works of wanderlust

Tag: social media

  • obscurity by design

    Blogs tend to get looped in with a broader definition of “social media” –and that is fair, to a point–but there is a much more modern attitude around social media fatigue and frustration to which that inclusion I may be less inclined to agree.

    I am going to write something that may make your eyes roll into the back of your head: I deleted Facebook. Seriously. But here’s the part where you can stop thinking of it as performative righteousness: I deleted Facebook over five years ago and have not looked back. People send me links and I ignore them. I am told someone sent me a message that I didn’t respond to there, and I say I have not logged in in years. Folks suggest I should check the online marketplace or visit their community page or whatever, whatever, whatever, and I shrug and tell them the same as I just wrote for you above: I deleted Facebook.

    This is a complex topic, social media.

    Our whole world seems to revolve around a handful of little corporate micro-blogging platforms that steamroll through the barriers to entry but, like a set of tire spikes at the entrance, create a troublesome blockade to escape again.

    So then that’s the thing. A lot of people “perform” the little notion that they have escaped social media apps, but like abandoning your car and walking out of a lot with tire spikes at the gate, you haven’t really deleted Facebook if your account is still there. You haven’t left Twitter if you could log back in and pick back up on whim. You haven’t escaped the doomscroll of Tiktok if you offload the app from your phone.

    I started blogging in 2001 and created my own little platform upon which I heaped countless hours of effort to write and post and share and converse. All of this was before the apps we know as social media were even twinkles in their tech bro’s thirsty eyes. And I write about it now because I am walking a fine line between grumpy old man yells at cloud (services) and clear-eyed neo-luddite looks at a world consumed by unidirectional experiences driven by inhuman algorithms that are literally destroying our society–and every day I feel like I need to say something.

    So, when I write that blogs tend to unfairly get looped in with social media what I mean to tell you is that sure, blogs are a kind of spiritual older sibling to the likes of Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, but maybe more of an older step-sibling, born of a different first marriage between society and technology, built and nurtured in a more innocent time, still problematic and ripe for potentially harmful communication, but far less wild and spoilt by their parents bitter fighting. Blogs are related, but they shouldn’t just be looped in with the other kids.

    I tend to fumble over to analogy when I am stabbing around for my point.

    I deleted Facebook but I re-invigorated my blogging because there is something deeply toxic that is being nurtured on those social media platforms that is a little more under control on a private blogging site.

    I suppose we could deconstruct this a little more technologically.

    What is a blog?

    I have built so many now that I take it for granted, but essentially your modern blog, like this very one you are reading, is a giant database of text and images stored on a web server. I log into a piece of blogging software, in my case WordPress, which opens up into a friendly screen that invites me to do all sorts of things: manage my design, check the health of the site itself, change my account or add another user, and probably most importantly add or edit content. I can open a little word processor, type and type and type, upload images, add links and tags and a hundred other little design flourishes. And the big database behind that system keeps track of what I made, stamps a date on it, and let’s me push a publish button that sets that post I made to be visible to the public. All of that means that when you load up my blog, in a fraction of the second the blogging software goes into that database and shows you a reverse chronological list of everything I have created and made public. In my case that means you get a reverse chronological listing of (as of right now) a couple dozen long-winded, text-heavy personal essays with a smattering of photos and images. All of that is stored in a database I control, on a server that I pay for access to use, and no one but me–absolutely no one else–has any control over what appears here so long as I don’t break the rules of the hosting company or the laws of the land.

    You may be thinking that this doesn’t sound too different from, say, Facebook and you’d be right… to a degree.

    What is a social media app, then?

