tl;dr: Buymecoffee.co is not for everyone, but that’s entirely the point.

Buy Me Coffee™ adds friction back to social networks by creating a personal paywall. We believe that what we are getting for “free” on social media now is far from what we should be getting. Our view is, over time, people have replaced quality and authenticity with meaningless quantity in the form of shallow follows and “friend” connections. This is great for companies that want us addicted to a “feed” filled with mostly inane content in order to serve us ads, but is NOT actually good FOR US. We rarely share anything near and dear to us on these feeds simply because most social media platforms are visible to too many people. And even when we restrict access, it's hard to trust an advertising-funded social media company to not sell or abuse our data.

There was a time when we were comfortable being “just” normal or “weird” online in view of our close friends (e.g. the dubious choice for your AIM screen name---we're laughing with you, fartMonst3r69), but these days, all we see is the “aspirational” highlight reel of social media. Highlights are what we are are willing to show strangers and people we barely know. But what of our closest relationships? Don't we need to nurture these relationships to be happy? Shouldn't technology enhance real world relationships instead of primarily helping to serve ads or track users (and manipulate democracies)? Sadly, despite how things seem on Facebook or Instagram, many of us are actually less happy now than we were before social media technology became such a prevalent feature in our lives.

The secret to happiness, we believe, is simple: To be happy, we need to 1.) be satisfied with what we are doing and where we are going in life through meaningful accomplishments, and 2.) be surrounded by people whose company we enjoy. Buy Me Coffee, we believe, is a step in the right direction.