back at it & social media free
hello! I'm posting again, this is the proof. I actually have two blog posts that are open tabs on my browser right now that I have not touched for weeks but never uploaded because I never finished them. will I ever post them? who knows...
but here I am. me. hi! there's been changes on this website and changes in my life so let's all make an effort to meet in the middle.
what's new boo?
I have deleted my social media. please, please, hold your applause, please. omg stop you're all too kind! please. thank you. but yes, it's true.
the why? the why is... I just felt like it. I'm a twitter girl, if you don't know this about me already. I have been a devout twitter user since about 2016 and have gone through my fair share of suspensions and breaks and online beef on there. but I always came back because that's where my family is! my oomfs, my dear, dear, lovely, kind, beautiful, incredible, darling oomfs. who would I be without them? they've been my friends for nearly a decade! so how could I leave, and go without seeing their hilarious and deranged tweets about whatever interest they have now, their thoughts on the topic of the day, and getting to interact with them on my own shit-hole tweets?
it's a drug I could not put down. those are my friends. they're my family. we even share locations. hell, I've met two of them just this past year! so howwwwww, how can I LEAVE?
pretty easily.
listen, if you used twitter prior to elon's takeover and kept your account into all the changes he's made to this website, you'll know what I mean when I say that that website is absolutely insufferable to be on now. it's like it goes in your brain, takes handfuls of your brain matter, and throws them into a blender with white supremacist dogma and reactionary tendencies and just general paranoid insanity about the people around you. that meme that's like "regular people: hey man what's up" is litttttterally how it feels to be a twitter user that actually goes outside into the real world. like woah, none of this is real at all, in any way. so why the hell do I come on here every day without out fail to get worked up about some bullshit on a screen? why? what is wrong with me?
when I'm online, I'm not the best person I can be, if anything it makes me exponentially worse and drives me to be a hateful, angry person, that I'm really not, at my core. it's a headache and a tumor to keep up with whatever your phone is saying is in, out, corny, played out, cool, cringe, and otherwise. it makes you totally out of tune with the real-life people around you. like, you're having all these thoughts and beliefs about these made-up guys in your head and you step outside bringing those same judgments to people you know and love. I can't stand that!
so I'm leaving. again. I've done it before, which makes this less daunting.
in 2021, I deleted all of my social media for the first time, and I mean really deleted them. permanently deleted the instagram that I'd had for all of high school, deleted my twitter entirely, no tumblr, no tiktok, nothing. it was disorienting. all of a sudden, my head was empty. nothing in front of me to feed me my thoughts and beliefs, nothing to do on my phone or reach for when I'm bored, nothing. It made me crazy for the first two weeks. I was literally itching to check twitter and see what my mutuals were posting on their priv accounts. but I stuck it through.
I was offline for a whopping 9 months. it was great, but it was terrible at the same time for reasons outside of not having social media. I got my first job in retail sales and was sexually harassed by my boss for the entirety of it, I was so depressed about it and the fact that nobody around me understood or even agreed with me, I had nobody to really talk to about it, and I was just 18. it was hell. but it showed me the value in the people I regularly associate with and that having my main support system be, what is pessimistically viewed as, strangers on the internet, is not wrong. it's valid, and I needed their voices at that time and I did not have them. I've never needed them more, but I also needed to be off social media so bad. so I learned the balance I need to have.
1. have irl friends and online friends that you can trust.
I wasn't in school when I first went offline and couldn't drive, so I had nobody to talk to or hang out with regularly, not to mention social distancing measures were still being strongly enforced for much of that time. so, I was stuck with my parents, who I do not have a good relationship with, my irl "friends", aka the girls I grew up with in the same religion as me, but was not close to, and my coworkers, who hated me and refused to speak to me because of false info my manager was telling them about me. it was hell, it was lonely, and it still makes me want to puke. but I'm not in that situation anymore.
I have friends from college that I see regularly, I'm fine with my coworkers, I have my online besties who I am closer to now than I was then, and I have my religious community that I am returning to. I have a ton of people who love me, and I accept their love with open arms because now I know I deserve it. so I'm not lonely.
2. have community that you trust and can rely on
I've written about this in my friendship post, but I'm not, like, dying to be in community with every friend I make. it's not shallow of me to say that I don't care to keep many people around for longer than I deem useful, it's just true. no shame in my game! you can't be everything to everybody, and many people I'm cool with rn just aren't people I care to keep around forever and ever. I have my forever people! I'm not shopping around for more.
so, my forever people are sticking with me. imma keep them in my pocket and they will be cozy there. but I'm also going to get closer with people I'm giving long-term contracts in my community. in my eyes, that means not just keeping up with someone on social media but going out of your way to text them and hang out with them. so I'm doing that a lot more. shoutout to all my girlies that I make plans with, I loooove you!
3. be self assured
it's a jarring experience for chronically online people to suddenly not be online. you may find it shocking how nobody reaches out to you and seemingly don't notice you're even gone. you cannot be swayed by this.
I've been talking to my old hs classmates recently and they've told me they noticed I was gone and had wondered about me because they couldn't find me online. so if you're worried that nobody is reaching out to you and therefore must not care if you live or die, slow your roll! they care, even if they don't reach out. think about it this way: are you reaching out? and if not, can you be mad that they didn't?
but past that, many people get their validation of self-worth by means of online interactions. you must have something of an ego death to successfully let go of this. just because you aren't getting comments from your friends under your selfies telling you how beautiful you are doesn't mean you're not beautiful. hopefully, now that you're not staring at your phone all the time you'll notice the compliments people give you, and even believe them. and if you've successfully removed the brain worms bait posts and bigots online have given you, you might even smile more! watch and see how you brighten other people's days.
4. have hobbies
I genuinely did not have shit going on for me when I first went offline. all I had was my job. no hobbies, no offline interests, nothing. so what did I do? go full force into my shopping addiction!
yeah, terrible times. especially when you're a great salesperson and make bank on your commissions, AND you work in the biggest mall in a 10-mile radius. it was a nightmare. thankfully, now I have things going for me.
for one, I'm in school now. I haven't been great about it recently because I waste all my time online, but now that that's gone... might as well throw myself into it.
second, I have an actual artistic hobby I willingly and regularly do now, ceramics! it takes up so much of my time but I honestly truly love it.
third, I'm going to start reading again. I want to go full analog so I can get off my phone, but I don't have the time or space to be lugging around a book with me everywhere, unlike my middle school self. so, I'm actually going to start using my kindle. everyone wish me luck!
and finally, I have friends now. I've gone out of my way to have friends that actually do shit and want to do shit with me. you can't be everything to everybody but you CAN have friends for specific purposes. I've got a gym friend, a dancing friend, an art friend, a going-out-to-eat friend, a shopping friend, a thrifting friend, and a concert friend. and some of these people overlap! so if I want to try out something new, I have people that I know I can do it with if I don't want to be alone.
so, all in all, I'm smiling. I'm happy and I'm excited to do this. I know great things are to come for me and I don't want to hinder that by having my head in my phone all of the time. so expect to see me around more. love you guys!