Here's somethning I wrote yesterday and intended to post on SDF bboard. I thought better of it, and am going to post it here instead, on my blog, that I have not worked on in about five years. This might be the longest I've ever been absent from it. I took a three year break from 2006 to 2009, and then started again in 2012. So really, blogging has been occasional at best, sicne 2006. I really only had a three year run at doing it consistently. But it's all here, uploaded. Not that anyone will ever find it, because it's not linked. Maybe Google will find it at some point, but it's possible it will not. I don't know how to check webstats on SDF, but I guess I could learn. In a way this feels like going backwards, since blogging was something I used to do and then stopped. I think I stopped in 2006 because of some legal threats, that were probably unfounded. It was a libel claim, and what I had said was not untrue, although it was insulting and damaging.
I'm 42 years old now, and a lot has changed since 2012. Last I wrote I was finished with grad school and deciding on what to do next with my life. I chose "moving to Montreal" as my thing to do, and tried it -- at least I can say that. I was trying to make something of my life, which is commendable even though it was executed in a misguided way (no job lined up and no contacts, in a Francophone city). I got really depressed and moved "home", in with my mother and stepfather back in Maryland. She had gotten married in 2008, and because of that I went to graduate school. I had to get out of the house; although I was told I could maybe keep living there I doubt that arrangement would have been tolerated for long. So I went off, the house was sold, I finished, moved to Montreal to be a star, and then moved into my mother's and stepfather's new marital home (his old house). It wasn't perfect but it wasn't torture.
Part of the reason I stopped blogging, on top of the legal threat, was the related matter of reputation managment -- I was wary of some prospective or current employer finding my blog, reading something they didn't like -- or just not liking the fact that I had an open platform on which to discuss my random unfettered thoughts -- and not hiring or firing me. I think it's a reasonable fear, kind of, but maybe an exaggerated one: first of all, many employees have blogs; I'm not that crazy, or that special. Second of all, if a company doesn't like you, doesn't that mean you shouldn't work there? Maybe a blog is a positive thing. I'm sort of looking on the bright side here; a more realistic assessment might be that yeah, it is dangerous to have a blog, because it's safer to have employees that are blank slates, or at most are only full of effusive praise for the company and express "passion" about their work. In reality, every employee is critical of their work and workplace and colleagues and boss. But talking about this publically, or even privately, is a no-no. "Don't bite the hand that feeds you".
Anyway, I'm going on and on. Let me paste in that thing I wrote yesterday, condemning social media.
It's just not good for me. I get too easily upset by the puppet personalities I encounter there, and the list is too long for me to pretend the problem is not me, although maybe absolutist geeks who think they're special -- the proverbial wonkos of the world -- just aren't any normal person's cup of tea. "I'm picky about who I hang out with", micahb once said. Maybe sdf is full of people who are predisposed to hate each other while they all hang out in the same room.
I've been trapped by social media (facebook, sdf, reddit, etc) for around 20 years now. I've made attempts to quit before but maybe this time will be different -- maybe to catalyse my recovery I can go through a 12 step program, or resume blogging, or take long walks on the beach, or talk to strangers in bars. I don't know what I'll do but it won't be this. Maybe the world is just shitty and asocial now, and people are being driven in mass numbers to inherently unsatisfactory experiences like "the sdf community" because it's their only option. I don't think it's a coincidence that sdf com contains a disproportionate number of single men.
Even smj sort of hates it here; periodically he gets sick of everyone and takes a long break. Social media might be fine in small doses but it also has an addictive quality that makes those small doses difficult to moderate. Sdf contains useful/fun services and projects, but the "community" in my opinion only subtracts from them. The sdf milieu is not reality -- it's a weird pseudosocial environment where people formulate incorrect ideas about others based on text projections/puppets.
Social media doesn't drive everyone insane, and if you like it then fine -- keep it up. But, it ain't for me. I'll keep doing my anonradio stream/podcast, hosting my site, etc, but here is my dramatic declaration: FROM NOW ON I won't do any more com/pcom/bboard/ytalk/whatever.
I sincerely hope I don't "come back", this time (i managed to quit for over a year once), but I don't have a good track record in terms of replapses. "they all come back", it's said, and in a lot of cases that's true. But, I know of a few people who have managed to escape: randy, sjhs, djm62, etc. so, I have roll models. All I can do is keep trying to do what I want to do, and hope it works out one day -- hope that the universe finally grants me free will, or at least just a modicum of mental consistency.
Interacting with disembodied avatars amounts to a toxic social videogame that stopped being fun a long time ago. Even if it's not a bad experience for you, you will probably agree that there's *something* consistently unhealthy about internet interaction; they've known this since early USENET/IRC. again, if it isn't making life worse then fine -- keep it up. But it is for me. Maybe it's something you (not i) can do in moderation, the way some people can drink in moderation. But for others that one can of beer is deadly.
Facebook is not even worth posting a "quit message" on, although maybe that speaks to its insidious evil: it's become such a normal, natural part of life, like breathing, that "quitting facebook" doesn't even really make sense anymore. "just use it less and/or use it only in ways that make you happy". Easier said than done.
It isn't you, and it isn't me -- the problem is that social media sucks. I'll do my reading and writing somewhere else.
I still believe this, in the abstract at least, but I just don't feel so bad about things now and am more inclined to not rock the boat.