Whenever you post about leaving a platform, you get people saying, “I’ll be sorry to see you go! I use this platform to connect with friends and don’t often seek people out one by one, so you leaving is really unfortunate!” Sometimes they talk about how they have made the platform non-toxic, with privacy settings, blocking, curating their feeds. They suggest you do that, too.
They really like you, and want to know what’s going on in your life, they want your take on things, but… well.
They don’t like you enough to read your stupid blog.
Dear God, Trump gave up on his blog because it wasn’t getting him enough hits. He created a social media service to connect. Because blogs are fossils that don’t work.
I have been guilty of this. The friends of mine that never use Facebook? I maintain a few of those friendships. Poorly.
Who hears my voice almost every day? Who is in my thoughts, when I read their posts? People on the platform.
So… I have been allowing a commercial for profit entity to edit my friendships, to subset them, for about a decade. Again, I have to take responsibility for my actions, I could have kept in touch with more people outside of the platform, but I didn’t, and the reason I didn’t is that I expended a lot of energy on Facebook, and I got a lot of response from that.
Email one friend? You get one email back.
Post to facebook to 1000 ‘friends’? Get 10, 20, 100 reactions and 20 comments.
Now, if you are a private person, the email has more appeal.
But if you are an over-sharer? Dear god. You’re in trouble. Because the social media platform will stimulate you an order of magnitude more than writing that single email. Oh, and it does it INSTANTLY! You don’t have to wait for hours, or days. With eough friends, no post ever goes. unnoticed; you get reactions proving someone saw it, That email? If the recipient doesn’t respond? God. It’s fucking embarrassing.
All of this said, people have vital, important, very real, interactions and friendships bound to social media platforms. I did, and do.
It’s sort of like a bar where your friends hang out. There are folks there you would never ask out for one on one thing. But they are your friends. The so called third place. The only problem?
Turns out… you’re an alcoholic.
The small doses of poison slipped into social media isn’t something you seem to be able to metabolize. You waste time arguing about things. Your posts hurt people. You overshare and damage your professional identity.
Not going to the bar means losing touch… most of your friends. Most of these friends, anyway. You can try to pull a one on one friendship out of the platform… but it’s just not practical. People have enough IRL friends, enough one on one friends, generally speaking.
This is the horrible part. A for profit entity lured you into this, with a platform with a lot less poison in it. And they have gradually ramped up the poison level over the years.
Anyway. I should be writing fiction. Talk to you later. Hopefully not today!
Please write more fiction! I like that were Fakebook friends (not a typo), as it’s kind of like eavesdropping on your creative process. Which is fascinating. But your fiction is my jam and I also loved your AI Polaroids. Do Whatever makes you happy is all I’m saying. Be well. And thank you for the updates.
Thanks! I appreciate that. I want to create some amount of content like my social media content and share it with you and a few people like you that have been very supportive.
I get why we all use Facebook. I just am not sure I can anymore. I’ll figure this out, and thanks for your best wishes.
Yeah, I have oftentimes felt bad about the friends I lost when LiveJournal was sold to the Russians, it was a nice little community… and I have never found it’s like again sadly. Thing is, keeping in touch with friends and such, requires effort… of a kind I am not particularly good at making. Facebook and other such platforms make it seem as if you can maintain friendships without effort… sadly, one cannot. And no worries mate, you need not feel obligated to reply to my reply, today. 😉
it is good to hear from you! I finished my first story in several years, and hit the button and submitted it to Asimov’s today, so I’m feeling pumped. How goes your recovery? Feel free to send an email.
Read a NYT piece, about how social media has gotten so bad, people are actually emailing again.