It is a truth, universally acknowledged by the snarky, that social media is not an airport and, therefore, one doesn’t need to announce one’s departure. And yet I feel I need to acknowledge that departure, not least because it has been a difficult, if inevitable, decision to leave.
I was slow to the social media bandwagon, joining Facebook in 2006/07ish. I enjoyed finding friends, old and new, and I wasted a lot of time on those little games that were so prevalent in the early days! While those games were a great way to fritter away time and procrastinate they were also instrumental in making many new friends, some of whom I have managed to meet ‘in real life’ and others who have remained friends despite the disappearance of the games and because we share common interests.
For nearly 20 years I have both enjoyed and disliked Facebook. More recently it has become a junkyard of adverts and irrelevant posts. It is increasingly difficult to see posts from friends and is not a pleasure to use. However, it is a point of easy contact with people, especially friends, and I have made many good friends, online.
I tried Instagram about the same time I joined Facebook and then deleted my account only to reinvigorate it some years later and for a while it suited my social media needs – I liked that I could use a photograph to introduce or tell a story about aspects of my life – I didn’t aspire to be an ‘influencer’. I merely enjoyed sharing snippets of my daily existance. I managed to accumulate some ‘followers’ and I, in return, followed content I found interesting but I didn’t make friends with many as I had on Facebook. Not that that was the goal. Insta was different and complimentary to my interactions on Facebook.
If it took a while for me to get onto the previous sites it was even longer before I got myself onto Twitter. It was a different experience to the others and I really wasn’t wanting to spend a lot of time debating, or more likely, arguing with people who could not be moved by reason and whose tolerance of debate was minimal. I had even less interst in fending off rage commentary on my own posts. It was much too combative for my taste but I did find interesting, informative, thoughtful, fun content … until it wasn’t.
I left Twitter fairly soon after it was taken over and joined Threads, which I have to say, I have found more enjoyable. There is some great content and despite some issues (so many porn bots!) I found several worthwhile content creators to follow even though my own input was minimal.
All of the above are owned by a tech bro who has now capitulated to the felon in the white house (no capitals intentional), as have the billionaires in charge of other enterprises. It strikes me as a form of collaborationism that I am bound to resist. I have spent a lifetime boycotting apartheid in South Africa, and Israel. I try not to support businesses with poor working conditions or practices or to visit countries with poor human rights positions or repressive governments. I cannot, in good conscience now continue to use products from companies so quick to bend the knee to a felonious oligarch.
To support Meta, Amazon, Apple and others right now is not morally possible, at least for me personally. I do not evangelise my Boycott, Divest, Sanction principles but I am trying to learn how to keep my friends and followers from various social media sites while I negotiate my way out of the grip of certain tech and social media domination. It is a work in progress to disentangle my life from them but I am searching for ways to make it happen, while retaining contact with friends whose only connection is through the aforementioned sites.
I will, therefore be moving my social media output to this blog. I have read various opinions on whether to stay with social media or to leave and the most convincing to me was to leave and produce content on one’s own website. I have always said I have a life, not a lifestyle, and my content creation is probably of limited interest to others. I do this mainly for myself and those who may find it mildly amusing or curiously diverting. Please join me here if you feel like the occasional contact with me. Alternatively I am currently trying Bluesky under the name CapnDarcy if that is more to your taste.
I am not immediately closing my social media as I have yet to work out the best way to close that door but I will be working towards that goal in the next few weeks/months. Here’s to new beginings and continued friendships.
Significantly Different 