Staying Off Social Media is Always a Good Idea; It's Essential Right Now
For a long time, I had a love/hate relationship with social media. It was terrible and toxic, and a source of unending frustration, but it also served myriad functional purposes, particularly if, like me, you’re a freelance writer who is forever struggling professionally and economically and an autistic man who finds it much easier to interact with people in a digital space rather than face-to-face. I networked, made friends, and experienced the validation of tweets going viral or at least semi-viral, every once in a while.
It seems like a very long time ago, but there was a time when I enjoyed spending time on Twitter. It was an invaluable form of self-promotion, and I wracked up an impressive follower count through my work at The A.V. Club and The Dissolve and, to a lesser extent, my books.
Because I am both shallow and narcissistic, I was proud of both the quality and the quantity of my followers. I don’t want to brag, but a lot of rich, famous people followed me, including two exceedingly influential gentlemen named Seth.
Yep. Those two.
Then Elon Musk took over what I will always call Twitter, and it immediately became no damn fun at all. People with stronger wills than I left the rancid sewer of a social media site rather than waste their time on the digital playground of the richest and worst man on the planet.
I did not have the luxury of being able to leave Twitter, though it grows less useful by the day, in part because the lefties who support my career fled to less evil sites with less baggage.
As I wrote in a blog post a while back, I finally mustered up the resolve to not put Twitter or Facebook on my new phone. That didn’t completely remove my access to the sites, but it significantly reduced the amount of time I wasted on social media.
I’m proud to say that I never put either app back on my phone, though I continue to find ways to waste time and energy doomscrolling, mainly through Reddit, The Daily Beast, and Substack.
I’d love to report that half-quitting social media did wonders for my mental health, self-esteem, focus, and productivity, but the upside was more subtle and understated than that. It was the right decision, and one I plan to stick with, but life continues to be unfathomably difficult for me as an American, small businessman, and neurodivergent parent of neurodivergent children.
Twitter and Facebook were already cesspools of hate before Charlie Kirk was killed. It became even darker and more despairing in the aftermath of a murder that tore an already divided country even further apart.
Because there is something wrong with me, when I see conservatives posting about how the unrelenting torrent of highly organized leftist violence is bringing us to the brink of a Civil War, there is a delusional part of me that thinks that I can get through to them.
Because I am a dope, I grow apoplectic when I see strangers rage-posting angry sentiments that are hypocritical, nonsensical, or otherwise factually faulty, and become convinced that I can use irony, wit, and solid reason to convince people incapable of reason or self-reflection why they’re wrong.
What a Quixotic endeavor! What a pointlessly Sisyphean pursuit!
If MAGA were open to reason, it wouldn’t be MAGA. I’m never going to win any political arguments on social media. I’m not going to change or open the minds of people who see the Democratic Party as a criminal hate group that demonizes and scapegoats the other side, but sees no problem with Trump describing everyone who disagrees with him as evil, insane, subhuman scum at war with our country and its ideals.
Going on Twitter now just makes me angry. It’s not a righteous anger. It’s not a productive or constructive anger. Nothing good can come of it. It’s just a way to ensure that I go through life in a state of perpetual anxiety and confusion.
It’s fucking grim right now. The world was already an ugly place. It just got a whole lot uglier.
I implore you to follow my lead and get the fuck off social media for the indefinite future, and only use it when necessary.
Staying away from Twitter’s fire hose of hate isn’t just a good idea; it’s fucking essential until this all blows over, which will be never.
You can pre-order The Fractured Mirror here: https://the-fractured-mirror.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
Nathan needed expensive, life-saving dental implants, and his dental plan didn’t cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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