    Well, a lot of that stuff about databases and content uploading and profile management is actually pretty similar to a blog. You log into a piece of software that lets you write something, add pictures or video or links, drop in some hashtags, and press the equivalent of a publish button. But that’s about where the similarities start to diverge. This will be a simplification because (a) every platform is a little different and (b) a lot of this stuff is hidden, secret and proprietary to those companies. But just like me, those companies are managing a piece of software on a piece of technology infrastructure, it is simply a matter of scale. And just like what happens when you visit this site and the database and software work together to build you something to read and view and interact with, those platforms do the same. But where mine is simple and reverse chronological, those platforms have introduced something that we so often hear referred to as The Algorithm. All this means is that rather than a tidy ordered list of the stuff people post fairly, simply, democratically laid out like how I do in my blog, countless factors–from what the company wants you to see to what they think will keep you reading to what they think you might click on to buy, and the list goes on–weight into the order in which the software generates something for you to look at. And that’s it. That’s the difference… and in many ways it’s all the difference in the world.

    You will not be surprised to learn that not that many people read this website. I don’t have much visibility or profile on this big wide internet now dominated by a handful of massive corporate interests. Almost one hundred percent of the users of the internet (statistically speaking, of course) feed their time and energy scrolling through outputs of the software created and curated by Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Tiktok. And you go on these sites, you are entertained (by design) and you never leave… but you roll your eyes at the kinds of people who try to step away. And like trying to drive backwards through the tire spikes, most who try are unsuccessful.

    And then we yell at each other, on those very sites, trying to understand why we feel the way we do about them. Why do we feel empty. Why do we get enraged so easily. Why do we feel drained and broken and mentally bloated from the experience.

    I’m not going to sit here and write that there is any one reason, but I would contend that it comes down to something in the difference between a blog and Facebook feed… in which at the same time I would contend there is simultaneously very little difference, yet all the difference in the world.

    Whenever someone loops an effort for someone, anyone, to maintain a blog into the social media categorization that talks about the decline of the internet, whenever I hear that, I shudder. And I go write a post about it that you may never read, but which will be right here waiting for you in the exact spot where I put it, not promoted by an algorithm with an agenda, nor hidden by anything but my own obscurity.

  • monster blue fame

    Despite my protests about the fluxable nature of social media, I have been posting on Bluesky.

    That site, for now, seems like the developers have set out to build the anti-twitter twitter, and that appeals to me enough to participate. Again, just for now. But for now maybe creeping closer to and end because this weekend they rolled out verification. Blue checkmarks. A kind of quasi-fame bestowed from upon high by invisible criteria and processes.

    I don’t like it.

    Yet another popularity contest for which the rules are vague and unpredictable.

    Yet another bit of nigh unobtainable digital swag the rest of us cannot but hope to acquire to validate our own opinions and voices. To elevate our own perspectives above the fray once in a rare while. 

    But that said I don’t have a better or an alternative answer. Do we let algorithms decide who is heard? Or do we let corporate moderation decide who is heard? Or is it that popularity remains with the masses, even though the masses are turning out to be as many bad actors or sock-puppets as there are real authentic humans.

    That never-satiable quest for fame seems to me to be one of the harbingers of the slide of truth and reality into the abyss within our societies lately. Celebrities writing op-eds. TV hosts filling important government jobs. Influencers deciding if your product or idea or service is worthy enough to exist.

    There was a time when having two hundred followers would have been enough for anyone.

    Today, if you don’t have at least a thousand times that you are practically no one.

    What have we created?

    To be honest, fame frightens me. I don’t know how I would handle a thousand followers, let alone ten or a hundred times that many. I don’t know how I would sleep dealing with the inevitable onslaught of contrary illogical collisions that would create. Part of me is happy with a few people occasionally stumbling on my posts or my blogs, getting a little chuckle or insight, and moving on. Being internet famous would almost certainly shake me to my core.

  • undeleted

    To be fair, I didn’t actually read the article.

    In these days of click-bait headlines it is equally likely that any given bit of tripe posted in traditional media is some too-clever journalist writing a bit of sarcastic parody humor prefixed by an all-too-clever title to draw in the crowds who are almost certainly looking for some bit of legitimate-seeming news to validate their screwball wacky viewpoints. The author then typically tries to write some clever well-actuallies… but then who actuallies need the article when most of us never read past the headline anyhow?

