I must finally admit defeat – social media has got the better of me.
It was
never going to be easy. Neurodiverse and social are never going to be
comfortable bedfellows, added to which is an inbuilt stroppiness that won’t
allow me to follow the crowd or to pander to algorithms.
Social media
based on photographs was never going to be an option. Nobody photographs me,
even my better half, who thinks that the cats are far more interesting, so why
would I assume anybody else would feel some compulsion to look at my girning
mug with any regularity? I don’t get it anyway – why do people want to see
repetitive images of cloned plastic people standing in ways that break various
rules of physics in order to stick one or other part of their anatomy closer to
the camera? And why would you allow these people to influence you in any way
whatsoever?
Beats me.
Twitter seemed
ideal. I needed a platform where I could provide updates and news about
international data management and quality – I’m by nature an information provider
- and my number of subscribers finally stuttered to a halt at around 543.
Hardly ground-breaking, considering the hundreds of thousands of people who
need to deal with international data every day. But par for the course because
99.99% of those people will never be persuaded that their data is anything
other than stagnant and just an extension of their own country’s data. Don’t
understand the naming convention? Don’t know where to place the postal code?
Don’t know why those numbers keep ending up truncated? Can’t work out what
those dots and dashes on a letter mean? Just wing it. Or, better, just look the
other way.
Which may
explain my current very concerning lack of gainful employment.
Hint hint.
But even
before the arrival of Clueless Musk things were not going well at Twitter. My
posts increasingly seemed to be disappearing into an empty void. If anybody was
there they weren’t really paying attention. Even the tumbleweed didn’t turn up
to answer any questions that I posed.
So it wasn’t
a hard decision to move across to Mastodon, a much more active, useful,
pleasant (though more techy) environment. I boosted, I posted, I hashtagged.
And my subscriber number ground to a halt at 13.
Hmm.
Maybe it’s
the subject area. In a parallel life I have a passion for analogue planning and
stationery, and a fellow sufferer suggested I create a YouTube channel. 47 videos
later and I have amassed 359 subscribers. My videos are hardly professional,
but they almost all get 100% approval ratings and are praised in comments for
being useful and honest. Which is gratifying, because, again, information
provision is what I do. Let’s just check some of the other reviewers. Yes, they
have better and softer lighting, and they utilise the ubiquitous and carefully
curated bookcase background along with the guitar leant up against a wall with studied
casualness. But many are being paid to spout only the marketing blurb of the
manufacturer with no honest comments at all. In many cases you can bet your
bottom dollar that they haven’t even used the product. My subscriber number: 359.
Theirs: hovering around 4.5 million.
Hmm.
Perhaps it’s
time to admit defeat! I’m never going to “get” social media, am I? Perhaps that’s
a good thing. I’ll have to think about that...
If you’re
interested, I’m still plugging away on Mastodon at https://mastodon.online/@grahamrhind
