{"id":5279,"date":"2019-05-15T07:05:37","date_gmt":"2019-05-15T11:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/?p=5279"},"modified":"2019-05-15T07:07:29","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T11:07:29","slug":"a-social-media-vacation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2019\/05\/15\/a-social-media-vacation\/","title":{"rendered":"A Social Media Vacation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recently, I found myself enjoying my social media feed less and less. Despite scrolling past all the negative comments and the bad news, I still couldn’t help seeing it as it went by – and just the sheer volume of negativity out there was starting to be come unavoidable, even if I just perceived it subconsciously. As a result, instead of feeling happy at the cute pictures I was seeing, or excited about people sharing photos, or talking about that neat thing they saw on the way to work or the latest thing about their favorite show or movie… instead, I was feeling angry and stressed – and I was feeling it more and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result, I decided to take a vacation from social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This wasn’t something I did lightly – I enjoy my social media (which for me is primarily just Twitter<\/a> and its semi-replacement, Mastodon<\/a>) and seeing lots of cool art, pictures, funny stories, and of course hearing how other people are doing. But between the “algorithms” as they are these days, and also just the nature of the world at large, my feed – though carefully curated – still became a source of anguish for me, rather than joy. So taking the stance that if something doesn’t bring me joy it shouldn’t be in my life, I logged out and committed myself to taking a break from using social media for a time – until perhaps I think the situation has improved or until I feel like I don’t miss it anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“But Keith,” I hear you say, “isn’t this blog a kind of social media? And didn’t I see this posted on your Twitter and also on Tumblr?” Ah yes, well, that’s just the magic of cross-posting at work. I haven’t deleted <\/em>my accounts or anything, after all. I also do still use my Instagram<\/a>, since that is basically just photos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And all silliness aside, I do still like to let people know that I’m still here and doing well – I’ve seen too many other people disappear from social media without a trace, and I’m always left thinking, “I wonder how they’re doing these days?” But with their accounts gone silent or deleted, I’ll never be able to find out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, that’s the story of why I’m taking a social media vacation. We’ll see how long this “vacation” ends up lasting, but thus far it has been all right. I’m actually hoping to blog more – less time spent scrolling feeds will hopefully mean more time to write for myself. I still find myself reflexively reaching for those apps on my phone from time to time, but the urge is declining steadily as each day goes by. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In any case, I hope you have a great day and thanks for reading!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When something stops bringing you joy, maybe it’s time to stop using it – and so it has become with my social media feed (at least for now).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[473,392,474],"class_list":["post-5279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-social-media","tag-society","tag-twitter","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pimUj-1n9","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5360,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2019\/06\/20\/a-lonely-social-media-vacation-report\/","url_meta":{"origin":5279,"position":0},"title":"A Lonely Social Media Vacation Report","author":"Keith Survell","date":"June 20, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Being off social media for a while was good, but it started to get lonely, so... I'm back!","rel":"","context":"In "My Life"","block_context":{"text":"My Life","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/personal\/my-life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6013,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2023\/01\/04\/keiths-belated-guide-to-mastodon-for-twitter-exiles\/","url_meta":{"origin":5279,"position":1},"title":"Keith’s Belated Guide to Mastodon (for Twitter Exiles)","author":"Keith Survell","date":"January 4, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"There are a ton of \"what is Mastodon\" or \"getting started with Mastodon\" or \"what is this Mastodon thing, really?\" articles out there already, but this is my blog and I wanted to write my own guide, so here we are. Let's go! What isn't Mastodon Mastodon isn't Twitter. 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If heading out west as we originally\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "My Life"","block_context":{"text":"My Life","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/personal\/my-life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":473,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/04\/08\/vacation\/","url_meta":{"origin":5279,"position":3},"title":"Vacation","author":"Keith Survell","date":"April 8, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm going away this week - I'm going to be on vacation in Sanbornton, NH. I'm going to be pampering myself with hot spas, golf, more hot spas, spas, sleep, games, movies, still more spas (did I mention spas?) and some other stuff, probably involving food and\/or alcohol. Probably more\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "personal"","block_context":{"text":"personal","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/personal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":336,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2004\/12\/16\/on-vacation\/","url_meta":{"origin":5279,"position":4},"title":"On Vacation","author":"Keith Survell","date":"December 16, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"I'll be out of town for the next 4 days (in New Jersey, actually), so I probably won't be posting a whole lot. I'll post any pictures & stories when I get back.","rel":"","context":"In "personal"","block_context":{"text":"personal","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/personal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3749,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2012\/01\/21\/depth-of-field-experiments-parts-2-and-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":5279,"position":5},"title":"Depth of Field Experiments – Parts 2 and 3","author":"Keith Survell","date":"January 21, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"More experiments into understanding and controlling depth of field (or the lack thereof) - this time, with my new camera and new lenses!","rel":"","context":"In "Photography"","block_context":{"text":"Photography","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/pictures\/photography-pictures\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"depth of field experiment 2 (wine)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm4.staticflickr.com\/3049\/3015399455_9f0d0615ff.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}