Unlearning Social Media

When I came back to blogging after years of being in and out of it, I did so mostly because I wanted to leave social media behind.

Sure, some people never stopped. There are people who have been blogging for twenty-plus years while the rest of us were tweeting away. I admire (and envy) them. I wish I were one of them.

Because I wasn't, I ended up carrying a lot of social media assumptions into blogging. It's only recently that I've started noticing them.

Having a blog isn't a replacement for social media

Sometimes I have this feeling that I need my blog posts to be seen, and I need it now. And I use the verb "seen" here intentionally, because that feeling is not about wanting to be read.

I need to be seen. Not read. Seen.

It's the dopamine hit of the like and the retweet. It has very little to do with being understood.

Blogs are social, but they aren't social media. People interact with us through our writing, conversations happen, communities form. But it all moves at a slower pace, and that's not an inconvenience, that's part of the appeal.

I don't need to cross-post everywhere. Or anywhere.

The act of writing and posting to a blog is a one-way thing. Feedback comes later, and the value of the post is not dictated by the feedback it gets.

When Threads launched I left soon after joining. People were posting things and deleting them a few minutes later because they weren't "performing". Eventually the platform filled with rage-bait, because hate always performs.

How fucked up is that?

What's the rush?

I recently found myself trying hard to come up with a system for the comments on my blog to appear instantly when they are posted.

Why do I want my comments to appear instantly? I'm actually enjoying getting a pull request for every one of them, and approving it. It's a joyful process that I run a couple of times a day. Why am I looking to throw that away in pursuit of empty immediacy?

Also, why do I need my comments to appear immediately on other blogs when I post them, other than the dopamine hit? I already know what I commented. It's not like them appearing instantly means the author read them instantly.

I thought I wanted both of those things because that's how they're "supposed" to work. Except they aren't supposed to work any particular way.

I love that every website in the indie web has its own personality, yet I still expect things like comments, publishing and feedback to follow a standard pattern.

Twenty years of social media leave habits behind. I'm still unlearning them.