Dear me, I am so tired of constant references to 'social media', and being asked to give a 'like' to, or 'follow', some person or company that I fleetingly engage with.
It's a plague. Why should I share my approval of a service provided? Or fill in their tedious online customer-satisfaction survey? They got paid. That's enough. I'm not going to give them any more of my attention. Nor inflict them on others. If I especially enjoyed the experience, then I'll be back. Otherwise, leave me alone.
Nowadays the commercial world seems to be organised on the basis that almost everyone is on one social media platform or another, and is eager to be contacted, and will share stuff. It's not a mistaken assumption. It is, after all, a basic human wish to be part of one or more social groups, and to interact. Few are outright hermits. Many do like passing on good reports, especially if there's a reward.
I suppose that makes me a social outcast. I shun social media. I don't want to be on any social media platform. I don't need to belong to anything. I particularly dislike adding extra value to a commercial company's sale: made to act as a channel for more business. I want to stand back from such complicity. In fact, it would give me the greatest pleasure to tell any company seeking an online endorsement that I can't do it, not being on - say - FaceBook. Or just to say 'no' to any request to rate them on Google - which comes up every day, and has (as you will guess) set me off.
I do use the Internet, but only for information, and - occasionally - to buy things I want. It's not my main source of entertainment, nor is it a substitute for real face-to-face friendships. As for 'keeping in touch', ordinary emails and texts work fine. Just as they always did. If anybody can't be bothered to contact me because I'm not in their FaceBook or What'sApp group, then, to be honest, I don't care: they won't be the kind of friend I value.
I don't count this blog as a 'social medium'. Nor my Flickr site. Blogger and Flickr are merely my long-running personal platforms for essays and photographs of my own authorship - a way of getting creative work out there on a non-commercial basis - and they are not intended to promote anything, nor provoke comments, nor help me keep in touch with anyone - although they do incidentally generate responses from time to time, usually welcome. Both serve a secondary purpose, enabling people who know me - but who don't necessarily wish to get in touch - to follow my daily life. Or at least edited highlights from it. But I don't use Blogger and Flickr to contact strangers, nor to be part of a trend, nor to keep up with some new fashion. I don't need to feel 'involved'.
I would never turn to social media as my main way of finding out what's going on, or help me make important decisions. I'd make a considered assessment from proper sources I might reasonably trust. And yet most people do interact with social media. They do it every day and do it a lot, and seem to like being alerted to incoming messages and responses, and video clips to watch, and special offers. I have to assume they enjoy that interaction and are not willing to forego it, despite all the reports of mood damage, mental health dangers, inducements to gamble, pressure to take out expensive loans, or urgings to make dodgy investments.
It's an addiction, like cigarette-smoking used to be. And like cigarettes, people know the risks but can't leave it alone. Getting one's phone out and scrolling through the latest stuff on the screen has long been a socially-acceptable thing to do, almost anywhere, in company or alone. I remember being told ten or twelve years ago that 'you're never alone with a phone'. Even more true now. Indeed, it would be entirely possible to live in a solitary world in which social media supplied all the human contact. As was the case for many during the lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. Those lockdowns will have done much to reinforce most people's reliance on social media.
And of course such reliance is wonderful news for the owners of these platforms. What a money-spinner for them, to have billions of people hooked and inevitably seeing the ads thrust at them.
Well, the clock can't be turned back. I must seem an increasingly odd figure, staying out of it. And yet at the same time I feel happier and happier as time goes on. Yes, I may miss out on seeing some daft video clip, and hearing about the latest style sensation. But I won't be upset by unfounded rumours and personal attacks, nor fed political falsehoods, nor become a potential target for some clever romance fraud. In a nutshell, I am avoiding all the social control and manipulation that social media addicts have to contend with. And it's good to snap my fingers, and live my life on my own terms, uncaring about whether I'm on-trend or not.
What about my favourite websites - the ones to do with photography for example - which I might visit at least once daily, maybe oftener? Well, they function for me as online magazines, and provide interesting reading matter to peruse, as I would a printed publication. And like a printed publication, I don't interact with them. I don't post comments. In the past - ten years ago maybe - I might have been tempted to, but such exchanges usually degenerated into rudeness. Somebody always pounced upon my contribution, to prove I was talking nonsense. Or the tone was polite but dismissive. These forums were (and still are) dominated by opinionated men, and no woman is going to be taken seriously. Why join the fray and get bruised? It makes no sense.
And that, I suppose, is the bottom line for me, where social media is concerned. Join in, and inevitably somebody will say something unkind; or a criminal will spot me, and try to groom me for some sting. For these reasons alone, I'm well content to keep away.
