Don't Sign On

This is the week for no Social Media.  No Reddit, No Twitter, not even FB.  I checked the March Birthdays, as I would be willing to wish old friends a wonderful special day, but there are none this week. Reddit icon removed from opening screen.  X never on it.  FB stays, as I need some discipline not to open it.  Email stays.

Despite rationing these things, I never set a chess clock or electronic equivalent to measure when I am signed on.  It's likely more time than I would have assessed by unmeasured impression.  I think I can shun this for a week.

So what do I and everyone else crave from these sites?  The designers of these programs know that.  Twitter is basically a wasteland where people of prominence pitch their political opinions.  It is also a place where The Atlantic runs articles that I have read for others to comment upon whether they have read it or not.  It may also be where a lot of lonely people seek the illusion of connection.  I will occasionally get a message that somebody decided to follow me.  I open their profiles, which invariably show them following 4K people, which may not all be real people, but only have 40 people following them.  There seems something desperate about that.  Or at least unlikely to make a lonely person less lonely.

Reddit will be a lot harder to shun this week.  It is a platform where I am helpful to people that I do not know.  I should be helpful to people I do not know.  And the designers notify me of comments based on my posts in my email inbox, which I have started deleting unopened.

FB was fine when I first enrolled fifteen or so years back.  It reconnected me to people from my past.  I acquired some tolerance for people who went on trajectories I would have avoided, or acquired ideologies very much in opposition to mine.  Its program algorithms were pretty effective at picking out things I liked, from my favorite comic strips to places I've been or regret never having been.  But I am overwhelmed by the unwelcome, while the friendships of people from my fondest past have mostly ebbed.  Very little is stimulating.

So without this for a week, or indefinitely might be better, what replaces the time allotted to it, or more accurately,  frittered by it?  Glancing at my whiteboard where my semi-annual projects appear in the left column, I've never denied myself a chance to pursue any because of social media.  Though it has been an interruption at times from what I should have been doing instead.  But sometimes signing on to FB or Reddit is a reward for a noble effort in something on that project list.  There are times when I go out to a park or out to a coffee shop to escape the attraction of my laptop, or even bring the laptop with me for a pre-determined purpose.  I may be able to do more of those things.

First morning off the X, FB, Reddit going OK.  No withdrawal symptoms.  No dramatic urge to migrate to email.  No refocus to my big personal initiates either.