Adventures in Social Media
You may recall that several years ago I nuked most of my social media accounts. With the exception of Facebook, which my lovely assistant updates for me, and Instagram, I was Officially Offline. But last April, in anticipation of the release of One World in Fall 2023, I decided to dip my toe back into social media. Now that we’re about 10 months out, I thought I’d share the results of that experiment.
What Didn’t Work
So, the elephant (bird?) in the room: Twitter. Dear God, Twitter. So, you all know my feelings about Twitter. But in the interests of marketing, I thought, “Well, what if I make an account again but it’s just a mirror of my Facebook account, and my assistant makes all the posts?” Surely, that would work, right? No. Ahahahaha, no. First of all, I couldn’t even do it because the antispam measures are so stringent now that I immediately got put in Twitter jail the minute I made the account. Every post was shadowbanned, every person I followed was not notified because I was in Twitter jail, and the only way to get out of Twitter jail was to actually use it. Which meant being in the cesspool and interacting with posts and crap. This was horrible and it took weeks to get out of Twitter jail, including two separate times of being automatedly put back into jail and having to prove my humanity to them again. But once I FINALLY was out of jail and was able to have my assistant start queueing posts? Nobody saw any of them, anyway, because the feed has become a hot mess of “recommended” posts instead of posts from people you follow. Around this time, the engagement on the Twitter accounts for my co-ops also started plummeting so badly that we wound up pulling the plug on those accounts as well. So yeah, Twitter isn’t just a toxic cesspool anymore, it’s also just plain broken. Should not have even attempted this. Deleted account again in July.
What Kind of Worked (But I Hate It)
So, Twitter is dead. What’s going to rise to take its place? As much as it disgusts me to say it, it’s going to be Bluesky. Yes, Jack Dorsey again. Apparently we’re just going to pretend that the problems at Twitter weren’t his fault, as if the repugnant algorithm changes of 2016 that started this whole toxic disaster didn’t happen under his purview. Everyone loves Bluesky because it’s just like Twitter “before.” Yes. It is. That’s the problem.
For a very brief period in late 2022, a whole bunch of authors fled Twitter for Hive Social (before that one imploded), and I tried going on there and seeing if I would like it, but it got directly into the brain and started stoking up the anxiety and depression again. Like, immediately. And this time it was easier for me to see what was bothering me, beyond just the typical political garbage. It’s cliques. Have you noticed? (I am talking to other authors here, I don’t know if readers will experience this as much.) Authors on Twitter tended to form these cliques, where the “popular” authors would talk to each other and the “less popular” authors would suck up to them and try to get the crumbs off their tables (and would get entirely ignored) and the newbie authors would try to make some connections, but would only get paid attention to if they had an important agent or publishing deal attached. This started happening instantly on Hive Social, and then once Bluesky opened up and people started flocking over there, it instantly started happening again there.
I am 0% here for that high school BS. I am thirty-eight damn years old, I am too old for this crap. If someone that I know knows who I am and who used to talk to me before they got Important is now ignoring me because they are now Important and I am Not, I have zero tolerance for that.
So uh yeahhh Bluesky technically exists. It doesn’t have an algorithm (currently), so posts display in chronological order (currently). I make posts and people see them and interact with them. Probably if I used it more, it would work more for me. But it’s a high school lunchroom so I’m not going to. However, I am attempting to remember to post announcement-y things on there since that seems to be where most of the book people have gone. Also, while I was in the process of writing this post, Bluesky switched from an invitation system to being open registration, which means anyone can join now. So if you are on there, you can follow me here.
What I Will Die Before Attempting
TikTok. Yes, I was willing to attempt Twitter a second time, but not TikTok. I would rather tear out my brain stem, carry it into the middle of the nearest four-way intersection and skip rope with it than dip one toe into TikTok. Line in the sand. Non-negotiable.
