Deeply unfashionable though it might be to admit this, but the truth is I’m bored with social media
I never got into Facebook. I tried to use it for a couple of months but it just infuriated me. The benefits in no way matched the value of my personal data. Despite people telling me “it’s just about being sociable..” I quit over a year ago. That’s not strictly true. I have a Facebook account for my cat where I post pictures of her friends and victims.
I tried to use Twitter for a year or so, but found myself stuck reading tweets from the same hundred and fifty or so people. It turned out that I wasn’t interested enough to go find more people to follow. Since I never followed anyone who followed me just for the sake of it, my Twitter network stalled about there. And like many people, I got bored of the spam and the social media gurus talking endlessly about…yes, you’ve guessed it, social media.
I joined Xing and connected with a girlfriend from a long time ago, but apart from that, didn’t use it. I quit Ecademy after a couple of years listening to people bullshitting about their egos and prowess. I spend a year commenting in 4Networking, UKBF, UKBusiness Labs and other such forums until I got tired of the inevitability that everything online degenerates to argument and abuse.
I still have a LinkedIn profile but, like many people, still don’t quite know why – although I quite like the way that LinkedIn seems to be following the ‘softly, softly, catchee monkey’ approach and avoiding the vulgar rush to ‘monetize’ that has characterised most of the other online networks.
I’ve joined and left hundreds of social media sites, without the slightest sense of loss of anything I cared about or couldn’t do without.
Throughout that time, I’ve also been doing more and more work in the real world and less and less in the online world. Coincidentally (not!), my real world network has increased; I’m doing more valuable and fulfilling work and enjoying it far more and I’m learning a lot beside. The range of opportunities open to me has increased in inverse proportion to the amount of energy and time I’ve spent online.
In the last year alone, I’ve traveled to India, Taiwan, Spain, Norway and the US on real-world business, earning a real world salary and working working on real-world projects with real people. It’s been great and most important of all, it’s been interesting.
I can’t help noticing that the more successful and confident I feel, the less appealing spending time on social media becomes.
Am I alone in that?
A couple of months ago I tried an experiment – I decided to quit social networking cold turkey – no more facebook, no twitter, bebo, myspace. For a while it worked. I became more productive not having to stop every few minutes to check my facebook, or catch up with latest gossip on bebo. About a week later I could bear it no more – I had to go back. Call me a social networking junkie but I couldnt stand the fact I was missing out on the latest news or nosing through peoples embarassing holiday pics. So although it is a massive timewaster for me anyway social networking is definately here to stay.
Thanks for your comment. Sounds to me like you’d do well to give up social media permanently before it turns you into a full-time spammer
Your message is, well, depressing really. Sorry I had to edit your link out.
I agree that social media is boring, time wasting and no more than a distraction from real life. When I was younger, my Dad used to tell me people took drugs for escapism. I believe the same is happening with the internet generally.
Turn off the internet and go outside and play.