I was there at the beginning of social media. I started my Facebook account almost 20 years ago, and I had a MySpace account before that. (I didn’t do Friendster, though, so maybe I’m not *that* legit.)
Social media was quite stupid at the start as everyone was trying to figure out what we were going to use it for. The inherent misogyny of Facebook’s foundation aside, it also was mostly harmless. When Zuckerberg let go and just let us decide what Facebook was going to be, we started to figure it out for ourselves.
The problem is a common denominator in all of this is, while people want control (and, I still believe, deserve it), they kind of suck when you give it to them, and they invariably ruin good things. It takes one bad collective decision to flush something good down the drain.
A decade or so after social media took off, things got real. Suddenly, we were all having important conversations about the world. Social media, we started to realize, was harmful because so many of us just still didn’t know how to use it, how to discern bull shit (because they never really learned those media literacy skills), or perhaps more crucially how to be a decent human being to another human being when we couldn’t look that person in the face.
Empathy was a key evolutionary trait we’d evolved to use as a vital interpersonal tool. Empathy keeps tribes together when they ought to split. Empathy makes people instinctually help others even when there is no immediate benefit to the individual, and in so doing, everyone benefits in the long run.
Empathy helps us overcome our worst impulses. And empathy, it turns out, isn’t something we’re very good at exercising in the abstract.
Back when social media became the place where we were having much of our public debate, I resolved to keep the lines of communication open because I thought, to some extent, having these important conversations with people could do some good. After all, it was something I was good at, and it was using a means of communications I was good with. Maybe people would listen to me, a reasonable, understanding, and respectful person who was both skeptical and diligent with his research and fact-finding. Maybe I could help cut through some of the bull shit. Maybe I could make a difference.
The thing I failed to understand now seems obvious: even though I have these skills because I’ve devoted my life to them, most other people don’t, and the trouble was it became incredibly draining to carry that burden of feeling like any time I opened a social media app I would find another record to correct, another bad take to address, another piece of misinformation to right, or more awful behavior from someone who had no capacity to responsibly communicate via text and didn’t really have an interest in personal growth.
All of this was constantly waiting for me on a device I carried in my pocket.
I’ve been battling some deep depression this year, and I may go into that another time. I realized months ago, this burden I was carrying had been hurting me for a very long time, so I removed myself from all social media. As a writer in these times, social media is a necessity, and that’s unfortunate since it’s so incredibly toxic (because the people who use it are so incredibly toxic).
Since this presidential election, I’ve been dealing with a lot, but some of what I’ve been dealing with is that none of it meant anything. I carried that burden for years, and none of it mattered. I changed nothing.
All these years on, I think social media is still quite stupid, and I’m still trying to figure out what it is supposed to be used for. I’ve been thinking about why I came to Facebook in the first place. I felt a need for community and support. I needed social media as a person who takes nourishment from relationships, but I also needed it as a writer whose very existence happens only with the support of others.
After a big change, I have to take a lot of time to adjust and figure out a path forward, so after this election, I committed to not making any decisions for a while; however, one decision I will allow myself to make is to reprioritize my social media experience so that it provides me with the community and support I need. What this means is I’m going to remove from my networks the people (regardless of who they are) that I allowed to collectively drain me for years. To be frank, if what I need is community, those people apparently don’t care to be in my community, and if what I need is support, those people were never going to share in that support anyway.
I’m not one for fanfare. Typically, I would just do this instead of making a big stink about it. However, I think it’s important at this point to say something to those of you who are in my community and have supported me. If you’re like me and you kept people who hurt or drained you in your social networks because of some misplaced hope that, by maintaining those connections, you could help them grow as people and ultimately benefit us all in the end, I think you can let that go now. Make your social networks places of community and support (or whatever you need) because, I think, that’s one thing that will not only help us survive in the short term, but also I now believe focusing on fortifying those in our communities and supporting the vulnerable among us who need that support is the way to collectively grow our strength so that, in the venues where we might actually be able to make a difference, we will be more prepared to do so instead of disheartened and drained by a constant weight of ignorance, disregard, and malfeasance, a fight that never changed anything and never was going to, at least not in places like this.
All this time, I think some of us have been fighting the tribalism that social media (and those who manipulate it) want to create, and I think that fight is over.
The last decade has been exhausting, and unfortunately, it’s going to continue for the foreseeable future. It probably will endure for the rest of our lives. In the story of America, this election was probably the final chapter before a time jump during which a whole lot of darkness happens.
But, I don’t think it was the final act in the story of America. There are still chapters to write. We’ll need you all for that, so take care of yourselves because it’s only after you care for yourself that you can care for others.
If you’re reading this, much love to you.