well, here we are, back in the swing of things, i guess.
i decided to revive this old girl because my desire to share feels tied up in knots and social media just doesn’t feel like the place anymore. i need more privacy, i need more quiet, i need more ME. which is what brings me back to you now. i need to get my feelings out in a way that doesn’t compete with the noise of all these platforms. maybe i’m ahead of the curve, or maybe i’m right on point with my timing- i think the world is ready to start jumping ship from apps like facebook, instagram, tiktok, and all the yadda yadda that’s lighting up our phones daily with notification after notification. i’m just so done with it all.
you know, i had one of those live journals when i was a teenager, do you remember those sites!? i swear they were at the forefront of it all, before blogs, before social media, before online advertising became (oh boy i can feel a rant coming on- so i’m going to just put that thought back in it’s box right now, lol), well, lets just say back when the internet was more simple.
i loved that journal. it was my place of solace. i wrote in it nearly every day. i could be myself there. i was totally unfiltered and would share my deepest, and sometimes darkest thoughts, feelings, and stories. i could dip my toe in the water of being in the public eye, and it didn’t matter because i had maybe 5 total readers and i knew 4 out of the 5.
when facebook came around it was such a fun place to be. i could connect with my friends regardless of where they lived, since i had connections in two very different parts of the country. one was more cosmopolitan, the other was small town usa. the city people shared about their work successes, their upcoming events, and all things professional that i could be overjoyed for them about. and on the flip side of my feed were the marriages, the babies, the new trucks and occasional yet still all too often news of someone from our wrestling team dying (its a long story, but its said our championship wrestling team that year is cursed- and understandably so- half of them died from one cause or another before reaching 30 years old. but that’s another story for another post a longgggg way from here. maybe when we know each other a little better i’ll tell you about the wrestler who’s initials are A.S. who used to sneak in my window at night to cuddle and who i got a tattoo for when he went off to war…but like i said…for now we’ll stick to facebook). back then facebook was just short bursts of updates, there was no video or links or advertisers. it was pure and it was connection, but it was also revealing, and i was starting to have troubles (big ones) in my marriage, so i withdrew from my journaling (mostly from depression) and from facebook (mostly because i couldnt find myself in either group of friends), and from anything that could dislodge me from my comittment to my marriage, no matter how bad it was.
then instagram came around, my husband and i split, and i remember spending a full day at a coffee shop scrubbing my exes existence from my facebook account in order to relaunch myself out into the world again. i should note that this coincided with moving back to my home town, which was never part of the plan, but divorce fallout can surprise you in all sorts of ways.
anywho, i really enjoyed facebook for a handful of years after that. it was a fun place to be! it was where i shared my successes, my adventures, and celebrated my fellow friends, and deep thinking, once again. it was just the thing i needed as i reawakened myself and launched this new chapter of my life.
keep in mind that this all happened just a few years into the iphone even having an app store, so the phone was still a fairly quiet device, nothing like the constant pinging, buzzing, and chirping of today’s devices (ugh, hold me back, i’m staving off another rant. ahhhhhh….okay….i think we’re clear).
facebook then started to turn its attention to its business customers and sponsored posts became a thing. again, nothing even remotely close to the volume of ads it is today, it was just a one in twenty scroll kind of thing, you might not even see one if you were on for just a few minutes -which was common back then- we hopped on and hopped off, we didn’t doom scroll for hours like people do now, there just wasn’t enough content or reason to keep us there- it was FUN, and just the right dosage of it. we didn’t have to get all covered in social media syrup like we do now (ugh, i told myself i wasn’t going to go down this rabbit hole, i’m so sorry…okay…reeling it back, reeeeeeeeeling it back).
when facebook bought instagram i had a feeling both platforms were going to go to hell in a handbasket sooner than later, and i was so unfortunately correct. it did take a few years longer than i predicted, but i’d say the arc of “enshitification” happened slow at first then all of a sudden and all at once it declined in a rollercoaster nosedive towards god-awful.
the landscape has become predatory. everyone wants you, your eyeballs, your time, your money, your like, follow, subscribe, share, re-post, re-tweet, re-spond, re-fucking-damn can i get a moment to me and my friends once again to just feel connected!?
when anything becomes too crowded, too loud, too impossibly competitive- I AM OUT!
but that doesnt mean i know where else to go. its like a breakup. i needed some time to myself before i felt like i could get back out there again, and now that i’m here…well, it feels good to be back. its a bit of a homecoming i suppose.
this site is about ten years old. i started it at a time when financially i couldnt pay $100, let alone $300 a year to just play around. that kind of money meant keeping my phone active, or keeping my lights on, or heating my house. i couldnt drop anything on anything that wasnt paying me back ten fold. but now, now i just want to be here, and i’ll pay the price for it, because i can, and because i think having an outlet is important for me.
maybe you can relate to my experience of the enshitification of social media platforms, or maybe you can’t (if not, please, lets go get a warm beverage and talk so you can enlighten me), either way i hope we can be friends, here, on our own terms.
i look forward to seeing you in my next post, which i promise will be much sooner than ten yers from now.
also: i’m currently reading enshitification by cory doctorow. i’m only about 1/3 through it and i enjoy the info, could do without the cynical tone (i know its the pot calling the kettle black- god- writing that saying out makes me see how awful it is, whats a modern update for this one!?), but also just wish i was learning something i didnt already know from first hand experience. anywho, its still a gread read and i reccomend it.