Now I don't do much social media. I got out of Facebook after one of my nieces blew up at me online over a comment I made over the abortion issue about two years ago. Now, I am pro-life without exception and without reservation. I'm even anti-death penalty, because nobody with an net worth over a certain amount ever gets to ride the lightning or take a hotshot in the antecubital. Until we have parity between rich and poor when it comes to putting the lights out on assholes, I'm for not giving the government power over life or death. And this is not to say that I'm opposed to individuals doing what is needed to preserve life and property. Good fences make good neighbors, but as Vlad Tepes showed, Bad Neighbors can make Good Fences.
But yeah, after damn near losing my niece, who I love, believe to be honestly wrong, and do not wish to lose, I deleted my facebook account. Social media is just social masturbation, a shitty substitute for having relationships with people. I did keep Instagram, though, because it's mostly just pictures and video clips and the algorithm knows what you want. In my case, boobs, guns, and boats, and nothing else.
... or it did. The coprophiliacs at Meta have realized that negative reactions create more clicks than positive. Somewhere along the way Instagram started steering me towards things I don't like, am not interested in, or don't tolerate and don't want. Around 6 months ago, I started seeing videos of people dying, LGBT issues, things for sale, or vapid retarded ugly and wealthy white people with weird colored hair saying the most foul, vile and absolutely stupid shit. Less boobs, less guns, less boats. But when I did see those things, it was posts that were negative on the subject. I am a boobs-positive person at my core. And to a lesser extent, I am a gun nut and boat nut too I guess. Either way, Instagram has become an exercese in Doom-Scrolling, where every interaction made me less and less happy.
I started saying things that were less polite about the things I was seeing. I started getting my comments deleted as a result. And that's fine. Life is hard enough without me getting my jollies being shitty to some stranger just because they were shitty first. But it just kept getting worse. More and more egregious shit. Within 2 minutes, while scrolling the gram doing my morning business (I like to pump bilges on the seat of ease on waking up, start the day off positive), I would see somebody die or some 16 year old in a $200 shirt go on about why capitalism is bad.
I took it too far last month and used many of the new no-no words , any one of which trigger an instant automatic post removal. Using too many of them at once flags your account, turns out. Well, I got creative and used all of them at once (to be fair, on a morning where my morning poop was disappointing, it was raining and the first thing I saw was some fat hideous landwhale singing about how sexually stimulating her abortion was), and my account got deleted about an hour after I got the notice that my post was removed.
Well, that was a bummer. But maybe I had it coming. And it was nice to have a few days where I wasn't doomscrolling and dealing with the overwhelming negativity.
2 weeks ago I started a new account on Instagram, and recontacted family. Keeping it light, not engaging in anything political, and going more or less boob-free, too. Nothing risque in the least. Barely even PG, honest. Within 2 days I got a post saying my account has a 7-day ban for sharing my account with a service that farms likes and subscribers for you. What the hell is even that?
Turns out, shallow terrible garbage people can share their account with foreign companies that bump up your subscribers using thousands of fake accounts so you look more popular. What kind of retarded guttermuppet trashbag even does that? I didn't know it was a thing.
Well, there's no way to say "hey, that's wrong, I didn't do that shit." so I took my ban, and a few days ago it passed. By then another dozen or so relatives and coworkers wanted to follow me. Great, now I could say yes. The algorithm can't feed you negative shit if you don't respond to anything, after all.
Except the next day, the ban came back for another week. Same reason.
I'm pretty sure I'm on a blacklist for thoughtcrime.
Well, jokes on them. Turns out, by remembering to bring my reading glasses with me as soon as I get out of bed, I can read a quick page of whatever book I'm reading while on the Morning Seat. I tend to read fiction almost exclusively, and I'm not into tragedies, so I'm back to being a big fucking ray of sunshine even before the caffeine hits. Honest to God, I actually do feel a bit sunnier. I mean, I knew that social media is a cancer on the soul, but this is hard data here. And when launching the Brown October of a morning, I am more apt to have a positive experience. 'Nuff said.
No comments:
Post a Comment