Thinking About Social Media
Is social media in any form really worth the drama, and was it doomed to failure from the start?
Regular readers will know that this is a thought that’s been swirling around my grey matter for a while now. Some examples:
- My thoughts on the Fosstodon drama (2025)
- Could you give up social media? (2024)
- Why have a personal blog instead of social media? (2024)
- Anti-Social Media (2023)
There’s probably more, but these posts are what spring to mind. Then this morning, I read a post from Manu where he talks about how the ultra vocal, chest-beating influencers (I fucking hate that word) are making things worse.
One thing that’s fun to observe, though, as a very passive and disinterested spectator, is how some patterns of behaviour seem to be platform agnostic. Which is just a very polite way for me to say that dickheads are omnipresent.
– Manu Moreale
Micro.blog seems to be better than most in this regard. I think that’s just because it’s a smaller place, and therefore has fewer dickheads (yes, I know I’m one of them before anyone emails me to say it 🙃). But it’s also full of great people — it’s just that, as usual, the minority ruin it for everyone else.
Anyway, I digress…
After everything that’s been going on in my personal life, I want to take this as an opportunity to re-focus on what really matters — time with my loved ones.
What will I do?
As far as you’re concerned, dear reader, mostly nothing.
Most of what I get from Micro.blog are discovering new people with blogs to follow in my RSS reader, and the odd interesting conversation. There are some people I talk to regularly there who either don’t have a blog, or don’t post often (looking at you, Basil 🙃), but that’s just FOMO.
So immediately I’ve removed the Micro.blog app from my phone, and from my favourites bar. I intend to stop visiting the site for a while and see how it feels. I’ll keep everything else the same, so my posts will still syndicate there, but I won’t be responding for a little while, I’m afraid. I’ve also deleted my BlueSky account, as I don’t use that anyway.
If it sticks, I’ll probably quit social media altogether — but we’ll see. This may just be a knee-jerk reaction as I work through my grief and the loss of my sister.
In the meantime, if you want to get in touch, my inbox is always open. See you out there…or not. We’ll see how this experiment goes.