribers will be the first to receive excerpts, tools, documents, and templates from my upcoming book, The Social Universe: The Art & Craft of Social Storytelling and Narrative Architecture, which I hope to be a definitive text that draws from real-world case studies, including the Emmy-award winning, cultural juggernaut that was the premiere season of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which I was the chief creative digital and social strategist for. With a rich background ranging from being the ghost blogger to American Idol’s Randy Jackson to working for ill-fated 90s start-up Kozmo.com, these stories are designed to think deeply about how technology and storytelling converge at scale and how to leverage the egalitarian nature of distributed networks to craft narratives that can be enjoyed, shaped and brought to life at home, in your communities and across our planetary society.

I hope you’ll consider subscribing today!

Best regards,

-Japhy