Twitter and social media

I quit Twitter and Facebook a while back.

Most days I am happy with this decision. I'm not only happier, I'm also happier with who I am as a person.

I'm on Instagram, which I'm frustrated by in some ways, especially it being owned by Facebook, but it has most of the people I missed most out in the Internet ether. I tried to do Tumblr instead, because I like the functionality and lack of Facebook ownership marginally better, but too many people I know either never went there or migrated away at some point, so my support was largely lonely.

I'm also, for whatever it's worth on Letterboxd and Goodreads, which have only limited social benefits (or deficits). I'm also on LinkedIn, although, like everyone, I have no idea why, except, I guess, it's my key connection to a handful of people I don't wish to lose all connection to, even though we don't actually make any contact through it.

Similarly, I'm on Stage32, which sounded super promising when it was introduced to me, but I don't think I'm connected to even a single person I've had any social interaction with ever there, so I'm on it because I've never deleted it.

I haven't deleted my Quora, but all of their recent changes to make it more profitable, or whatever their motivation, have made it an intolerable hellhole in my opinion. That was too bad, because it was nice for a long, long time as an alternative tothe toxic environment of social media.

But the other day, I found myself wanting to update my Letterboxd account, including my picture, and was informed my picture there was attached to my Twitter account. So, I created a new Twitter account.

Then I was involved in a discussion with people who were super pleased with Twitter and their activity there. So I peeked in through my new account that I set up just to peek in. I looked at the accounts of some of my favorite people who are not on or at least not active on Instagram.

Now, I want to be clear, this was kind of a random assortment of people. And these were people who, if some combination of them got together at a bar or coffee shop near me on a regular basis, I'd be unbelievably excited to go every week. I'd update my life schedule to make it work. I'd travel a mildly inconvenient distance. All of that.

But on Twitter?

As Marshall McLuhan taught us, the medium is the message. Twitter is a place to declare things not to listen.

And, yeah, I'm not still not feeling that right now.

Even if you're declaring something I agree with like, "Hey, Neil is awesome!", who cares? I've had altogether too much declaration at this point in my life.

I'm leaving that new account up. I might post blog posts there, because, why not? I might leave it for the eventuality that I find having a Twitter account necessary and/or more desirable. I certainly left my original Twitter created and unused for a long time before using it to any extent. Perhaps that'll make sense again.

Or perhaps I'll be that careless with my own needs again.

Who the fuck knows?

Why blog?

I've decided to blog again.

I'm not committed to giving up videos at this point, but I'm no longer sure I can bring myself to keep up on it regularly. As I said at some point in the process, I could definitely get enthusiastic about it if I could get someone else to play me in my videos. That sounds like a just a canned line, I suppose, but it's certainly true. I have two videos that due to technical issues and me wandering too far astray have multiple parts that I'd have to spend a lot of time going through to turn into videos, and I simply can't bring myself to spend that much time listening to my own voice.

So, the I was reading The Creative's Curse by Todd Brison, which mostly didn't work for me. There's a sweet spot in storytelling and teaching in which the specific evokes the universal, which I think this was reaching for, but I found that it eventually had too much specific that had no relationship to me or my needs. That said, he suggests regular blogging, which spoke to me.

Now, here's the funny thing, Instagram is the only social media site I'm active on.

Mind you, I keep thinking I should drop it, because it's owned by Facebook, just like I should use a different blogging service because of Blogger's connection to Google. Yeah, like everyone, I have a LinkedIn that I rarely use. I mean, it's the only connection I have to a handful of people I like having some connection to, but damn, if it isn't almost a bunch of "navigating white collar workplaces" and "selling capitalism to the masses" articles making my want to gouge out my eyes.

But while my Instagram username is flying_guillotine_, awkward underscores to distinguish from other "flying guillotine" users, it won't let me put this blog as the link on my bio. Now, I'd be lying to suggest that my intention with the name "Rise of the Flying Guillotine" isn't partly political.

It is, of course, at least as much a reference to Kung Fu movies.

For my purposes, however, it's good. I'm going to come over here and blog regularly, not promote it significantly and try to ignore how many people bother to read. I think that's how I've always gotten the most out of writing.

I don't have an agenda at this moment. I don't want to avoid politics necessarily, but I want to avoid the kind of reactive political writing that social media is so good at encouraging everyone to get distracted by. I'm not innocent of that, in fact, I'm too easily swept up in it, which is part of the reason I stepped away of most social media. It's so clear to me how dangerous the entire process is to everyone.

I also don't want to do movie reviews. I always hated my reviews the most, out of all of my writing. Do I say that somewhere else here already? It just always what brought out my high school English essay writing, which I'm glad I learned to do, I suppose, but have no interest in further exploring. It was one of my go-tos when someone convinced me I could impress some person or people with my blog and use that for some kind of later rewards that clout might buy.

I won't be surprised, but I will be disappointed, if that's all I end up doing with this damn thing. It is indeed exactly my disappointment with my previous blog that I did too much of both of those things.

I'm really hoping it'll be a quiet place that I do some glorified journaling for the sake of writing words in some order to focus some of my thoughts.

I can't explain to myself or you why it's still easier for me to do that in public than in a notebook hidden under my bed. Putting something on the Internet in hopes it goes largely unnoticed is some kind of contradiction in my head that I'm still working to resolve.