Oh, the joys of not understanding social media. It is an enigma wrapped in a demonic vision… did I mention I am not good with social? Yes, I am sorry. I don’t social good.
I’ve written a few times about this (links above). Each time I sit down, thinking that in some way I can suddenly turn on a switch, changing how I interact with these systems. The last one, which made sense, was the idea that I would simply treat it like a cork board. As much as I wanted to do it, to think that I could handle that, it wasn’t meant to be.
There’s also this increasing issue with privacy, with places like Facebook getting caught watching literally everything that you do from the browser. It’s so bad that browsers like Mozilla’s Firefox has an extension that pretty much isolates it from the rest of your browsing, but even still, such behaviors are concerning.
Even so, most everyone I am close to in real life are active on Facebook. Twitter, not so much. I’ve struggled with Twitter of the 10 years I have been on that platform, never finding a groove. I was never able to really settle in on a voice while on there, irrespective of the fact that my audience was paltry. With less than a third of the followers I had on Twitter, my Facebook page surprisingly gets 5 times more traction. Not the point, but is stands to reason that it has a lot to do with my inability to find a footing on that platform.
I always believed in a 1% rule on Twitter: that at any given time on average, only 1% of your followers engage or even see a post (with obvious exceptions). The micro-blogging timeline with the strange, cryptic algorithms only serve to prove that to me, with a recent Wrong Speak Podcast with Bill Ottman confirming that theory (although he said something like 1% to 3%).
However, again, I just couldn’t find my groove on there. I couldn’t even find the right accounts to follow that truly interested me, that kept me engaged.
And it was the same with Tumblr, which I left coincidentally soon after the “porn ban.” And I got even more traction at one point on Tumblr than I had on Facebook and Twitter combined. Nonetheless, I couldn’t figure myself out on there.
Again, I don’t social good.
So, I left Twitter. Permanently.
In the meantime, I am trying out Minds.com as an (open source) alternative to Facebook and Instagram, which I will remain a part. For now, as each are getting far too intrusive… or should I say: Facebook is getting far too intrusive, and Instagram is just its more attractive younger sibling.
There’s also Ello.co… maybe. I am on there, but I haven’t been active since opening the account.
Either way, while I am figuring myself out on these networks, it just made sense to cut loose the networks that I wasn’t getting a self-traction on. Tumblr didn’t work for me; Twitter didn’t work for me. I am going to focus a little more on the ones I have left and we’ll see if that works.
At least I’ll have this site if nothing else works out!
Jeremy C Kester 
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