I remember the social media shift starting for me in 2006. At that time, Facebook was the new kid on the block that everyone was talking about, and it was grown folks talking. But I was never one to go out of my way on the idea of being “social.” My personality is more about talking to people when I have something to say. And when I need to talk to you… I’ll talk. 

Well, in 2006, I was not yet sold on the social media gadgets or what to do with them. So, I had my Uncle Joseph McLaurin back home in West Philadelphia running my Facebook page. In fact, he was the one who set the whole thing up for me, including my business web site and a long email list. As a technology guy working at the Ivy Leage University of Pennsylvania, Uncle Joe understood a lot more about the online technology world than I did, and he still does. I just wanted to sell my books and stay in touch with the readers for when I needed to announce something.

I had no concept of fan base maintenance, where you reach out to your public supporters on the regular and respond to them frequently. So, when grown folks who I had known for years started harassing me about being their “Friends” on Facebook, I had no idea what they were talking about.

I said, “I’ve been your friend for years. And I’m still your friend. That hasn’t changed,”

Then they would tell me, “Well, you didn’t ‘Friend me’ on Facebook.”

“Friend you on Facebook? What?”

I was totally at a loss on the concept. So, they had to explain it to me.

“Yeah, you didn’t accept my ‘Friend request’ for us to be connected on Facebook.”

“Friend request? What?”

“Omar, you really need to get hip. Facebook has ‘Friends’ and you have to accept them all in order to share messages and pictures and stuff. How could you have a page and not know that?”

Because my uncle was running my page, and he didn’t know who was my “Friend” and who wasn’t. So, I took over the page and started accepting Friends, responding and posting things on Facebook myself. And with my popularity in 2006 as a nationally known author, my 5,000 Facebook Friend limit filled up pretty quickly, where we had to open up a “Fan Page” for more.

Then I had people who started sending me Instant Messages, or IMs, that popped right up on my computer screen while answering emails. And it was pretty cool at first.

“Hey, look at this new technology. We’re in The Jetsons and Star Trek age now.”

But then the IMs got distracting real fast.

“Hey, Omar, what are you doing? What are you working on? When’s your next big event? When’s the next time you’re coming down to Florida? I always wanted to write books like you. How do you do it? What’s your formula? Do you ever get writer’s block?”

I can easily answer a few of those questions. But when they start coming in at rapid fire pace with two and three people sending them at the same time, it can get a bit hectic if you’re trying to focus on a specific task.

Then the Twitter App popped up and the numbers game approach got more unlimited. Twitter didn’t have a 5,000 Friends limit like Facebook. So, you started seeing numbers in the thousands, the ten thousands, the hundred thousands, and eventually millions. And instead of calling people “Friends” like Facebook, Twitter called them “Followers.”

That’s when you started hearing about people “buying Followers.”

And I asked the question, “Why would you buy a Follower?”

Apparently, the more “Followers” you had, the more “social” you could become. But so what? We’re bragging about how many different people we know now? I didn’t see the point. Until people started talking about social influence and marketing. The more people you know, the more people you can spread the word to. And that part got my attention.

In fact, the “social capital” concept got everyone’s attention. And the more that people followed you, the more people wanted to. You know, it’s the copycat syndrome, where you ask yourself, “If everyone else is following, then what’s my problem?”

The next thing I knew, we were all racing to collect more Followers as some new form of social status. And we were being pushy about it, too.

“Follow me! Follow me! Follow me! Make sure you Follow me! Did you Follow me yet? When are you gonna Follow me?”

It got ridiculous. I even had tech savvy friends to buy fake Followers for me, only for the numbers to disappear when they stopped paying for the service. So, I went from 22,000 Followers on a Friday night with payment, and crashed back down to 16,000 without payment on Monday.

That wasn’t that bad of a drop off, but you get the point. A lot of these fake numbers are smoke and mirrors with accounts and Followers who don’t really exist. Then social media got even more serious when Instagram started up with more pictures and videos. And you could write more in the summary caption instead of being restricted by a certain number of “characters” that Twitter enforced on you. And the race for numbers was on again for Instagram, where pretty girls, popular athletes, musicians, movies stars and comedians all had their advantages. 

Everyone still likes to laugh if you’re a trendy comedian with jokes and acting skits. Movie stars are still movies stars, especially when they have new movies or shows coming out. They will always have the attention of the mainstream media who are in bed with the Hollywood machine that pays them all. Black musicians remain the biggest individual stars in the Black community, locally, nationally, and abroad. And that’s not going to stop anytime soon, as long as Black people can still sing, rap, dance and play instruments.

