A few thoughts about my first week out outta the social media spin cycle with a slant towards what it means for me as an artist.
A week without Meta
I left a bunch of social media last week and this week, I’ve been giving that change a lot of thought. I was holding on to Meta, particularly Instagram, as a deep connection with my audience and peers. Before leaving those social medias, I kept trying to articulate what I was getting from the platform and what I would be giving up in leaving. Ads were everywhere and my engagement was way down. I wasn’t seeing people’s posts. The word that keeps coming to my mind over and over is stale. It was stale there. I felt stale there, locked into doing things a certain way with no idea how to shake them up.
I reached out to a few people to ensure that I’d stay connected. Also I added myself to some artist newsletters that I’m a bit embarrassed to say I wasn’t already on. A bunch of folks jumped on my newsletter (Hi! and Welcome! New subscribers!) It was like going around in high school and asking for friends to sign my yearbook and signing other’s in return.
It felt like the end of an era and it was. I joined Twitter about 15 years ago. Then I joined Facebook about 10 or 12 years ago to post updates about my travels in Nepal. I joined Instagram sometime after it got started to post pictures of art I was working on. So while I hadn’t been on Facebook or Instagram as long as some, I had been there a long time. Over that time, it had become the means by which I thought I had to share my art. I’ve disconnected from all of these now.
I thought I’d feel lost and cut off
Turns out that’s just not true. I’ve messaged and zoomed with more artists this week than usual. I was chatting with one friend yesterday. She’s still on those platforms but not engaged there much. And we decided that social media’s lie is that it makes you feel connected but actually delivering a very shallow version of connection. Instead of engaging with folks by phone or video call or in person, you think you are connected because you saw their pic of their camping trip and their dogs being cute on a hike.
The real test I suppose is how things play out over a longer period of time. I had a lot of conversation and connection this week because I’d made a rather big change. How well I can sustain those connections will be on us without the convenience of social media. I haven’t left the internet, I write onto my public blog for anyone to read. But I’ve definitely removed some easy access points.
And I am on Bluesky. So it’s not even like I’ve left social media. It’s been fun over the past few months to go back in time to what Twitter was when I started there. Chatting with friends. Posting pics of the dogs. Talk about art and things. And recapturing that beginning feeling only solidifies how stale things felt on the old platforms.
Time to work
I thought I’d gain some time back and could put that to good use in the studio. That hasn’t been the case this week but I’m hoping that I’m headed that way over the next few weeks. Letting go of the need to post on Instagram at a certain time every day has been a bit of a revelation. I didn’t realize how much that made me feel chained to it all.
Likewise, generating slides in Canva to use for my blog posts. I set up this blog to post to Bluesky automatically when the post goes live at 7:45 am on Tuesday morning and I don’t have to do anything else. That’s a pretty drastic change to my workflow where I was manually posting slides and links across six social media sites at my highest social media count. (I also deleted Cara this week, not that anyone is there to miss me.)
Routines that I hadn’t even questioned got subverted by my leaving. It’s a bit shocking how much of my art life revolved around posting to social media. This next week, I’m hoping that I can be in the studio actually doing some work instead of managing all the backend of social media. What a treat!
What else is possible?
This week has opened up this question for me. What else is possible if I’m willing to make a change? Even one as confusingly scary as leaving a social media app? What does leaving invite in to take its place? It’s a big world out here. I’ve got lots to do. I’m finding that I have even less time to devote to keeping my social media up to date.
How’s your social media life? Are you working through quitting some of it? Trying something new? I’d love to hear about it! Email me or start a conversation by leaving a comment on this post! If you’d like to keep up with what I’m working on, I’d love to have you as a newsletter subscriber. I include blog posts from here, cool things I find online, and pictures of my dogs. Sign up here.
I do think deleting it all is so brave Misty, and I agree, we’ve just added new hoops to jump through for years without removing any old ones at all, but why?
And when it maxes out we might burst.
Yeah, when I realized that these platforms were creating more and more hoops for me to jump through I decided they needed me more than I needed them. Maybe someday I might change my mind but for now, all I feel is relief.
Well, I wrote you a note and lost every bit of it. I am out of time but will get back in touch with you soon.
Please do!
This fascinating Mindy. I love that you’re evaluating as you go (and sharing with us!) I’m really curious what it will be like for you off meta. For now, IG is a necessary evil for me while I work on building my wholesale business. But I’m making it as simple as possible, and thinking of it as a portfolio site, not worrying at all about any interactions from my posts or increasing my followers.
Thanks for reading! I’ve been doing my best to also stay away from just scrolling Bluesky. I’m not doing great at that, but closing the other accounts helps that a little bit. Someone mentioned shutting down their Pinterest as well and I’m considering doing that also. I never look at it, so why keep it? Just trying to keep shrinking my digital footprint and just keep what I actually find useful and meaningful.