goodbye social media

"So why did you delete your social media, Elfi?"

It was a good question, and to be honest I didn't have a song and dance prepared. It was more of a spur of the moment decision. But one of the answers I came up with surprised me. "It's so easy to get locked in these parasocial types of relationships. I'm tired of it."

I'm not just talking about influencers. How many people have each of us had on our timelines that were just more noise. We'd like each other's stories or posts once in a while. We'd maybe shoot the occasional message. We'd see stuff the other shared. That would be it. Essentially we'd be lurkers in each others' lives. Nothing more real or substantial.

I followed something like 2000 accounts on Instagram. I'd try to shave it down, which was a pain in the ass, but not to much avail. Shit accumulated over years. I'd see updates from people I haven't seen in years. I'd be aggressively marketed to by businesses I had no relation to, or who I haven't shopped with in a while. All of this would fill my feed, among whatever "recommendations" that algorithm curated for me. Was I made any happier, more fulfilled? Was I even alerted to something I would have otherwise missed out on? No, not once. It was all noise.

To be clear, I'm no tech-doomer. I have my (yes, cynical) views about the companies that run these platforms, but I don't inherently have a problem with social media as such. I don't think it's the root of today's societal problems. I'm just exhausted by it.

Thinking more on it, social media as it exists today creates an illusion of community at a distance. Community, I'd say, implies togetherness, but social media as a business venture is only effectively when it can be a mediator. The data from your conversations in person or over the phone can't, for instance, be scraped by Meta for AI training or targeted advertising. So it's effectively useless to them, unless they can work out how to hack your phone. So the name of the game is eyes on screens, fingers on buttons. Keep up with the Joneses through our platform. That's all it is.

I had an interesting experience after I quit. I asked one of my old mutuals for their number, and they asked "what for?" I admit to not thinking that far ahead. I just wanted to stay in touch. And it made me realize how much less it means to add someone on whatever platform than to offer them those ten digits, a direct line to their personal life. That should tell you everything. Are these actual connections, or names on a list, notches on a bedpost, jelly beans in a jar? I think, with the way we use and experience social media in our world today, it is undoubtedly the latter.