things got really weird when I got off social media

here is what happened

~ about a 4 minute read

I’ve been musing over something for the last few months now, and that something is social media. what I’ve been musing about social media, is how my life dramatically improved when I got off it, and how shocking it is that I neither miss it, nor realised all the ways it was stealing big joys from my life, like privacy and disappearing truely.

a birth canal at the chalice well in Glastonbury

my relationship with social media, which refer to Facebook and Instagram, traveled the same path. it went something like this: I wasn’t interested at all and then I became interested, and then I started sharing photos and I loved sharing photos but then I started to read peoples opinions on everything and compare my life to those stars that shine over the internet and then I got angry about everything, and then felt shame for sharing my opinions about everything. at the very last death rattle I felt nothing but disdain and depression for these apps that had so nonchalantly walked into my life, yet changed it severely.

with Facebook, I got so bored; so sick of the ads and the warnings about stranger danger and the mothers with their babies. I started seeing hateful right wing opinions that had me engaging in online battles until one day at work, around 4 years ago, locked in a battle with an old friend from Canada about climate denying, I just deleted my account. I hated Facebook long before I got off Facebook and its beyond freaky how it somehow listens to your personal thoughts, and then advertises to you, regarding your inner world.

how beautiful is England

instagram was a bit different, albeit it went the same way. for me, instagram was something I could curate; something that would make me popular and where my art would shine and where I would become a renown tarot reader and woman worker. none of this happened yet I held on. I kept going back. I defended it to josh, lying to his face. ‘ but I like instagram - it makes me happy,’ I would say. but in reality, I fucking hated instagram.
its never winter on the gram because its always summer somewhere. people are always doing well and even those who aren’t have somehow figured out how to market and sell their depression. people I love in real life I hate on social media because it only shows you one dimension and its generally the worst one. you need to see people fully to love them. I started to see hateful left wing opinions and realised that the people claiming they were defending our rights sounded a lot like those trying to control them. I hated the vanilla of it all - the baby pics and the wedding pics and the holiday pics yet I engaged and participated. I wasn’t in control. I hated the mocking memes, the mummy memes, the single lady memes. I hated the authentic ones as much as the fake ones. it became a battlefield.

I pulled back when I came here to substack but kept up Mondays to share my writings. as my following dropped, because I was now an undesirable due to my lack of engagement, it caused me physical pain to get back on the app to share a hard-worked article to a vapid crowd who just scrolled for something more not knowing what more they wanted. I hated my friend’s posts and their friend’s posts and their friend’s posts. I hated everyone on instagram and it wasn’t the people per se, but the the app and how it deadens us to anything real, and then makes everything a showcase. so one Monday as I was listening to Taylor Swift sing ‘I hate it here,’ I said goodbye. that was around 3 months ago and I have never looked back.

the weird things that have happened as a direct consequence have been, well, weird. for instance, I haven’t missed it once. not once! I thought I would. I thought I would miss sharing my curated life, my walks through the streets of Lisbon, my pics screaming I am on holiday, but I haven’t. another weird thing that has come from my absence is loving my absence. I didn’t realise that my privacy was luxurious and I was just giving it away for free to people and Mark Zuckerberg. I didn’t realise privacy was a gift, a privilege even. I didn’t realise how cool it was to be somewhere and only you and the person you’re with know it. it was weird that I didn’t know this, or had forgotten this - like I was under a spell.

or a curse.

I am in Lisbon however having a lovely time

but the weirdest thing to happen was my mood significantly shifted. I became more stable because I said goodbye to shit I did not need to hear or know or see. in other words, I controlled what I could in a world where I cannot control most things. you could say I went back in time to a simpler time that we all say has flown away but is still, unbelievably, here. and the scary thing about it all is that I didn’t even know social media was affecting me in such ways because it became so normal that I defended its presence in my life for the longest time. I somehow forgot it was created by a lonely man who never had anyone’s best intentions at heart.

how weird.

until next week my loves xo

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