Signing off for Christmas

Yesterday morning I had an epiphany. Well, actually I had a full english breakfast, but before that I made the decision to dramatically reduce my use of social media until the new year.

This actually boils down to removing the Facebook and Twitter apps from my iPhone, as it’s become apparent to me that my default holding pattern, given access to the world’s information, literature and opinion, is to dive into the social media echo chamber and look at videos of cats.

The following blinding revelation occurred to me

  1. I’m not all that interesting…
  2. …neither is anyone else. No hard feelings and of course I don’t mean you personally. This is more of a collective thing.

It’s telling that this is the first blog post I’ve published in well over a year (on this account, in any case). Naturally I had something to say, so that helps, but clearing the decks of mindless consumption opens opportunities.

I was concerned about missing @ mentions on twitter, as I find this a useful way of making arrangements. Given it’s the week before Christmas, there would be the possibilities of missing out on pints. To deal with this, I set up an IFTTT recipe to alert me.

I wonder what they can be...

Furthermore, I still have a need to make myself heard. This actually might become more important if I manage to reduce my consumption of social media into the new year, especially as I use the social networks to promote my business and other activities. I’ve set up Agile Tortoise Drafts to compose and send posts. It’s a conscious write-only activity which I tested by sending an update about The Force Awakens. (I heartily enjoyed it. The film, not the status update.) I understand that this has caused some comment along the lines of “thought you weren’t on Facebook ATM”. I’m not. I’ve not seen your comments, but thanks for your concern.

I’d not like you to think that I’m some kind of digital ascetic. I’m still blogging. I’ll doubtless end up Instagramming some festive sights, which will appear on Facebook and Twitter. I’m still playing Neko Atsume. What I’m not doing is spending time watching the stream of inane social chatter (again, not you). It’s too tiring and I need a rest.

This blog post will likely automatically cross post as well. Feel free to comment there if you like. I’ll read it in the new year.