The Last of Social Media

Several years ago I finally empowered myself to finally completely sever my relationship with Facebook and have never been happier making that decision. Instagram was easier to walk away from. Twitter has been more difficult. I deactivate/activate my account several times a month these days. In December, I almost made it through the month, going from deactivate to delete. At the last minute, I logged back in to keep the account. Maybe because I’ve had it since 2005.

YouTube is another problem I’m having (especially during this time of isolation). To be specific, I’m having difficulty unsubscribing from all of those travel vlogs like Disney and cruising. I unsubscribe and then resubscribe, “needing” to peek in to see what they’re up to now and then. On a daily basis. Especially when there are Disney or Knotts events coming up. But really? I’m not sure I can stand that level of stupidity and self-absorption any more.

One vlogger said recently that they were in no hurry to upload their Knotts Boysenberry Festival because most of the other West Coast vloggers were in Disney World. Okay, so you’re only in this to be first I guess. Not to provide content your viewers are interested in. Vloggers just care about getting hits associated with being first out there in some grand competition (to, hopefully, make money).

Unsubscribe…

Okay, so the next test will be if I can delete my YouTube channel. It’s a mishmash of Disney, cruising, travel, book trailers, and music. I’ve been trying to focus more on music but I have a feeling the subscribers I do have are there for Disney and cruising and not my books and music. But right before the pandemic, one of my cruise videos went viral (for me) and got 87K views in practically no time. Hard to delete it now…

But, perhaps, if I finally take that final step, deleting Twitter and YouTube, I’ll actually be able to juggle writing books and music instead of feeling like I must choose one because I don’t have the bandwidth to do both. Maybe I do have the bandwidth if I don’t waste it on meaningless unsocial social media.

But what if I need Twitter to promote my next book… I read that, and I know this to be true, you don’t really sell books on Twitter or any social media. Social media is really just a lie.