Social Media

Social media is at the core of virtually all creative work these days. It’s how we let others know about our work and share examples, whether to a small known audience or to the greater world. But sometimes, changes in a platform’s operations adversely impact how we see ourselves within that platform.

For me, the realization came with Facebook. I’ve been on Facebook for nearly 20 years. It allowed me to communicate with far away friends and to share my photography with a wider range of people. I’ve also made some new friends over the years - a result of chance meetings over shared interests on Facebook.

But all of that changed a few months ago. Facebook announced that they were changing the way the information feed worked. From what I understand, they had determined that the younger generation was less interested in communicating with known friends and associates than they were in myriad ‘new looks’. 

For me, that meant that for every post I see from someone on my Facebook ‘friends’ list, I have to scroll through a dozen or more ‘posts which may interest you’. And consistently, the stuff I’m presented does not interest me in the least. 

Yes, they say, you can mark a post that doesn’t interest you. But when you take the time to do so, the response from Facebook is “we won’t show you this post for a while.”  But if I’m not interested now, I’m probably not going to be interested ‘in a while.’ 

In the meantime, the posts that DO interest me - postings from those on my friends list - are buried somewhere in the mass of junk that Facebook has determined I should see first. The result - I often miss information from people I actually know while scrolling through posts about some rapper’s love life or the latest diet craze. 

I also noted that people ‘liking’ my photos or posts decreased significantly. Perhaps it’s because my posts to my friends were buried on their feeds just like theirs were on mine.

So after several months of this, I decide to bid farewell to Facebook. I kept the private messaging option but I no longer have the Facebook feed. Nor do I miss it after two weeks. I’ve reclaimed a lot of time that was spent daily scrolling through what is to me garbage in the nearly-vain hope of finding some tidbit of information from someone I care about.

That doesn’t mean I’m abandoning social media. I still have my small website and, for now, I still have a small presence on Instagram. 

I’m also considering starting a YouTube channel as that seems to be a more controlled platform. It’s nothing definite yet but it has become more of a consideration since I made the split with Facebook about two weeks ago.

So please keep visiting here and, should I start a YouTube channel or go some other direction in social media presence, I’ll let my friends know here.