    So I didn’t read it. Couldn’t read it. At least not without forking out money for a subscription. So, won’t read it. Can’t read it. Don’t need to read it.

    The headline was “Go Delete Yourself from the Internet. Seriously, Here’s How” from the Wall Street Journal.

    And in this day and age of terrible tech advice abounding I’m pretty sure this was not parody. It might have been well-meaning. It might have even been sensible. But it was probably not good advice.

    Today is a day I have marked in my calendar as my “blogiversay” which is twenty-four years to the date of when I made my first blog post on my first blog. I didn’t put it into my calendar until years later when I noticed that the first post in the archives of the blog was, and would for a long time be, April 20, 2001.

    And then one day I deleted myself from the Internet. Seriously.

    There were a lot of good reasons to have done it. I was, what? Twenty-four when I first posted. I had just moved out of a backwards little life in a backwards little city (which you can ready-aim-fire at me for being judgemental but you could easily google the name of said city and you’d be greeted with a lot of right-wing, nationalistic, hyper-religious news-adjacent references that would vouch for my then and current opinion of the place.) I had a lot of growing to do, and I did a lot of said growing right there live on that blog, sixteen years worth. A lot of that blogging, those growing and changing opinions, may not have aged well, and good or bad, I don’t care to read and edit two million words of my blathering personal blog writing for any reason.

    So I deleted myself. I deleted myself when I got a semi-public job. I deleted myself when I started managing people, particularly a few stubborn ones who didn’t like me, and I deleted myself when it started scraping up against the gentle opposition of my peers.

    But here we are in 2025 and there are suddenly and realistically a lot of reasons to undelete oneself from the internet. There are a lot of reasons to hold one’s ground and push back against the very idea of ceding this digital space.

    Mostly? There is a vacuum that will exist in the space where each person deletes themselves from the internet and that vacuum would almost instantly be filled by something else. Something bad.

    Maybe some terrible AI content will slurp into the vacuum.

    Perhaps what people will see will instead just be more terrible influencer content and the tidal wave of stealthy and deceptive advertising.

    Or worst, and what I fear the most, is that the vacuum will be filled by the relentless creeping onslaught of political propaganda and the opinions (agree with me or not) which are increasingly anti-fact, anti-science, anti-intellectual, and anti-reality. I fear the space will just get filled with more lies, more manipulation, and more noise designed to overwhelm and crush what little remains of these fragments of freedom and democracy to which we cling.

    April 20, 2001 was a few months before 9/11, a day which for reasons beyond the obvious changed the trajectory of western civilization. On that day we went from an optimistic society progressing towards something special and we collectively did a u-turn into fear and suspicion and surrendering our rights for the illusion of slightly more safety. Now, arguably, many of those rights have been gone for a generation, nearly twenty-four years gone, and yet we all feel less safe than ever. What are terrible trade. What a terrible decision we all made together.

    Right now, a big part of me feel like that happened so easily because we deleted ourselves from the conversation. Deleted ourselves from reality, from truth, from the fight, from purpose, from everything. We deleted ourself from the internet, a great big town square where we should all be shouting and having a voice, arguing and making better choices for us all. We deleted ourselves and turned over our voices to corporate social media, to algorithms, to AI, to billionaires who claim that they are guardians of that voice but who only put it in chains.

    We deleted ourselves and surrendered.

    I am undeleting myself. This stupid little resurrected blog is the beginning of that effort. I am trying to reclaim my voice, small and unpracticed as it is.

    Undeleted.

    You next. Stay tuned.

  • social games

    I spent nearly a decade feeding the massive social media networks like Facebook and Instagram with my creative output.

    What did it get me?

    I could tell you that I learned some skills in social media engagement, but that would be a bit of an exaggeration because an invisible algorithm did most of the work.

