Category: Social MediaCategory: Social Media

The reason I talk about websites and RSS and building a cozy email inbox is because if we want to escape social media we need someplace to go.

I went to the New Jersey shore this weekend; colder temps, fewer crowds, lots more parking. I saw monster trucks and ate pumpkin pancakes and ran 5 miles in the rain. It was perfect.

The “trick” of spending less time on social media is spending more time on other things.

Deleting an app is the easy part, but then what?

It’s not hard, but it’s hard to do.

For years we’ve posted fun stuff on social media, but then we treat our email list like an ATM machine.

“I recently saw a Reel of an artist explaining how they weren’t making sales because the Instagram platform was limiting their reach.

I clicked around and found their website (it was a store), and at the bottom they had an email sign up form, so I subscribed.

A few weeks went by, and by the time they sent me something, I had no idea who it was from.

This creative person, this spreader of whimsical words and imagery, posting daily their delights and magic. I subscribed, basically saying “hello, keep in touch.”

But instead of their magic and art, I got a menu.

A list of product images, prices, and the “BUY NOW” buttons below.”

That’s from a post I wrote in 2023, and sadly it hasn’t gotten any better.

This right here from Emma Orlando is basically how our week Social Media Escape Club calls started:

It didn’t take long for social media to enter the chat because it has a funny way of stealing the show even IRL spaces these days. As the coffee went from warm to tepid, we lost ourselves on the trail of online exhaustion, more specifically the fact that it’s a bullshit metric measuring people’s ability to be in the room and how samey it all feels nowadays.

The exhaustion. The bullshit. The shame of some random niece you know being able to go viral, but you can’t even get 10 people to like a post.

I’m not saying deleting social media is for everyone, but if it hurts, if it’s painful, if it’s making you feel bad – none of those things can be good for your art, your business, your mental well being.

There are recovering musicians who don’t play bars.

As creative, magical, artistic beings we can find other ways to do the work. Are the platforms built by techbros the only way to flourish? I think not!

The quote above hits on something else, too – “the chat.” Talking with other people about the pain is the best way to beat it. Social media loves to isolate us, make us feel like we’d be lost without it. That sounds like “toxic relationship” langauage to me, and I want nothing to do with it.

So keep talking with other people. Keep the conversation going, in person, on the phone, in a Zoom call – whatever you have to do to get the feelings of exhastion and grossness out of your system, and find ways to replace it with better vibes.

This was inevitable: Meta charging for links in a Facebook posts and Instagram Reels.

As Future of Media reports, “without paying for a subscription, pages could come up against a maximum of two Facebook links per month.”

And it seems they’re going after the “link in comments” trick, too.

“The new restrictions being tested include links in comments. Users included in the test have reported that once they hit the limit, their URLs appear as plain, non-clickable text.”

The best time to have left Instagram and Facebook was five years ago. The second best time is now.

(via Pixel Envy)

I can walk for three hours per day because I choose to not spend three hours a day scrolling through social media. Thirty minutes here, an hour there, it all adds up.

Maybe Social Media Escape Club has missed some growth opportunities because I’m not in the “public forum” of social media, engaged in conversations and discourse through the day (and evening, and night), but I dare to believe that time spent on other activities have led to my own growth.

I host three Zoom calls per week, talking with people about leaving social media, building websites, and writing newsletters. That’s 3+ hours per week. And then 21 hours a week walking. A full day every week that I’m not giving to any social media platform.

Again, maybe I’d have 10,000 more email subscribers if I spent time on X or Threads engaging, but I like the people I get to talk to every week. And I like the calm and peace I find from walking so much.

Maybe everything doesn’t need to be about follower growth, or increasing reach.

A musician practicing three hours per day would probably compound so much in a years time. A writer or a poet could fill dozens of notebooks in a month’s time. How many sketch books could an artist fill if they spent three hours per day sketching?