I guess I’m staying on Meta… for now – A Busy Woman, With Concerns

I’m staying on Facebook and Instagram… at least for now. I never actually left. Every time I wrote something here, I posted links over there. My goal was to eventually delete my Meta accounts, in hopes that friends and family might come here regularly to read what I write, but I have changed my mind for a couple of reasons.

1. Expecting people to visit here is asking too much.

Everyone’s busy! They have their own lives and shit they’re dealing with! It’s easy to pop in on social media to see updates from a bunch of friends and family at once, but thinking that people will make a separate, deliberate visit over here is asking too much. We no longer live in a “lots of people have blogs and we all have a list of sites we visit daily or weekly” culture, and my random thoughts and updates are not other peoples’ priority.

This peacock escaped the horse farm and was roaming the neighborhood with eleven of his buddies this morning. My writing is definitely not his priority; he was screaming at the top of his lungs at the peahen two yards down.

2. Leaving Meta probably means letting go of people I like.

Prior to the last couple of decades, moving away from someone meant that you’d likely never see or hear from that person again, and you just sort of accepted that and moved on with your life. Maybe you’d write a letter now and then, maybe not. People came, people went. That was just how things worked.

But social media changed all that. At first, it was like this wonderful community center available to everyone, where we could just drop in as we liked and see what our friends and family were up to. And of course, now capitalism and greed has ruined it for everyone. I hate so much about how it operates (Facebook ditching its fact checking, anyone? Cambridge Analytica? Etc. etc.) and how users are exploited and manipulated. However, there just isn’t a good substitute at the moment.

A lot of the people I know and love are still on social media and that’s the only way we are in touch. If I make the choice to leave, I may never get to talk to them ever again.

Also, once I make a good friend, which isn’t easy for me in the first place, I am usually motivated to stay friends with that person basically forever. Do others have an easier time letting people from their past go, letting those relationships fade away, moving on?

3. No one finds me as interesting as I do.

When I write something that I think is good and release it into the world, I am so happy about it and want to share my excitement and dopamine buzz with everyone. I made a thing! I did it well! Why isn’t everyone immediately reacting to it and lauding me with praise and giving me gold stars for being such an exceptional human?

Ahhh… see #1 above. People have their own lives that take up most of their time and energy. No one is hanging on my every word — nor should they. But I bet that this is a universal thing that all writers — maybe all humans — experience.

4. New facts presented themselves, and I changed my mind.

I tried something and it didn’t work the way I hoped. New facts were brought to my attention, and so I’m changing my mind and doing something different instead of digging in my heels and insisting that my way is RIGHT despite factual evidence to the contrary.

Hey, what a concept. I wish more people were able and willing to do that.

*****

So I guess that I am staying on social media for the time being. It serves to keep me connected to people that I want to stay connected to, and I have no other way to effectively do this.

I’ll continue to make posts here, though. I love love LOVE writing, I like that I’m regaining my atrophied skills, and maybe some day data archaeologists will find my work and consider me an interesting example of a good human being for future generations to study.