Sheletta Brundidge has decided to walk away from her popular social media accounts. Instead, she has created a free new daily newsletter, “SheLetta’s NewsLetta,” featuring her trademark funny and thought-provoking take on the news of the day and glimpses of her personal life.
“Social media, in its purest form, was the great equalizer. It allowed the small to have a big impact,” said Brundidge, the WCCO Host, Emmy award-winning broadcaster, podcaster and activist who founded the ShelettaMakesMeLaugh.com and production company.
With a background as a television newsroom assignment editor, Brundidge perfected her instinct in selecting and crafting irresistible social media content.
“That’s my skill set,” she explained.
Brundidge’s clever social media posts have gone viral many times. The mother of four children, including three with autism, Brundidge shared often her family’s journey. Her post with video of her non-verbal son Daniel’s breakthrough with music as he sang “Old Town Road” earned more than 10 million engagements. The post of her son Brandon seeing “Let’s Go Brandon” signs and assuming they were messages of support for him, garnered 30 million.
But after Donald Trump’s inauguration, Brundidge noticed a change.
“Engagement dropped enough for me to say, this is trending in the wrong direction,” she said. “You’re telling me I wake up after the inauguration and I don’t know what people want? No. Algorithms are being tinkered with.”
Christopher Terry, Associate Professor and Cowles Fellow of Journalism, Policy and Law at the University of Minnesota, said Brundidge’s suspicions are justified.
“One cannot write off the possibility of a shadow ban or throttling, especially in the case of these platforms and the fact that Sheletta is an influential Black woman,” Terry said.
Shadow bans are when a social media company limits who can see posts without the knowledge of the person posting, leading to content shown to fewer followers and a drop in engagement. Throttling slows the speed that a user experiences when clicking on a link. In 2023, it was reported by the Washington Post and other news organizations that Elon Musk’s platform X (formerly Twitter) engaged in throttling to create delays for users accessing links to news sources and online competitors.
None of this sits well with Brundidge, who likens social media to modern-day sharecropping.
“You post your creativity, your intellectual property for people to like, comment and share,” Brundidge explained. “But it doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to Mark Zuckerberg.”
According to Terry, the arrangement with social media is actually worse than sharecropping.
“It’s more parasitic. You give up all the rights to that content. It’s just the terms of service you agree to,” he said. “My students are shocked when I tell them this.”
Brundidge has gotten out of the grip of social media, closing her accounts on Facebook, X, Instagram, Threads and TikTok. She’s gone old school with “SheLetta’s NewsLetta,” tagged with the line, “Get Your Happy Back.”
The newsletter is a three-minute read that drops into email inboxes at 11 a.m., Monday through Friday. It arrives after subscribers have gone through their email and headlines and can use a moment of levity.
Brundidge can be counted on to find the humor in her day-to-day domestic challenges. She shared the story (and photo) of bending over the bathroom sink next to son Daniel to retrieve a toothpaste cap, dry erase marker, pencil and lotion bottle pump stuck down the drain.
“Somehow he claims it was an accident,” Brundidge wrote. “I don’t know about you, but this don’t sound like no accident to me.”
In its first weeks, the SheLetta NewsLetta is making readers laugh and even reach out. Deb from Northfield emailed, “I love this newsletter! Keep on keeping on!” Louis wrote “Love your newsletta Sheletta!” and Brenda chimed in, “Just sharing, I’m loving the newsletter! So much fun to read and a day brightener.”
Brundidge reports having good feeling about her new venture, which lines up with her desire to avoid forums that have too often turned negative, cruel and harshly critical.
“I’m done going into dark rooms. I’m going to go over here and shine bright,” she said.