Ok – it’s a lot you. I mean it is glaringly you.
But it’s still me.
I have an unhealthy relationship with social media. I know – Shocker!!
I don’t even doom scroll. The closest I get to that is what I call “hate-scrolling”. This when I go through my feed looking for what my friends are saying and block anything that isn’t them. I block ads, meme generating accounts, pages and even random people that pop up. I’d block groups, too, but apparently that’s not possible.
Social media is filling a gap I left in my anti-social life when I cut the cable and switched to streaming (more on back tracking there later). When I still had cable, I was a channel surfer. I spend hours just wasting time and not actually watching anything. Hoping something would catch my interest. There is a lyric from Pink Floyds the wall – “I’ve thirteen channels of shit on the TV to choose from.” Last I checked it was upwards of a thousand channels and at least half of that shit is just infuriating.
I am not sure how much my attention deficit plays into this, but it’s a distraction technique. Distraction from loneliness, boredom, sadness, pain… All of those, I guess. Random flickering images to keep the thoughts at bay.
The lure of social media was the myth of engagement. There was engagement in early chat rooms. There was engagement in bulletin board systems I’ve been on. Social media has engagement, but it is not what I’d hoped it would and not even as good as it used to be. As we become more the product the level of engagement is hitting rock bottom. A convenient way to keep up with my friends spread around the country has become wading through the mire of advertisements to catch a glimmer of worthwhile content.
With the older pre-social media systems, I actually made friends. Talking online lead to deciding to have a face to face. Sometimes good – sometimes bad. But there were actual connections being made. Even if some were quickly severed.
Social media has also gotten in the way of my being creative. Be it writing, cooking, or even just reading a book. Hate scrolling has taken over a lot of that time.
I know this is not a cut and dry issue and social media isn’t the big-bad-evil… Well, it is big and bad and evil, but anyway. There is a lot to blame with my psyche on the issue and social media just found a good notch to fit into with that. It aids in my bad habits of not wanting to engage in small talk with new people. Online is easy to get to the point of topic without seeming as socially awkward.
Anyway, I have some things to work out regarding my relationship with social media. So, it’s not you, it’s me.
But, it’s still definitely you.