Issue 13 | August 25, 2026 | Sign up
Ever had something you wanted to say, but when you went to post, you hesitated? Something felt off? So you didn’t?
You are among the 85% of social media users who feel this, and I’m here to validate your feelings. Nearly all of our online spaces are profoundly strange and unnatural. And it’s worth asking: What if they weren’t?
What if social media felt like a heartfelt invitation? What if news sites left you feeling informed, and nothing else? What if posting felt like a natural extension, and you usually got back more than you gave? What if it felt like your online spaces reciprocated your participation, and made you want to maintain them? What if it felt like these sites encouraged a nutritious informational diet?
And what if—and this is getting wild here—we measured them not in time spent but by how they propagated goodness in our lives? I don’t mean mindless positivity. I mean inviting us to sometimes hear hard things and grow from it.
Today, just a small fraction of people active on social media post regularly. We are so browbeaten we think that this is normal. But I assure you these spaces feel weird because they are predatory. They are run by companies that want to make money at all costs and they’ll do anything to hook you, then worsen your experience as much as possible to sell your attention to advertisers.
This is called extractive media.
“When I ask people about their relationship to the news or social media, they say, ‘I feel terrible about it, but I engage anyway,’" says Eve. “But I believe the energy in which something is built is forever with it, and many of these sites grew out of awful intentions. Meta began as a site to rank women. It will never outgrow that. They are nearly all like that.”
That’s the digital world we inhabit. We think our digital meeting places are town halls but they’re really industrial farms. Eve and I are now wondering: What if the fix was as clear and straightforward as applying the principles of regenerative agriculture to media?
For the past 40 years, millions of people have been working hard to regenerate how we farm by considering the once outlandish notion that nature knows some things. That we are part of the ecology, not separate from it. And that if we over-extract, the ecology dies and then we die. The regenerative agriculture movement has proven that responsibly managing the land with a diversity of plants and getting rid of the harmful chemicals produces more in the long term. It reduces pests, increases nutritional density, and requires fewer synthetic interventions.
The principles are well-established. Why can’t we apply them to toxic online spaces?
Why can’t we engage less and enjoy more?
Feel free to leave once satiated?
Enjoy a creative outlet without the consumptive habit?
Learn, connect, and enjoy, without growing addicted?
Feel that by giving, we are gaining just as much in return?
Share in a way that feels perfectly natural?
“There is a sickness here in Silicon Valley among some people so divorced from nature, they think they don’t want to die,” says Eve. “That means to never fully embrace what it means to live. They fail to realize that impermanence is what makes life utterly awe inspiring, or see what a gift it is to be here. That’s who is behind these platforms. We need to bring back natural cycles. Our media should mirror our living planet.”
Our media should mirror our living planet. That’s the idea. And it’s no coincidence that when we started Fenwick more than decade ago, we chose a .media domain. I always suspected this was our purpose. I just needed a name, and now thanks to Eve’s oracular invention, we have it: regenerative media. So we can begin.
I’d love to hear if this idea provokes anything in you, and how we can work together on it.
Here’s our pass at a manifesto, which is really more of a call for comment: Regenerative media. Like a plant, it will grow.
Practical application: What does regenerative media mean? Weigh in.
There's a principle for this: Describe the Dream
We work best when presented problems to solve because it frees us to set the frame. If the frame is already set, we can only do so much. Always, we’d rather someone describe their dream of the world they envision, and ask us how we can help them get there.
Inside Fenwick
We’re pursuing the regenerative media idea on two tracks: a public manifesto and a portal. The beginnings of that portal exist right now in The Rewild. Create a free account.
Worth reading
I’d like to invite you into my favorite genre of non-fiction: The tech tell-all. The people who built these platforms want you to know. They’ve been telling us all along: Uncanny Valley, Careless People, Empire of AI, Super Pumped, WeCrashed.
Watch: The machine understands the business. Fenwick x Isaak Le for one of our clients.
Four states are suing Meta for $1.4T for harming teens.
Strange and beautiful things under a microscope.
Who will monetize the truth? A provocative if long-winded tour of how corporate media is changing.
AI 2040. I like what this group is doing, trying to forecast. But publishing this after their AI 2027 scare piece was so profoundly wrong is intellectually dishonest. They should post about how they failed, because LLMs don’t really think. Superintelligence is not near.
Artist corporations. Colorado passed a law where artists can create “A-corps.”
A bear webcam. Watch them fish.
The death of the blog. From The State of Brand. This vastly overstates the case. What they are proposing is literally Robert Rose’s definition of content marketing circa 2010.
On trend
I’ve been saying this for two years, but past-as-future is “in”: Shopify. I think there’s something reassuring about this, visually; just like how after The Great Depression, banks started putting up Roman columns on their buildings to convey stability.
Videos
Ads work without voiceover. Another.
Justworks ad. By the agency that did the Walton Goggins thing. They definitely have a type and feel.
Visuals
Hiring posts are getting good. This is what Lope Gutierrez calls “the strange attractor factor.” No amount of research would have told you to invent a spinning gem, but wow is it captivating.
Meteoric. Seeing a trend?
Just for fun
Watch an art director assemble a NY Mag cover.
