There is Life After Social Media
(I pinky promise.)
Hello, Friend,
Well, it’s FriMEH! and we made it through another work week, unless you work for the federal government, in which case, my most sincere condolences. Maybe you took the fork, or maybe you told them to fork off and showed them the spoon.* Either way, you did what you felt best for you and your family and I support that. I work for myself so my employment status and work weeks are a little more elastic than most. (By work for myself, I mean I do this Substack thingy which takes up most of my ‘work days’ and some freelance design and writing, but I’m mostly unpaid so…yeah.) Does it qualify as work if it isn’t paying the rent?
It covers my magical skin cream, pink lipstick, and art supply budget. So that’s something.
While I have you here…would you care to buy your hostess with the mostes’ a coffee or a pint of Ben and Jerry’s or a vodka martini? Honestly, this week, a martini or two may be in order. Extra dry, side car of olives, shaken not stirred, straight up, thankyouverymuch.
But I digress, I was late to ‘work’ today, even though the dogs thought 5:15 am was a great time to get us all up so they could go pee and head back to sleep on the living room couch. If they weren’t so damn cute, I tell ya…I’d give ‘em the what for. Galdangy! Instead I gave them the pats and snuggles and took my sweet time getting caffeinated, motivated, and accelerated.
I wanted to talk about life after Meta. It’s been a couple of months. I no longer reflexively try to check my FB or Insta or Threads. I left X when Melon took over, and I can barely remember using it. Things are less noisy. Less distraction allows me the ability to focus on writing letters to my senator and researching deep dive articles and tapping out meandering stream of consciousness missives like this one. I don’t miss those platforms at all. Not even a little.
I do, however, miss my people. Or more aptly, I miss the idea of my people. The truth is, most of the people I thought were my people have vanished along with the apps I deleted. I guess they weren’t my people after all. Some of them subbed here so maybe they’re still lurking in the shadows and if they are, and by ‘they’ I mean ‘you’ if you’re one of them, say hello once and a while! It’s lonely here in the middle of nowhere digitally (and physically.)
I’ve made efforts to stay connected with some of my longer term connections and some of those efforts have been fruitful and others less fruity. Before I left Meta, during the past five years of my ‘I’m still mostly stuck at home because I have crap lungs isolation’, some of my lifelong people vanished. One of my most cherished people moved across country and didn’t even let me know. I was still sending birthday and holiday cards to the old address. Boy, did I feel like a dumb ass. Though, truth told, I found out he was engaged many years back from an acquaintance, so perhaps we were unpeopled long before I fully accepted it. Before social media, wrangling your people was a lot more complex. People, and by people I mean me, move and have new contact information and who the hell knows where they are now and then…time slips away, like it do.
Social media made reconnecting so easy, even if the price we paid for it was our data and our privacy and our friends data and their privacy and maybe the future of the entire planet, too. I’m starting to think that much of that ‘reconnecting being easy on social media’ is the only thing that facilitated it. Or, maybe most of ‘my people’ weren’t really ‘my people’ and they were hanging around for other reasons.
I guess, you are my people now, whether you like it or not.
HA HA! I shall run at you like a mud covered labradoodle all giant paws and floppy tongue and unbridled enthusiasm!
MY PEOPLE! HUZZAH!
This might explain why ‘my former people’ weren’t all that into me.
I would tell you the whole story of my journey through pea soup fog on sketchy back country roads from the middle of nowhere to ride with a bus full of strangers to Washington D.C. to attend the Women’s March way back in the day. The truncated version is that once I got to the train station in D.C. and saw the vast crowds of people moving up the escalator, I realized I wasn’t going to find the people I was intending to meet and I needed to find some other people ASAP. So, I turned to the two nice ladies standing next to me and asked if I could be their friend for the day. They said yes! I tried to stay in touch, but they really were just ‘my people’ for the day. Sometimes people are your temporary people. I’m good at forging those kinds of connections. Never be afraid to reach out to people, this may be crucial if the shit hits the fan at the velocity it looks like it could.
The point of all of this is this. People do their best, but if you aren’t in their immediate vicinity online or IRL, most of them will drift away. It’s just the way of people. Maybe it’s our sub-conscious protecting us from the pain of loss.
Out of sight, out of mind, as they say.
There is life after social media. You can do it. If you’re looking for a way to fight back, might I suggest you delete your profiles on FB, Insta, Threads, X, and TikTok? Stop being manipulated and feeding the Tech Bros who are in the middle of divvying up our republic. Yes, it’s hard. You might have to work a little harder at maintaining your friendships or you might lose some of the people you thought were your people. It sucks, but these are exceptional times.
It’s time to make some tough choices. Vought was confirmed to OMB yesterday, and he is the co-author of Project 2025. Melon Husk has infiltrated our government servers. His minions have downloaded everything and installed (who the hell knows what) new software. They now have control over our government agencies, our treasury, and all of our reserves. The new CIA director just outed every new agent hired in the past two years, decimating our ranks and endangering us, them, and their families. This isn’t a drill. We are running out of time to do something. I know you’re sick of hearing this, but I’m risking a lot to keep writing it so maybe…I don’t know…LISTEN TO ME!
There is life after social media, and it appears the asshats who own social media won’t be needing us or our data much longer. Jump the ship before it sinks! Look around and find your people, your forever people and your temporary people. You’re not alone. We are going to keep fighting the good fight. We can do this. There are millions more of us and this is a huge country, wrangling that is not going to be easy no matter what they believe.
Maybe don’t take the fork, or maybe tell them to fork off.
Welcome to the rebellion or the resistance or the great big heaping spoonful of OH HELL NO!
*Maddow shared the story of the spoon emojis on her show, you can watch the clip here. Stay tuned, because I have an idea…
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Heheh - happy to have those muddy pawprints on my shoulders.
Good point about temporary people. We shouldn't undervalue those relationships.
I sure wish more people would catch-on to you as you are one of the sense-makers we need right now.
This reminds me of the summer of 2016, when I spent a week studying mantra at a giant yoga school in MA. In one of the evening workshops, I sat with a group of lovely Canadian ladies, and they joked with me that if things went "sideways" in November, we could always move up north with them. I wish I had kept their contact info, but I guess they were just my people for that evening.