> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://abagofstories.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # A Social Network Should Still Be Social - URL: https://abagofstories.com/a-social-network-should-still-be-social/ - Published: 2026-08-16T14:42:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-25T14:30:35.000Z - Description: We have opened a few more doors into "A Bag of Stories". Not because we need another place to promote ourselves, but because we still believe that a network can be a place where people notice one another. - Author: Flaminia Paternò - Tags: Letters from Afar, Editorial notes If you have been following AFAR for some time, *A Bag of Stories* may still be relatively new to you. **The magazine grew out of the same world**: the journeys behind the objects we make, the people and places connected to them, the materials that pass from hand to hand, and the questions that inevitably arise when you begin paying attention to where things come from. But it was created to let that conversation travel further: *A Bag of Stories* is **AFAR's magazine** about travel, materials, communities, photography, work, culture, and the human intelligence behind what we carry. It gives us room to tell stories that may begin with an object but lead somewhere entirely different; to meet people whose work interests us; to question some of the habits of travel, fashion, photography, and storytelling; and, often, simply to remain curious. > AFAR already has [its own social presence](https://www.instagram.com/afartextiles/?ref=abagofstories.com). *A Bag of Stories* now has one too. We are on [**Instagram**](https://www.instagram.com/abagofstoriesmag/?ref=abagofstories.com), [**Facebook**](https://www.facebook.com/abagofstoriesmag/), [**Bluesky**](https://bsky.app/profile/abagofstoriesmag.bsky.social?ref=abagofstories.com), [**X (Twitter)**](https://x.com/bagofstoriesmag?ref=abagofstories.com), [**Threads**](https://www.threads.com/@abagofstoriesmag?ref=abagofstories.com), and [**YouTube**](https://www.youtube.com/@abagofstoriesmagazine?ref=abagofstories.com). Written like that, it sounds like an announcement. **It is not meant to be one**. Opening six social accounts is easy. Filling them with photographs, links, videos, and carefully timed posts would not be particularly difficult either. The harder question is **why** we should do it at all. There is already enough content in the world. **More than enough.** What interests us is something else: whether these spaces can still help people encounter one another. --- ## An audience is not a community We work with stories, photographs, objects, journeys, materials, people, places, and questions. Most of them do not fit particularly well inside a few seconds of attention. **That does not worry us:** *A Bag of Stories* was never conceived as a machine for producing content. It is a magazine, but also an attempt to pay attention: to the intelligence contained in a handmade object; to what people carry when they travel; to the lives behind materials and images; to the way places change; to the difficult relationship between those who look and those who are looked at. None of this becomes more meaningful because ten thousand people click a heart beneath it. Numbers can tell us whether something travelled. They cannot tell us what happened when it arrived. We are therefore not particularly interested in building an audience that watches us. We would rather build a small community of people **who notice one another**. People who disagree sometimes. People who recommend a book we have never read, point us toward a photographer we did not know, tell us that we have misunderstood something, **send us a story** from a place we have never visited, or simply stay with a question for longer than social media normally allows. Fifty such people would matter to us more than fifty thousand silent followers. --- ## Six places, not six copies We will not use every social network in the same way. A photograph behaves differently on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/abagofstoriesmag/?ref=abagofstories.com) than an idea does on LinkedIn. [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/abagofstoriesmag.bsky.social?ref=abagofstories.com) can become a place for conversations and discoveries; [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/abagofstoriesmag/) can hold longer exchanges; YouTube can preserve voices, gestures, processes, and time. [X/Twitter](https://x.com/bagofstoriesmag?ref=abagofstories.com) may lead us into discussions already taking place elsewhere. **The story will remain the same.** The language should not. This also means we will probably not publish everywhere every day. Sometimes something will belong naturally to one platform and not to another. Sometimes we may remain silent. We are comfortable with that. We would rather have a reason to speak than a publishing schedule that requires us to. And we would like to spend at least as much time looking outward as looking at ourselves: reading what other people are doing, following small magazines, photographers, researchers, artisans, writers, organisations, travellers, designers, and communities whose work deserves attention. A social network becomes useful when it ceases to resemble a stage. --- ## What we hope might happen Over the coming weeks, we will begin experimenting with a few simple things. We will ask questions for which we do not already have the answer. We will occasionally show what remains outside a finished article: a contact sheet, a field note, an uncertainty, a detail that changed the direction of a story. We will point toward work made by other people. And we will begin asking readers to contribute something of their own. One of these invitations will be called "**What We Carry**." > The idea is simple: photograph one thing you carry with you that matters, then tell us where it came from and why it still travels with you. It does not have to be beautiful. It does not have to be valuable. It may be practical, ridiculous, worn out, inherited, found, repaired, or almost meaningless to anybody except you. There will be no competition and no winner. **We are interested in the story.** Perhaps, over time, these objects and their stories will become something larger: a page in the magazine, a small publication, a wall somewhere, an archive of the ordinary things human beings decide are worth keeping close. We do not know yet. That is partly the point. --- ## Before asking you to follow us The usual way to end an announcement like this would be to ask you to follow *A Bag of Stories* everywhere. **We will not.** You do not need to follow us everywhere. Choose the place where you prefer to meet us. Or stay here and read the magazine. Or receive our letters by email. The important thing is not the platform. The important thing is what passes between people through it. So instead of asking for a follow, we would like to begin with a question. **Who should we be paying attention to?** > Tell us about a person, a photographer, a writer, a small magazine, a community, an organisation, a maker, a researcher, a place, or a project you believe we should know**.** Something that deserves more attention than it currently receives. Send us a name. Send us a link. Tell us why it matters to you. We will start there. Because perhaps the best way for *A Bag of Stories* to enter a social network is not by saying *look at us*. It is by asking: **What should we look at together?** You can always write to us at [**staff@abagofstories.com**](mailto:staff@abagofstories.com) or leave a comment below. We read both. --- We are on [**Instagram**](https://www.instagram.com/abagofstoriesmag/?ref=abagofstories.com), [**Facebook**](https://www.facebook.com/abagofstoriesmag/), [**Bluesky**](https://bsky.app/profile/abagofstoriesmag.bsky.social?ref=abagofstories.com), [**X (Twitter)**](https://x.com/bagofstoriesmag?ref=abagofstories.com), [**Threads**](https://www.threads.com/@abagofstoriesmag?ref=abagofstories.com), and [**YouTube**](https://www.youtube.com/@abagofstoriesmagazine?ref=abagofstories.com).