Post Brain is when you go about your day constantly scanning for anything you can turn in to content, or what would make a great “post”.
Post Brain. What a great name. I like it.
I don’t have any factual evidence, but I’d wager the majority of active users on social platforms circa early 2010s onwards probably experienced some sort of Post Brain. I certainly did during my highly active daily Twitter use — I think it’s fair to call mine exclusively ‘Twitter Post Brain’ since it was the only network this effect had a hold on me. Furthermore, I can, however, declare that almost 50% of the Post Brain content ended up sitting in my drafts and later on lost momentum, and got deleted.
To a certain extent, Post Brain still exists in me. The difference now? Instead of scanning my surroundings for something relatable to turn into a social media post, I pay attention to blog posts and articles I read on the web. I’m constantly looking for anything of relevance that triggers and sparks my thinking into jotting down whatever thoughts I may have to add to the conversation. My Ulysses draft folder is filled with quoted snippets from articles and blog posts I’ve read. Combing through my linked draft folder a few days ago, the thought occurred to me, “I ought to create a ‘Linked’ tag for linked posts and add it to the navigation menu.” So I did.
It’s rare nowadys that I constantly scan my environment for text-based content to post on the various social networks I am on. With my efforts to return to mobile photography, however, I scan my environment a lot for photo opportunities as I build a collection ready to edit and post on the site here. So I guess that Post Brain is still active, somehow.
