As you back away from social media it’s hard to immediately convert that time into useful activity. Because you’ve been using it to fill your socialization hunger, your hunger for connection if not actual conversation, which now, let’s face it, feels a little awkward.
Who wants to eat fruit when you can chug down bubbly corn sweetener?
Recovery people will tell you that you need something to fill that time, the time that opens up when you are off your drug of choice. I think the problem comes in when you have diminished executive function, when you’re tired, and the effort to fill that time up with something nourishing is so great you do something else stupid instead.
Like this blog.
You are substituting something social, but with lower levels of interaction, say a group email to a few friends, one off emails to folks saying, “christ, this is hard, I’m getting off social media,” that you hope will garner instant feedback, texts left with friends and family who suddenly, feel much more important now.
And you wait. And you wait.
What the fuck is taking so long?
Social media has trained you to expect an almost instantaneous stream of connection, if not conversation; the likes that start streaming in instantly. But what are these likes? The nod of a passing neighbor at the compost bin? Or deep involvement, empathy, communion?
You don’t know.
So FB created a series of icons. Hearts and hugs and along with the anonymous thumbs up. To try to create a difference. But what this means is that folks can scan a post for content quickly, say, “fuck, somebody died,” heart that thing and skitter past. “Oh Christ. More cancer.” Scurry away, because thinking about cancer is awful. Heart it! Then–you’re outa there!”
Welp. That’s dark enough for now.
I had three reads, maybe two, on yesterday’s sadly titled post. I’m jonesing over here.
But then, I’m supposed to be.
POSTSCRIPT: Of course social media barely shares your shared blog links to your feed, if you have a blog plug-in that does this. Social media hates your blog. Hates you owning your own relationship without their mediation. Social media sells your friends attention back to you, after all.
Social media creates nothing. It’s a honeypot for harvesting data and selling ads.
Trump, with a third of the country worshipping him as a Combed-over God, couldn’t figure out how to monetize his blog, or drive readership or engagement.
That’s right. Trump.
Don’t be sad, if you start blogging to the chorus of crickets and the occasional hooting owl. Nobody can do this, create significant engagement, without some kick ass career, bigger than Trump’s I guess, or one that engages people who read, or weight loss or get rich quick schemes to sell.
This is a place to come and dry out, a bit, while the hunger for conversational typing dies out.
I hope.
Are your stats measuring reads from emails? Because when I decide not to comment, I don’t hit the post’s page. Maybe just email the first few lines to make people click over? Anyway, the social media clicks and such never really interested me. Maybe my brain isn’t wired that way. Same with alcohol. Alcohol makes me physically sick and I’ve never understood why people like it. I think it must be physiological. I stayed on FB as long as I did because I felt an obligation to the people who wouldn’t communicate with me any other way. But FB made me sick once my feed went mainly political and hateful. Then I realized that anyone who truly was my friend and not a “Friend” would follow me off the platform. The ones who matter did. Those who didn’t…well, time to let those hangers on from my past go. Like cleaning out a closet. If I haven’t worn a thing (or heard from a “Friend”) in two years, out they go.
If you only look at the email, you don’t get counted; if I had my feedburner thing working I could see that, I think. I used to support RSS.
I need to redo the subscription feature. I no longer even know how it works or see the analytics.