I'd Quit Social Media If I Could

Ah, who am I kidding...

It was almost twenty years ago that I first started to hear about a new website called The Facebook. I was a freshman at Texas A&M and folks in my dorm had started to talk about the site. With a few clicks, you could upload your photo and a few bits of information about yourself - entering the data into a virtual directory that other classmates could find you on.

Why would anybody want to do that?

I put off creating an account for a few months but then there was a cute girl in class whose name I wanted to know and the early days of Facebook were built for stalking. People entered the dorm they lived in, their class schedule, their phone numbers, whatever. You could do reverse searches of any scrap of information handy and track down somebody’s identity within minutes. That should have been a warning - instead, I treated it like an invitation.

I didn’t really use Facebook all that much the first few years of having an account. The site was limited to a handful of colleges across the country and many of my friends from high school had adopted MySpace instead. Soon, so did I. MySpace had a blogging function, the ability to link to cool songs you dug, and - perhaps the weirdest function - the ability to rank your friends. Yay for passive-aggressive ways to chip away at friendships! Facebook, on the other hand, was relatively limited. You could add people to your network and there was a “poke” function that served as a proto-Tinder matchmaking device, and, eventually, there were walls where you could write messages to your friends. First and foremost, though, Facebook was a giant phonebook as opposed to the social network monolith we know today. It’s hard to remember the gradual transformation of Facebook from what it was to what it is today - just like it’s hard to remember what life was like before social media.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the like have become such a huge part of my life that I cannot imagine a future in which they don’t exist - I also can’t help but wonder if life would be better without them. I look back at how I used social media during that first decade and I grimace. I posted so much on Facebook in my twenties - sharing every thought and every joke that entered my brain. To journey through my personal Facebook archive is to look at the map of somebody with wild mood swings, extreme loneliness, and way too much time on his hands. One moment I’d be posting a lame joke, the next I’d be sharing tiny minutia about my life that nobody could possibly care about, and the next I’d be posting raw, unfiltered glimpses into my emotional health.

I wasted so much time on social media - and to what end? I would spy on old friends and enemies, comparing their lives and successes to my own. I would waste time on pointless arguments with strangers over inconsequential matters. I would emotionally invest myself in the online lives of folks on the Internet that I followed but didn’t actually know. These are all dangerous behaviors - addictions that chip away at the sanity of any who attempt them. Sure, social media has allowed me to connect with strangers around the world - even forming something close to real friendships with many of them despite having never met them in real life - but they are still strangers. I’ve been able to share successes and tragedies and huff those dopamine rushes that come from their likes and comments. Social media can be an easy fix during moments of boredom - scrolling through Twitter or Facebook certainly helps pass the time when stuck in traffic or a line. It’s also helped my career. I’ve used Facebook and Twitter to promote the stuff I’ve done at the Alamo Drafthouse. I’ve gotten writing opportunities through connections I’ve made on social media. I’ve met and interacted with my heroes. But social media has also left me with feelings of inadequacy. It’s filled me with mild panic and dread about the state of the world. It’s turned me into a voyeur - devouring drama from strangers at the expense of real human connections. Social media has made the world a whole smaller - but that’s a double-edged sword. Social media has created a world of casual friends.

Despite all that, I don’t think I’ll ever actually quit social media. It’s too useful a resource for promoting stuff I’m working with. It’s the best way to keep up-to-date with what’s going on in the lives of too many of my friends. It’s the best way I know how to keep up with news on what’s going on in the world and with the stuff that interests me.

As I get closer to the release of WHERE WOLF, social media is also the best way to promote my work as a creator and artist. When I was submitting the book to publishers and agents, the question of how many Twitter followers I had would come up more than once. It’s obvious that, without an active social media presence, it’s next to impossible to establish yourself and your creative output. So what’s a guy to do when he has something he wants to share with the world but also doesn’t want to be Extremely Online™ all the time?

If you were expecting an answer to that question, I’m sorry - this isn’t that kind of blog. I have no idea how to navigate this problem. The best I’ve been able to come up with for now is to try and use social media sparingly. I don’t want to put my personal life on there - the days of me exploring my inner mental health publically and online are long gone. I try and use social media as an extension of how I see my role as a film programmer - I champion stuff I’m digging (books, movies, television shows, music, etc), I speak in hyperbole about the stuff I’m working on that excites me and I share funny pictures of myself with kangaroos. That’s it - that’s my approach to how to use social media despite being very certain social media is the thing that will destroy civilization as we know it.

So, let’s see what happens!