Maybe you’re a friend, a mutual follower, or just someone who stumbled across my hopefully defunct social media profiles. In any event, welcome. Here you can keep up with what I’m up to if you’re interested or find other means to contact me if you ever want to get to know each other better. This is basically the bare minimum I felt I had to do before I could start to feel comfortable with the idea.
To understand why, you have to know why I used social media in the first place. It wasn’t because I secretly wanted to be idolized or out of lack of other stuff to do. It was out of an old desire I had to meet people online. A desire that stretches back as far as the late 90s when I was an awkward emotional teenager.
You see, I grew up and live in a very rural part of a rural state (Wisconsin). While it’s certainly nice for my anxiety to live away from a lot of people, it sucked for trying to find true connections. Especially when my interests didn’t line up with the typical person. While people have increasingly become more open to things like anime and computers now, back then it felt absolutely nonexistent (It still feels that way today from time to time, but that’s more from me not getting out much)
I relied on the internet for much of my teenage years to form relationships. It started with IRC chatrooms and evolved into Final Fantasy web forums. By the time social media rolled around, I wasn’t as much of a teen anymore and had gained friends. College also gave me many avenues in which I pursued and obtained many relationships (Some of which exist to this day)
However, college only lasts for so long. Eventually I found myself back in this place where it’s a 20 minute drive to get to the local city, but there’s nothing there you care for. While I don’t plan to be here forever, hopefully, the opportunities to get out right now are not great. It’s not so bad, but it is incredibly lonely.
The internet, I believe, once had the potential of bringing people together. I still believed this even in the early days of social media, although I felt like the focus shifted too much from quality to quantity. Though as time went on, I realized what I wanted and what it provided were getting farther and farther apart.
All the rage-baiting, the AI slop, the bots.. It’s now reached a point where my addiction to it takes more dopamine than it gives. I thought for a while that maybe I could suffer through it, wade through the bullshit, and maybe find someone… But the more years that go by, the more I realize that’s not very likely. It’s only really making my life worse.
That’s not to say I didn’t find good people, but despite any desires I might have to be a bigger part of their lives, social media never gave a good way of doing that. Even if someone followed you back, while exciting, often didn’t lead to many one on one conversations. Maybe occasionally they would comment and you could have a bit of a rap with them, but there weren’t really the chances to take things beyond that. Most people already had their own lives and friend groups, and things like social media were meant for more superficial things.
I’m not trying to talk shit about anyone, honest. I just came to feel like social media, instead of giving me a tool that could help bridge the distance to forming relationships, only really gives you a few surface level connections. And that is the only thing a lot of people seem to be looking for. It provides a means of validating yourself.
It should be obvious, even if you don’t necessarily full agree with my assessments, that feeling this way is more than enough reason to want to quit. Yet, even I have had my doubts, which is why, despite trying many times, I’ve always come back. However, there’s only so many times where you can come back before you have to realize there’s nothing changing.
Maybe there was a different way I could of approached social media that could have gotten me what I want. I wont deny the possibility. I will say that it’s impossible to find out what that is continuing on as I have been. Thus I’m giving it up in hopes it can help me with my productivity and happiness. I’m also giving it up in hopes it forces me to explore other avenues to hopefully meet people.
If you read this far and are inclined to get in touch with me, I still use Discord (maegamisama) That most likely will not change. I should also note that not all social media is affected, but that I am putting restrictions on most.
More specifically, I wont be visiting Blusky or Twitter again. Blusky is a great place, people-wise, but still operates on some of the bad features or Twitter. Twitter is not a good place at all and I hope Elon Musk loses it all one day (maybe I’m a bit spiteful) Basically I’ll be avoiding anywhere that’s about posting to the void that’s not this blog
Reddit I’ll still allow when it comes to looking up information because sometimes that where a lot of my solutions to questions come from. I might also look to keep up with visual novel news (until I can figure out a better way of keeping up to date with things)
Youtube will be music and occasionally watching streamers I like. No more Youtube shorts. While they’re not social media like Twitter, they’re definitely more dangerous to productivity.
In short, this is where I will be from now on. If anyone happens to stumble across me or you knew me from any of those places I left, please feel free to reach out with the resources I provide here. I’d still love to get to know you and potentially be friends 🙂