What I Wound Up Absolutely Loving
I’d heard about Mastodon a while ago as a Twitter alternative, but I hadn’t given it a try because I thought it was going to be like Hive Social and Bluesky turned out to be, more of the same stress and drama. But another author highly recommended it as being pretty low-key, so Mastodon was the first social media platform I dipped my toe back into, and it also wound up being the only one I’ve stuck with. I love Mastodon?? Let me tell you why:
- FILTERS OH MY GOD. I do not want to see politics on social media at this point. At all. Period. Point blank. Politics on social media has driven me absolutely out of my mind, in a very literal sense of the phrase. I don’t want to hear about T***p, I don’t want to hear about B***n, I don’t want to hear about the el*****n, I don’t want to hear about it. Well, guess what? On Mastodon, I don’t have to! Mastodon is the only platform to my knowledge that has (a) a robust filtering system (b) that works without malfunctioning and blocking access to my notifications (which is what happened when I tried to mute too many keywords on Twitter back in the day). You just make a filter that has the keyword you’re seeing too much of and bam it’s gone. If you want to be warned instead of the post being hidden altogether, you can also do that. But I don’t want to be warned. I want to forget the existence of those subjects. So I just hide it entirely and it’s like it’s not even there. And nothing of value was lost. In fact, I’m having much more meaningful conversations with people because I’m only seeing the stuff I give a crap about instead of getting stressed out by the politics and clicking away.
- NO ALGORITHM. You only see posts from people you follow, and you see them in chronological order. You see everything they posted (unless it’s got a filtered word in it and you’ve got it set so that filtered posts disappear rather than having warnings). Some of you youngsters may not remember this, but back in the olden days when social media was just LiveJournal and MySpace and The Facebook (yes, The Facebook), you would just… see your friends’ posts. In order. God, how I missed that. And it’s back, baby! No incentive to rile you up or prioritize bad behavior for the clicks. It’s just… your friends’ posts. In order.
- I am so done with corpo… socio? Is that a word? You know what I mean. Honestly, guys, I am turning old and I’m not even mad about it. I’ve been in this industry too long and I’ve seen too much BS. I hate corporations. I hate MBAs. I hate people who are into the corporate life. I hate the pod person made-up language they speak. I hate their metrics and their optics and That Guy. The older I get, the more I long to be an old hippie living out in the countryside raising chickens and wearing a broomstick skirt and never dealing with another corporate zombie as long as I live. So in that regard, Mastodon (or rather, the whole of the Fediverse, as they call it) is very good for me because it’s open-source, decentralized, and largely run by old hobbyist internet nerds, aka my people. It’s such a return to the way Things Used To Be on the internet back in 2004, and it’s really a breath of fresh air when you’ve had to live on the other side.
- The people on it are more chill… or maybe it just seems that way because I’ve muted every stressful word that could potentially come out of their mouths. From what I’ve seen (or what I can see, at least), you’re not getting the kind of “THE WORLD IS GOING TO END” frantic types of posting you get on the other social media. You actually see people telling other people to knock that crap off and leave it on the other social media. Instead, the culture of Mastodon emphasizes hopepunk, hopeful stories, hopeful ways of enacting change, and an overt rejection of doomposting. Without the algorithm stoking up disagreement, you get people just talking to each other like regular humans. If there is a disagreement, it’s usually a misunderstanding and a couple clarifying posts between the two parties will get everyone going, “Oh yeah, I get you,” and that’s the end of it. In a more relaxed environment like that, you can make actual connections with people and have real conversations with them. I cannot believe how many nice new author friends I’ve made since joining Mastodon. I also have connected with two authors who I really admired back in the Twitter days, which has been super exciting for me.
- Also, the hashtags! This ties in with the no-algorithm thing, but on Mastodon you can follow a hashtag and it will show up on your feed, and it shows all the posts of that hashtag. So, for example, there’s a writing challenge that I found in my first month on Mastodon called #TimeTravelAuthors. Our fearless leader Julie Bihn comes up with challenge questions for us and we can all join in and talk about our books. I followed the authors in the tag that I saw early on, but by following the hashtag, I can see new authors who have just found the hashtag and are joining in, and nobody gets left out. Instead of the algorithm prioritizing the people who are already popular, we can just see everybody, new or old, and it’s a great way of leveling the playing field and treating everybody equally.
As you can see… I really love Mastodon. 🤣 So I’m really really glad that it was recommended to me, because it’s made a big and positive impact on my life. #TimeTravelAuthors even helped me get over the finish line with One World! So even though the 2023 social media experiment was, by and large, a failure in terms of numbers, it was a success because it helped me find the one place that I’m really happy.
So if you are on Mastodon or the Fediverse (since other federated networks like Firefish etc. can follow Mastodon accounts), I hope you’ll give me a follow over at the Wandering Shop! It’s by far the place where I am most active, and where I’ve been sharing the most updates about what I’ve been up to writing-wise. I do also embed my Mastodon posts on my homepage, or if you use RSS you can also pull it that way, if you’re interested.
In conclusion… Twitter still sucks, get off Twitter. If you want old Twitter, go to Bluesky; if you’re looking for something a more laidback and anti-corporate, I recommend Mastodon!