    I could tell you that it gave me an excuse to write and create, but that would be something of a cop out because one shouldn’t need such excuses to practice one’s craft.

    I could tell you that it gave me an audience, but honestly I could have currated an email list of my friends and family and had nearly as many eyes to see what I made.

    What it really did was create value for someone else.

    What the social media networks never admit is that the house is only one guaranteed to win, and it’s always their house. Sure, some folks hit a jackpot and walk out richer and wiser, but most of us spend our creative chips and they vanish into the coffers of the app or network.

    I can’t tell you that you shouldn’t play the social media game, but I can suggest that there are far fewer winners there than there are the rest of us. And I can tell you that I have lately been, and will continue to be, putting more effort into building my own (much smaller and less social) networks with my creative energies.

    I wrote the first half of this post as a professional reflection on social media itself and maybe as a bit of shrouded advice about starting your own blog. But the truth is I’m feeling a little more than bitter about the whole thing. In fact feel more than a bit taken by these systems. Conned. Duped. Played. As have almost all of us.

    I remember participating in the early forum sites. Usenet, in particular, was really pretty much a crude ancestor of Facebook or Reddit: alt.movies.obsessive the joke went. But there was never any pretense that we were doing anything besides chatting with passing strangers, ghosts in the night, words on a screen that we knew were some other person but that person maintained a reputation that was as transient as the dial up connection.

    Obligatory Simpsons reference? Check out Radioactive Man Issue #42 for more explanation, huh?

    What we really did with the social media networks was recreate fame. We invented a way for people to be famous online, and if they were already famous offline to milk that fame even more online. The social networks invented the online celebrity: the influencer, so now rather than clambering to become a tv star or a movie a-lister, anyone with a smartphone, anyone posting anything, anyone participating was really just auditioning for the i-list.

    That was the whole game: the whole point of creating from that moment on was to build a following, become noticed, attract clicks, and generate revenue from it all. The new dream: and we all dreamed that dream because participating was playing was dreaming.

    Even now, you may be reading this going: well, what’s the point then? Why are YOU writing a blog if not to have people read it, if not to create content that persists and, in playing all that, rolls the dice on internet celebrity?

    I don’t know. I don’t know how to break free of that idea other than to do what I have been inclined to do from the beginning: share for the love and zen of sharing, and simply hope that it is enough to exist in a quiet corner of this infinite internet casino avoiding putting any more tokens into the house than needed to keep from getting booted out the door.

  • blog-iversary

    This coming Sunday, April 20th 2025, marks the twenty-fourth anniversary of my first blog post.

    You can’t even read it.

    I can.

    I mean, I have an archive of it somewhere in a document, stored away safely on multiple hard drives and backed up to the cloud and generally tucked away for some future time when I want to read about how I spent some random, idle day in April 2001. 

    But you can’t read it.

    That said, I have been thinking about that blog lately because of a long list of reasons, not the least of which is the state of technology, freedom, democracy and more in this world, and how so many of us enthralled by the idea of cheap fame are dumping billions of hours into populating the apps and websites of private companies. And how some of those companies are revealing just how much of a bait-and-switch this aways was, how sinister and self-serving they have always been, how much of this gets fed into the AI behemoth, and how we have collectively tethered a decade of creative energy into feeding a corporate beast that does not care a whit about the soul of humanity.

    I should never have shuttered that blog of mine, the one that would now be twenty-four years old and a few millions of words strong.

    Every so often I sit down and try to resurrect something of that vibe, though.

    Every so often I kick off a new site with a grand idea and think, now if I could just get some momentum on this topic or that theme and maybe I could start writing more again.

    But it never sticks.

    And maybe it never will again.

    But it doesn’t mean I won’t keep trying to write, because as I realize with each passing day, not writing as much as I can, logging what I want to write about and not caring my own whit about cheap fame or filling up the follows or feeding some corporate social vortex, I can maintain my own little bit of that human soul. 

    And you can definitely read this.

    For now.