I got on around 2011 and off Facebook around 2013 -excluding the account I created in 2022 when I needed to join an exclusive group I’m part of. I only use the account when I’m checking for messages for that group. By 2013, I had realised social media was not for me. The endless engagement, notifications and sharing of people’s lives was an invasion I found unsettling.
People are supposed to pass in and out or settle in your life according to efforts made in those relationships. But with Facebook, the organic-ness and genuine-ness of relationships began to erode away. People online felt they knew each other. People in real life would get offended if you did not respond to an invite or something else they had posted on Facebook, instead of just telling you about the event when you met them or at least texting you one-on-one. People from childhood whom you were not supposed to know anything about after leaving a phase of life were still around stalking each other.
Adults were on those same platforms finding out what we were up to when they weren’t around. Cyberbullying and kids getting exposed to inappropriate content far too early in life became a thing.
All kinds of boundaries that had been there before blurred or disappeared. It was hell.
I delayed getting on Instagram until 2020, I think it was. I was going through a writing growth spurt and thought I needed another platform besides WordPress. I didn’t want to go back to Facebook so I thought it might be fun to try a more visual medium. I muddled along on Instagram until mid-2022. Then things got crazy at work and I went on survival mode, abandoning my creative pursuits. I’m back on Instagram again as I ease back into my writing life. I will probably never get on TikTok as I prefer long-form content.
Recently, I saw a YouTube video of a brilliant, introverted academic confiding that she wanted to stop making videos at some point. She felt it wasn’t for her. The abusive comments, the fame, the constant scrutiny. She had the same feelings about academia. Academia had seemed like a place where she could enjoy diving into a sea of knowledge, fraternising with colleagues who were equally passionate about the subject matter, the thrill of examining books upon books. But academia, to her disappointment, turned out to be a circus run by charisma and connections. She was constantly overwhelmed.
And so, once she concluded her PhD, she wanted to disappear into obscurity. Take up a low-key job where no one would ever see her and where she did not have to try to maintain a particular persona to stay afloat.
Such is the life of introverted creators -including writers- on social media.
Some social media habits are discouraging -for example, when people like posts in the hopes of getting others to visit their platform. But now and then, someone drops by who genuinely enjoys a piece of writing and it shows.
Nowadays, I use Instagram to participate in online writing challenges or to talk about writing. It seems like a necessary evil. There are some good side-effects, however. I’ve used social media to find out about authors I might not have known about before. And there is the camaraderie of engaging with people who are interested in the same thing.
There is something about art that makes the creator feel that it is not enough to produce it. It must also be shared. For that, I suppose we have the convenience of social media.
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