Social Media Thoughts

CWs: social media, politics, trump, racism & bigotry mentions

I’ve been thinking about this ever since my friend posted this on their blog recently. The only social media I have currently is Mastodon and LinkedIn (no, I am not linking that here, sorry), at least in terms of websites. I have a Discord account, but it’s not something I really publicize. Like many others, I used to have more social media, though. I had MySpace back in the day, yep, for many years, until it died its slow death and I fled elsewhere. I received a Facebook invite in 2004-05 sometime and took right to it. First found friends at my school, before it had opened up to everyone and literally their dog, and sure, built-in friends. I would give out my FB willy-nilly, because why not? It’s where everyone seemed to be, for many, many years. When I was on the tenure-track job market, I even had Twitter for a year or two, from probably 2014-16, before I gave up on that entirely.

So why do I just have Mastodon and LinkedIn, you ask? Well, because Facebook is a dumpster fire, manifestly so from the past eight or nine years at this point. It has gone straight to hell. Facebook has been in consistent decline for years, torching all the goodwill they once may have had, catering to paranoid, conspiracy-addled boomers and weirdo Trump worshippers. I began to see that much more clearly after 2016, when all the Trumpers came out of the woodwork and started filling FB with their (worse) nonsense. In mid-2019, I was finishing up my last few months of secondary school teaching, watching that dream die, but looking ahead to better things. I felt like having a FB was going to be a liability for a job search. But more importantly, it had outlived its usefulness. I had outgrown it. It was a complete black hole for free time, a constant drain, a vacuum for emotions and anger and nonsense. And I didn’t need that in my life any more.

That summer of 2019, I found out about Mastodon and the fediverse. I remember signing up on my first instance and thinking, here we go. The interface looked like a homegrown, FOSS Twitter. I grabbed an app for my phone called Subway Tooter (hilarious name), and logged in, and watched the federated scroll by. It seriously looked to me like the Matrix, and I was immediately enthralled. I would see something interesting, stop for a second, and hey, why not comment on it and respond? Maybe I’d make a friend. I was spending my days looking for jobs and trying not to freak out, and this was something new. Mastodon turned out to be a perfect, for me at least, replacement for Facebook. So I started making plans.

Now, I gotta preface this by saying that Mastodon is by no means a perfect space. Not by a long shot. I’ll talk about that a little later ideally. But it came along at the right time for me, and I deeply treasure the friends I’ve made there over the years, a few of whom I have had the good fortune to meet in person even!

I started saving “pages” and other things which I followed on Facebook to a file, and anything else I thought worth keeping. I then drafted a farewell message to friends, advising that I was deleting my Facebook and said to reach out to me if they still wanted to stay connected. I eventually sent that message, then gave it a day or two, and deleted my Facebook. Again, this was sometime back in 2019, I can’t exactly remember when, but it was sometime during that summer.

I had probably 140-150 “friends” on Facebook, many of whom I knew in real life, but of course, after moving to Colorado, I saw almost none of them in person any more. I find it incredibly telling that I keep in touch with a very small fraction of those people today still. Most of the people who stuck around were people I regularly text/message with, or family, or both, y’know? But others just disappeared. I know that’s a two-way street; I could have probably reached out. But some of these people I only knew on Facebook, and didn’t have alternate means of contacting them. But again, it’s telling how few people remain after leaving. And I suppose that’s OK. I have kept the friends who matter most to me and to whom I matter, and that is enough.

Thinking back to those first few months on Mastodon, and it was a weird, bumpy ride. No one tells you that you’ll regularly run across virulent racists and bigots on the fediverse. I found out pretty quickly who the “bad actors” were, after running afoul of detestable “freeze peachers” (free speech absolutists, who think they can say anything with no consequences at any time), and seeing people just be straight-up racist towards others with no remorse. I quickly blocked those servers as soon as I realized what they were about, but it took time and lots of trial and error. Efforts like The Bad Space are immensely helpful and cut out a lot of the trial and error. The fediverse needs better onboarding, and absolutely better moderation, to be sure, and that has to be on admins, who need to be looking out for their users as much as possible. 2019-2020 was a weird time for the fediverse, and a lot of pain to be had, unfortunately.

But in time I found the people I enjoyed spending time and talking with, and they in turn introduced me to others. And slowly, but surely, I found what felt like a new digital home. I’m now on my third instance, but as far as I know it’s where I plan to stay. I don’t need to go anywhere else as long as it’s around. In text and emojis, and pictures here and there, I felt connected with people again. And I hope I’ve made others feel that way too. It can be lovely. But it can also be very messy, just like life, and that’s OK, as long as we’re willing to put the work in to make it, and the world, a better place.

So if you ask me, almost 6 years later, if I miss FB, or regret leaving? Absolutely not. It was the right call and I would 100% do it again. There is really nothing about it that I miss. I am partially cheating here, since my spouse is still on FB (and will likely never leave, due to having it as their only, or at least easiest, link to family &c.), and sometimes relays me information via there. But it is never something I need to rely on. I hope they eventually get off of FB; who knows, they might enjoy Mastodon too one of these days. But in any case, through my eyes today, leaving FB seems like it was always the right choice. And I hope more and more people realize how toxic a space it is and leave, sooner than later, and find healthier spaces. Same with Instagram or other corporate social media (especially Threads and X/Twitter). I certainly hope that people eventually decide to eschew the easy way and embrace something better for themselves and others, or hell, opt out of social media entirely, that’s great too.

I hope my thoughts are clear on this. I have been thinking about this a lot lately, as I mentioned, and I’m tired and it’s Friday night, so here we are. Thanks for reading, friends <3