Fine-Tuning
Warren Ellis talking about fine tuning his social media:
On Saturday at 1201am I turned off my social media. I have a private IG account for looking at nice pictures, and Twitter lists for news, but I’m not posting on or participating in the public internet for the next several months. I tell people on my newsletter, all the time, to tune their internet connections until they are useful and fun. The public internet stopped being fun for me some years ago, and I disconnect from it for half of each year at least. I like newsletters, blogs and RSS, podcasts, email, messaging apps and complete thoughts. The public network turned into something I don’t really enjoy or get anything out of.
For me, I’ve found the only way social media is useful for me is by fine-tuning and curating them as well as limiting my time.
My Twitter feed removes all RTs, which is the only way to experience the platform. I’ve also curated my feed to only see posts from people I like or admire. I have a news channel and that’s it. I use Tweetdeck in a browser and Tweetbot on iOS.
With Facebook, I can easily fall down a rabbit hole, but I’m increasingly not doing it because ultimately I don’t really care as much as I used to. Facebook isn’t all that fun for me anymore. The same goes for Instagram. I’m old so I never used Snapchat. I keep a LinkedIn page, but it gets visited only a few times a year. I was never on Myspace. I cancelled my Tumblr. I still like Pinterest, but I can live without it too and I don’t really view it as a social media site anyway. I was on Google+ for like half a second and went nope and deleted the account (I think… may need to check that one).
Like Mr. Ellis, I like newsletters, blogs and RSS, podcasts, and complete thoughts. In fact, one of my best tricks is following Instagram accounts via RSS in Feedly.
My simple recommendation is to take control of your social media and make it work for you. That may mean simply turning off RTs on Twitter for the people you follow. It may mean deleting Facebook entirely. It may mean doing nothing at all.