Reflections on Experience with Social Media and Ending on a Positive Note

It’s really funny in a not funny way that to build connections on social media the users also have to suffer all the shit that people throw into it.

My biggest gripe of mainstream Mastodon is the same as other corporate social social. No sense of community, no boundaries. People who don’t add content warnings to upsetting non-illegal content (ex. complaints), people who don’t tag political toots.

I got so tired of sanitizing my Mastodon feed that I felt I had to be on my toes every time I scrolled through my feed. It’s like people don’t even consider how their words could affect others. It’s like people are talking at the reader and not to them. It feels condescending, childish, and it gives me a negative opinion about that person’s character.

This issue of all mainstream social media is incredibly complex and my frustration fuels my fascination with human behavior in digital spaces. On the one hand there’s freedom of speech while on the other the mental health of the casual reader. Decontextualization is also a pretty issue. The whole quote toots/retweets function.

I got a bit carried away with my fascination with anti-social behavior. I was complaining about social media not doing a dissection of human behavior, wasn’t I? Ah yes, the first paragraph was about how I had to metaphorically dig through a pile of negativity in an attempt to forge professional connections. That was a huge commitment! And at the cost of my mental health! My precious and fragile mental health. So yes, a few weeks after changing instances, I couldn’t keep checking my feed. The risk reward balance was (is) skewed against me. Thus, after maybe a month or two, I started feeding some Mastodon mutuals feeds into my reader.

Writing all of this down… makes me feel pretty good! I don’t feel like I should best myself up for being unable to hold a social media presence and stay at the fringes of the interwebs. I’m working on my website and enjoying it a lot. I’m learning web dev and improving other skills. I’m Doug okay and I mean that! I’m doing my BEST! My best is all I can do!!! (^_^)