Professional athletes are a natural lock to collect fans and Followers as well, just from being on a popular sports team and performing on TV, while being idolized and admired by kids, mothers, fathers, other athletes, and the sports media, whose job it is cover these athletes 24-7. In fact, media interviews for professional athletes are MANDATORY. And we’re talking about the prime-time networks of ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and the worldwide juggernaut of ESPN. Even the streaming networks are getting a piece of the sports actions now with Amazon, Netflix and Paramount. And a lot of these athletes don’t even want the attention… until they’re ready to pitch something.  

Then you have the sexual advantage of the pretty, young woman. Yes, I’m saying it, because it’s true. When I was an adolescent growing up in Philadelphia, sometimes my young buddies and I would sneak peeks at the Penthouse, Hustler, and Playboy magazines inside the local drug stores for that masculine rise. And every man reading this article can relate. Now young men can look up the pretty Instagram girls in swimsuits on their private cell phones for the same feeling. It’s a biological FACT for young men. We are WIRED to be attracted to the naked skin and curves of a woman, so that our “family jewels” can react accordingly to produce children for the continuation of the humanity race. PERIOD! End of story! No argument! Otherwise… every young man alive would need Viagra.

And these coy, young women know this. So now, we have dozens of them wearing swimsuits all over social media, summer, winter, spring and fall, who know exactly what they’re doing. Why else would a girl post nothing but swimsuit pictures for 100 straight days, while turning off her comments for no engagement? Because she doesn’t want they’re engagements or DMs, while trying to pick her up with their freaky or desperate fantasies. She just wants their Follower numbers. Plain and simple. And she can use those numbers however she wants to.

But would that work for a man? Can an attractive man post himself in different sexy outfits every day and expect the same daily output as a pretty girl in a swimsuit? He can surely try, but I doubt if he’ll get the same desperate response from women, because women are not as crazy about a man’s looks as they about his income. And since most men already know that, we tend not to go overboard with the sexy photo thing like young women. A young man would be better off modeling a collection of luxury cars, boats and airplanes, if he can afford to fake it. Maybe A-I can create it all in the background and make it look real.

Then someone created the Tik Tok App that features more videos than pictures, and the numbers race was on again. Initially, Tik Tok seemed to be the youngest social media platform and was basically set up for teenagers to sing, dance and laugh for a lively and captivated cell phone audience. But now it’s expanded into a bunch of other stuff for “influencers” with definitive missions. But I can’t understand the algorithms. Tell me how I can have more than 7.000 Followers, yet I still get less than 100 views on many of my new posts…

That doesn’t make any sense. You mean to tell me that not even 10% of my so-called Followers are willing to watch my new posts? That would be 700 views. And I know the argument. “Well, maybe your posts are just not engaging enough.” Okay. Then why Follow me? You know I’m going to be talking about BOOKS. Am I supposed to talk about something else? “Yeah, just be social,” whatever that means.

It seems to me as if the crazy people get the most attention. Is that what being “social” is today; transparent, vulnerable, dramatic, and additive? Well, what if I don’t want to be any of those things? Those are the characters that I write about in my books. But I don’t want to BE one for social media, just for you to be “engaged” with me. Once again, it’s all ridiculous.

Maybe the so-called “algorithm” of Tik Tok is holding me back from engaging my 7,000+ Followers because I refuse to BOOST my numbers with my hard-earned family bill money, which Tik Tok strongly suggests for me to do every day. So does Instagram. So does X (Previously known as Twitter). So does Facebook. And so does LinkedIn, which I didn’t even talk about yet.

BOOSTING is what ALL of these FREE APPS want us to do now to engage with MORE of our so-called Followers.

Ain’t that’s a trip? But for the people who have figured out the formula, social media has become a new game changer. You just need to learn how to manipulate it, spend more time with it, plan your day around it, never forget about it, and schedule your posts on it like your life depends on it. Then you can figure out HOW to make it do what you need it to do for you.

Valerie Densie Jones, the veteran producer of my new podcast, “The Retro Movement” told me more than five years ago that the number of “Followers” on our social media Apps will become the new capital. And I heard her, but I didn’t hear her. I understood what she was saying more than five years ago, I just didn’t care, because I didn’t take it seriously enough. You mean to tell me that NUMBERS on my cell phone are going to determine what I can or can’t do in life? Really?

But Valerie was absolutely right, more than five years ago. The people who have figured out HOW to create a MILLION or more Followers on social media are the ones who have the new money now. They are the influencers. The ones that people pay attention to. The ones who land the corporate partnerships and sponsor money. They are the ones who move the needle now. For everything! So… what happens now to the rest of us?

I presently have just 12,000+ Followers on Instagram, 7,000+ on Tik Tok, 15,000+ Friends on 3 Facebook pages combined, 15,000+ on X (Previously known as Twitter), and 500+ connections on LinkedIn, the so-called business channel.

