Social Media Sea Change

It's all happening rather fast, so why don't we slow it down?

me, a real person, with a highly sensitive nervous system who is still learning how to be a person under fascism. Books and records and newsletters are helping!

It’s been an interesting time to mostly be off of social media for the past month. I, like many others, have been dreading January 20th and the inevitable cavalcade of bad news that would be incoming. Since 2016 I have been on HIGH ALERT TO STOP FASCISM using the internet and boy howdy am I tired. Being passively suicidal for much of 2020-2021 was a wake-up call for me that I couldn’t keep going on like this. The events of 10/7 and the ensuing social media battle of pro-genocide propaganda also really did a number on me. I’m a sensitive soul, with a sensitive nervous system, so this is hardly surprising — and yet I have gaslit myself for so long that I was fine and could handle everything that was being thrown my way as a semi-public person on the internet.

The interesting thing is that I have a pet theory that some autistics have been drawn like a moth to a flame at the promise of community, information, and info-dumping that social media can offer. I have experienced all of those things, of course, and it has been great. But I have also subjected myself to more bad news than my ancestors could possibly imagine. I have been bullied and yelled at and people have felt the almost incessant need to shame me for my opinions and feelings. It has both helped me and hurt me, and I want to be honest about both.

Where we are at as of January 21st is that the four main social media apps (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and now Tik Tok) in the US are now aligned with a fascist dictatorship and will almost certainly be prioritizing state propaganda (just see what has happened with Twitter/X). Even if I wanted to stay on these apps to continue to send up my flare to find readers/community, the algorithms will not be in my favor. It will be harder for everyone to use social media for the good bits, and it will get easier and easier to spread misinformation, propaganda, and hatred.

When Tik Tok sent push notifications on January 19th praising President Trump for saving that app I broke out in a cold sweat. As my friend Kelley noted, that is some Orwellian shit right there. What gives me anxiety is knowing that a lot of people in the US simply won’t care about state-run social media and the fascist oligarchy controlling our communication methods. What gives me a lot of hope is knowing that a lot of people do care, and recognize that just because we currently rely on certain companies to communicate doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.

The past few days (including the inauguration of Trump with Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerburg, Elon Musk up on stage) gave me the push I needed to finally deactivate my META accounts. I requested a download of all of my data (starting from 2004, when I first started a FB account) and I will slowly be going through it as I take some time to process my relationship to social media. I have a lot of grief and gratitude coming up, and I am rightly angry at the ways that our attempts to connect and share creativity have been co-opted by the capitalists yet again.

I am doing this because it is what is best for my mental health, and after slowly limiting my social media over the past year I have also realized that I am not getting that many new readers / paying readers, so my old metric (post and you will get readers) no longer applies. Going off of the four big platforms also seems to signal the death knell of me wanting to traditionally publish a book again anytime soon, since publishers are still using those metrics of “platform” to dole out advances. But I am happy to be a scrappy mid-size writer and creative who continues to adapt as things rapidly change.

As a big believer in autonomy, I think everyone should do what is best for their mental health when it comes to social media. And as an autistic, I can’t help but point out the patterns for where the big four are going (or already have). Sometimes we have to divest from systems before we can change them — and sometimes we can have a lot of fun fucking around with them from the inside. I don’t think there is one right way or one right answer. But I do know that we are in a period where social media is rapidly changing, and this is what is interesting to me.

For today’s discussion, I want to know: how has your relationship to social media changed in the past few years? And how are you feeling about it? I like how Ann Helen Peterson recently had this prompt and she asked people to please don’t explain why you are still on social media / using special apps. We all know the reasons why people stay (work, community groups, ect) and there is no need to justify it to others. You do you, boo. What I am interested in is what is changing, and how we are feeling about it. What are you grieving, and what are you grateful for? How are you processing the encroachment of fascism into our social media? How are you feeling in general about technology these days? Have you been delving into any local / shoring up the skills of in-person community building? Are you finding alternate ways from the big four to connect with folks online that are working well for you¹?

Let me know in the comments!

1. I am having so much fun over at Discord right now! Here is a link to my server if you wanna come join.