Rabbit Holes, Part 2: Social Media

Social media.  Because your life isn’t complete unless you are up to date on what your neighbor is cooking for dinner, what that person you haven’t seen in 30 years is doing for vacation, and what some distant relative’s political views are. 

My introduction to social media happened one day years ago, when my husband Ernie asked me how my one brother was doing after his surgery.  I looked at Ernie quizzically. 

“What surgery,” I asked?

“I don’t know,” he answered, “but he posted something about it on Facebook.”

Facebook.  I was not on Facebook.  I knew of it, of course. Didn’t want it, didn’t need it in my life. I was a working outside the home mom with two kids, who has time for that?

But lo and behold,  how else was  I going to stay informed?  Clearly my brother didn’t think it important enough to call and tell me he was having surgery, but thought it important enough to post it on Facebook.

With that I signed up. 

I thought, well, I can manage this to just be for family.  It’ll be a good way to stay in touch with family, especially the ones I don’t get to see often. 

Mmhmm.  Next thing I know it’s expanded to close friends.  Then work friends.  Then friends you haven’t seen in forever.  Then neighbors. I’m not really sure how many friends I’m up to, but if you are not careful, you can get sucked down that rabbit hole and spend endless hours scrolling through meaningless sh*^#. 

At the end of the day that’s really all it is.  And this meaningless sh^# falls into one of two categories.  It’s either carefully curated sh^# about how wonderful somebody’s life is or it’s political sh*^#.

Some people like to think it’s a platform for change.  But seriously? Nobody is changing their views based on what they read on Facebook.  With the country so divided, instead, you get echo chambers.  Each side convinced they are right and nobody is listening to anybody whose views are different. 

Some of your neighbors who you really like and would describe as very nice people, you now know they are on that other side of the divide, the far right one, and had no qualms voting for a narcissistic, xenophobic, racist, mysogenist with zero political experience for president.  Now how are you supposed to enjoy the next neighborhood picnic knowing that?  Or worse, how about finding that out about one of your closest friends that you’ve been friends with since highschool?

Then there’s Instagram.  When this first came out, my artistic daughter tried to describe it to me and recommended I get the app. 

“So what’s it do again,” I ask her? 

“You post pictures”, she says. 

“What kind of pictures, “ I ask?

“Any pictures,” she answers. 

And then she shows me how you can edit the pictures, use different filters, etc.  Oooookaaayy.  Again, who cares about what pictures I take?  But I downloaded the app. In the beginning I would post a picture of my dogs, or my cat, or a sunset, or a flower, or a bee on a flower, every now and then. 

Since then I have bought a nice camera and have taken up photography. So what had been every now and then posting of pictures is now daily. Sometimes two or three times daily.

Alot of people will post the exact same stuff on FB on Instagram.  So not only do I see what they had for dinner on the FB post, I get to see it a second time on their Instagram post.  Myself? I do not post the same thing on FB and Insta (that’s what the cool kids call Instagram). I use IG purely for photography purposes. I use FB for ranting about the Eagles. The Phillies. The Nittany Lions. There was a lot to rant about this year.

Twitter is up next.  I had decided I would not get on Twitter.  It was all I could do to maintain FB and IG.  However, I was giving a presentation at a conference and they asked me to include my Twitter handle on each of my slides. 

“Oh crap, “ I thought.  “Now I have to create a Twitter account.  Ugh.” 

So now I have Twitter.  However, the only time I posted anything was at that conference.  I almost never go on Twitter.  I have to draw the line somewhere. And of course, it’s not even called Twitter anymore, thanks to Mr. Musk changing the name to X. And from what I understand, a lot more people no longer go on Twitter, er, X.

As a result of that drawing of the line, all the subsequent social media apps, like Snap Chat, Vine, Tik Tok—I’m like, nope, nuh-uh, ain’t happening.   Not to mention I’m pretty sure no one my age is on any of those.

I’ve been trying to work up the courage to walk away from social media.  But I just haven’t been quite able to make that break.  I mean, I might miss something like that millionth picture of someone’s toes at the beach, you know?