I have been active on these Apps for more than twenty years now, and I still haven’t figured out the formula for moving my Follower and engagement numbers drastically FORWARD. So… how in the world can I ever even DREAM about reaching a million? How would that happen without PAID MARKETING to tell people that I still EXIST? Well, that’s the formula right there. You have to PAY FOR IT, just like if you were to place an advertisement on your local radio station. They’re not playing your promotion for FREE.

Or, what many social media people talk about now is partnering up with someone else who already has the numbers. You know, freeloading. That’s what we used to call it back home in Philly. If you didn’t have any food in your own house or refrigerator, then you head out of the house to join in with the family picnic down the street, who had plenty of food. And you would laugh and joke and vibe with the family, while sharing their food, chips and drinks for free. I get it. Great plan.

So, I could interview Snoop Dogg for my new Podcast, The RETRO Movement, and the interview would be so good, engaging, and well executed that 10% of Snoop Dogg’s audience would decide to Follow ME in order to keep tabs on my next interview. And with Snoop Dogg having a reported 87 MILLION Followers on Instagram, I would end up with 8.7 MILLION myself. Right? That’s the simple mathematical logic of it.  

If only it were that easy to call Snoop Dogg up and get him on an interview. But I’ve checked Snoop Dogg’s page, and he barely gets 6,000 likes on his average post. Now, with 87 MILLION Followers, that doesn’t make any sense to me either. Let’s just think about it. Wouldn’t 87 MILLION Followers pretty much break his damn cell phone if they all tried to like something that he did? Even 10% of his Followers at 8.7 MILLION would break MY PHONE. So… what really happens with these RAW NUMBERS if we can’t really use them? Who can answer that question?

However, one thing’s for sure. Snoop Dogg was chosen to host events at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris, France, and then at the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Milan-Cortina. And those are both HUGE international events. So, that tells us that someone is taking Snoop’s numbers very seriously as an “influencer,” and he’s not young anymore. So, WHO made that decision?

Honestly, I don’t believe my personality could ever reach Snoop Dogg’s Follower numbers in three lifetimes. That 87 MILLION feels like 1,000 Goliaths to my 1 little Biblical David. But when I look over at the social media accounts of my hero, Ryan Coogler, the filmmaking writer/director of Black Panther, Creed and Sinners, he doesn’t even have a social media page. And his fan page has LESS than 3,000 Followers. Yet… this man Ryan Coogler has now grossed nearly 3 billion dollars WORLDWIDE through his art. That’s what you call BANKABLE and SIGNIFICANT. So, maybe there’s HOPE for ME without having a MILLION+ Followers.

Then again, all three of Ryan Coogler’s blockbuster films have starred the heartthrob actor, Michael B. Jordan, who has 26 million Followers on Instagram. And he’s the one the audience is actually watching in the films.

So… maybe I need to partner up with one of these MILLION+ Follower Influencers anyway, while praying to God to help me sell this international American football book, TOUCHDOWN IN BRAZIL like crazy, for the entire 2026 NFL football season and beyond. Or maybe my Bad Decisions vertical microfilm will get made. Or maybe the African American media mogul Byron Allen will find me and decide to  partner up with his Allen Media Group to expand my audience for “The RETRO Movement” podcast and more. We could even finance my Flyy Girl project and finally produce the long-awaited 1980s film, presently stuck at Lionsgate, who are about to break $1 BILLION in worldwide sales from the Michael Jackson movie.

You see that? I still have plenty of creative and lucrative products to pitch, just like Ryan Coogler does, without a massive social media following. The difference is… he still has Michael B. Jordan, Marvel Comics, Disney, Warner Brothers, Netflix, Hulu and Imax, who all respect him enough to do business with him, despite social media. And they market him the old school way, through his PRODUCTS.

Well, I don’t have any of those guys on my side… yet. But there’s still time. There are still cell phones to call people on. We still have emails to send out, proposals to write, business meetings to have, and prayers to pray in order to make SOMETHING happen to take down this new GOLIATH named SOCIAL MEDIA that is presently blocking me (smile).

In the meantime, I’ll just continue to work, write, interview, network and pray for my own Ryan Coogler model, where I’m somehow able to deal with the real decision makers at the top for strategic MARKETING that WORKS, so we don’t have to chance whether or not the WORD goes VIRAL for our next big meal ticket. I would much rather KNOW that we did our best to reach our desired audience than to GUESS about the algorithms of social media.

~ Omar Tyree is a New York Times bestselling author who has published more than 30 books and counting and won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Work of Fiction after graduating from Howard University, cum laude, with a degree in Print Journalism from the School of Communications in 1991.