Life is rarely (read: never) simple and straightforward ... thus there are topics that I come back to several times as life experience dictates I should change my stance, possibly in response to a change of circumstances.
The topic I am revisiting in this post ... is named in the post title, so pretending it is a surprise doesn’t really work 😂 : social media. (Past posts include here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and earlier posts that I don’t want to spend time tracking down.)
As of now - or, more accurately, a few weeks ago when I started writing this - I’ve decided to cut down on my social media ... or perhaps more accurately, I’ve decided to invest less importance to it.
I have learned a lot, met some great people, and enjoyed interactions (especially some of the humour), but there are some problems:
- social media has people who are at different stages of evolution/development of particular topics, which can be a little like having kindergarten children and post-graduate Uni students all shouting in the same space.
In that environment, finding someone who will understand and aid you on a topic without being judgemental can be difficult.
It is also a reminder that, going the other way, one can never make all people happy; - some attempts at consideration can develop into shutting others down - and, on that, I have had a lifelong problem with low self esteem and need to have the confidence to back myself more.
An example of that is "liking" posts about distressing matters because it is a sign of approval of the poster: I could never bring myself to do that on the social media platform I originally used (dying, soon likely to be dead), and resisted it for a long time on my current choice of social media platform - and then when I gave in, got soundly and rightly criticised by someone who had the same values that I did. (That was actually the trigger for this post.)
One of these days I will write about the problems of trying to hold to values without any support - and of others having unreasonable expectations of what I will tolerate/do; - some of the focus is trivial - such as questions about which way toilet paper should hang, FFS - stuff that is so trivial it is offensive. Other aspects are truly clueless to the point of being discriminatory - such as polls about whether TGD people should be allowed to exist (the wording was about views on TGD people - which was basically giving bigots a platform);
- the final point is the variable acceptance of me - which is something I have found in real life as well - I am thinking in particular of several women and trans people (none in my life now, thank the Goddess) who have painted themselves as progressive and yet have judged me for not meeting their stereotypes of women/progressiveness - which is also a useful reminder of something I have found many times in life: no community is perfect, any more than any single person is.
I have better things to do with the end stage of my life. Time to simply focus on doing those tasks I know I have to complete, and self care, in whatever time I have left on this earth (I have not recovered from last few years of family - and growing personal - illnesses, work demands, the effects of the pandemic, the psychic impact of right wing haters and decades of neoliberal selfishness and hate, etc), and enjoy existing and any new friendships that come along. That doesn’t mean I will isolate myself or completely step away from social media, but I will give less focus and weight to digital life other than those aspects that are genuinely inclusive and either enjoyable or tolerable while being instructive - unpleasantry doesn’t help learning, and I cannot be bothered wasting my life with fools who want to direct sarcasm at me.
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Finally, remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing.
