For someone who used to be so active on social media, my absence is deafening.

Well, to me at least.

But really, I’ve been pretty damn quiet on social media lately and don’t see that changing anytime soon.

For too long, my social media presence became based more on promoting my blog, than it was anything else – which sucked. After a while the blog became the primary reason for existing on social media. Even though I made a lot of online friends and stuff using social media, it had evolved into something that I no longer enjoyed.

Social media was once upon a time about people, not algorithms, corporations, or AI. I enjoyed meeting other people with similar interests. Once I no longer blogged for a reason (babbling about my latest and greatest post) or lurking to see what others were doing or talking about, I faded out. Last September when I re-evaluated all those wonderful social media sites I was a member of, I found that I really wasn’t that into the crap that goes along with social media in today’s world.

Blogging – Yeah, blogging is a part of social media and I still follow a bunch of blogs, though I don’t comment too often, which is something that I need to work on. I’ll probably start picking up a few more again and take the time to enjoy other people’s writing more that I’m starting to write again. I find that if I am writing my own stuff, I pay more attention to what others are writing. Not so much to hop on a bandwagon, but more to read more than just certain silos or echo chambers. Also, I don’t see me moving back to Medium or playing around too much with Substack, both are great at what they do, but would tend to put me on a different path and change my perspective towards my writing, than the what I want it to be.

The other part is that I don’t plan to optimize for SEO, use lots spam posts, have too many images or trash content in my feed. I’m not writing for that kind of audience. If there is a reason for an image, cool, but just to jazz up my post, I’m not bothering anymore.

Using a multitude of other people’s quotes to back up what I’m writing about just means that I’m not secure enough in my own beliefs to stand on my own words. From where I sit, having too many quotes from others in a post probably means that I didn’t need to write that post – relying on others’ words too much is just filler. This ain’t academic writing where I have to prove others agree with what I’m saying or that my scientific methods and observations are valid.

This is me writing Harold’s thoughts on Harold being Harold.

Twitter – I refuse to call it whatever to f*x^ Musk has changed it to (yeah, I know what it is). I found that the shit being promoted to my “free” timeline was just that “shit”, ads, corporate shills or is that shrills, and very little interpersonal talk. I closed the account in late 2023 and really haven’t missed it. Though I do have to let Privacy Badger on my browser do one-time opens in Feedly, to see the injury reports for my fantasy baseball leagues. So, it seems that some people are still using it. I don’t see me going back.

Facebook – I deleted that too, but at the last minute (the 29th day) I decided to keep it. I guess it is the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) about what old Coastie buddies, former co-workers, high school people, and even the few family members who bother to keep in contact with me are doing. I check it when I remember, then I typically just go through the timeline and like a few things, but don’t comment very often…usually about every other week or so. I might wander around for a couple of days in a row, then again, I forget about it pretty quickly. I could easily give it up, but probably won’t, though I continue to hide or block anything that I don’t want on my timeline when I deign to go there. It is now a choice not a must do.

Mastodon – Just never got into it, even though I tried several different channels. I kept one – I think. I’ll have to check on that one, not sure if I did or not? If I were to go back to social media, this is probably where I’d start this time.

Strava – Since I wasn’t really running for a long time, looking in on Strava went by the wayside and even though I’ve gotten back into the running habit, I haven’t gotten into the Strava stuff again. I’m just not in comparison mode anymore and since I’m not racing, anytime soon…well it’ll be something I keep, but just ain’t a big part of my day, hell my week.

All the rest of the Twitter replacements, video based things or other social media sites, I just haven’t had a lot of interest in being a part of their algorithms.

Yeah, I really think that since the social media sites went to basing what you see on algorithms versus a true timeline, I stopped caring as much about them and my interest level kept declining with each passing year. They became more focused on corporate needs than personal interactions (that’s where the money is, so they have to follow the money). I’ve just gotten tired of the in your face stuff that the algorithms force on your timelines. When I first started on Twitter and Facebook in 2007, I saw so much potential for good. Instead they have become bastardized tribal echo chambers which have only become even more divisive, since divisiveness and being a shithead is great for booming up the algorithm scale and driving whatever they are using for metrics.

That is what I’m doing on social media, not much and probably it won’t change, though every so often I might throw one of the blog links up on Facebook, just to remind people that I’m still alive.