How many cans...
...must I substack up?
Bye, Elon. Bye, Zuckerberg. Who/what else is next?
I keep circling this bowl. I continue to struggle with creating a significant alternative to all the stuff consuming my time and eating my creative energy. Games, doomscrolling, seeking that endless endorphin hit from posting just the right meme…
Today, Elon takes/took over Twitter, and has announced a free speech haven. I don’t use Twitter—it’s the most talked-about social media platform that I just never got the hang of. Maybe I’m not funny enough, maybe I’m not checked into enough of the right kinds of folks. I tried to make Twitter about poker, but I just don’t care enough about even that to stay checked into the Twitterstream—I loathe endless notifications, so I turn them off and then forget to check in, and it moves so fast that I feel endlessly behind.
So, thinking about deleting Twitter, I wonder what the cost would be.
Nothing to be proud of from a content perspective—literally, zero engagement with anything I’ve done, and I haven’t done very much, so there isn’t a whole lot to recover w/r/t content.
Looking at my followers list, it’s all porn, poker and toxicity. Literally, the first human I actually know is someone who’s changed their account name to reference a prior employer and a potential sex crime. Yikes!
Nobody I know talks about Twitter IRL. I wouldn’t want to advertise any of my upcoming projects there. So there seems to be very little benefit…
These days, I always handwring about getting off of social media because of all the connection I have and maintain there. Really, only Facebook is useful in that context, and these days…
Yeah—that one got me a 30-day ban. So, while I should definitely be vibing with Elon’s desire to create a Free Speech Nirvana, I don’t think Twitter is the place for me, nor do I really think Zuckerberg is doing good things for our republic or our psyche (see Instagram)
At this point, the only thing keeping me tied to Facebook is that it’s the only game in town for small businesses to promote and reach small audiences. And Instagram…
I’ve been slowly building out different voices across several different accounts, but none of it is very satisfying because it’s all about audience building, and it feels like I’m focused on the wrong things.
Too much doomscrolling, too much distraction. Looks like I’ll be deleting it all (except a single Instagram account). Really, the most important thing, to keep the connections live, is to create a real alternative, generate real content.
I like to say, “Facebook killed my blog,” but that’s both disingenuous and not the point. Indolence and laziness killed my blog, Facebook just made it easier…