Fighting The Future

Another day, another round of problems to fix behind the scenes here, on ye olde blog, and another round of asking myself if it's worth continuing with a presence on "soash meeds."

I've pretty much given up on Facebook now (before all their bullshit came to light, as it goes), and Twitter is nothing but a cesspool, while Instagram is... Well, actually, Instagram is OK. It's slightly annoying that I can't see posts in chronological order any more, but, given how often I use it, I think I can live with it.

I've said for a long time that Facebook is functionally useless, and that's the main reason why I've pushed away from it; Twitter is on its way to becoming that way, too. But the more I think about it, the more I realise why they're that way for me: it's because I feel like I'm constantly having to fight their algorithms just to be seen. The more I feel that I have to do that, the less I engage, and the less I engage with the services, the more I feel I have to fight just to be seen. It's a weird, screwed up cycle and I really, genuinely hate it.

I mean, I get it: social media algorithms are designed to get you to engage, so you stay within their respective walled gardens; the more you do, the further your reach becomes on their services. If you don't, then you're "reach" whittles down massively, and you get caught up in the "quality filters" (and that's before you get into whether these platforms are actually hiding links to outside sites - I keep hearing that, but can't find any evidence to back it up, but it really wouldn't surprise me if it was real). I know that sounds like I'm deperately yelling "look at me," but, honestly, the only reason I want to be "seen" is to get my work in front of people - even if I get one sale from a short story through soash meeds, I'd be happy.

I dunno. Disengaging from the world outside during a pandemic where we're all stuck inside, in desperate need of contact is probably not the best idea, but I'm just not sure how much more I can carry on trying to engage with algorithms.

Fighting The Future Fighting The Future Reviewed by Lee on 10:41 am Rating: 5
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