Disengaging From Social Media

Marko Kloos on why he shut down his Twitter and removed comments from his blog:

My Twitter account shows that I’ve posted over 20,000 Tweets over the last 11 years. Even allowing for the old 180-character limit, that’s three or four novels’ worth of words I’ve put out there for free, much of it to entertain people who don’t know me personally, and who mostly won’t notice my departure. Twitter, like Facebook before it, has been a useful tool to stay in touch with colleagues in an easy way, a digital watercooler I was visiting during the day to take breaks.

But I can’t count the number of times something in my feed made me angry, upset, or anxious. We all have different ways to deal with these emotions. My wife, for example, will get mad at something and then forget all about it within five minutes and move on with her day. I’m the type whose anger or anxiety will simmer for a good while, affecting the rest of my day.

To put it bluntly: I can no longer allow anyone with a smartphone and a data plan the potential ability to darken my day or interrupt my work by trying to pick an argument or fill my Twitter feed with aggravating stuff. Most emails and Twitter interactions with fans have been fun and positive, but there have been exceptions. And even the well-meaning emails from happy readers take a slice out of my writing time.

I can empathize. In the past few months, I've taken Twitter off my phone, and I haven't really missed it. It was always the easiest way to just get a quick hit of novelty in the middle of the day, but especially with modern features like threads and replies it's so easy to go down a rabbit hole that you spend the rest of the day thinking about.

As for Facebook, I uninstalled their app over a year ago and I've just been using it through a web browser. Partially because they have fewer creepy permissions, partially so I never get notified (interrupted), and partially because the additional friction of the worse user experience on the mobile web makes me want to use it less. But around the same time I deleted Twitter, I decided that if I was going to look at Facebook on my phone, to sign out my session afterward.

That little bit of friction, of having to put my password in every time I want to browse has turned what used to be a mindless activity of opening the browser and scrolling into a conscious act. It's not a huge hurdle, but it's just enough. Having a moment to pause and consciously decide to participate has made a world of difference.

Most of the time these days, when I do find myself mindlessly looking at that login screen, I close the browser and open Feedly, Instapaper, or the Kindle app, depending on how much time I have to kill. But all three of those have the advantage of only being populated with content I chose to read, and it's never algorithmically arranged to generate the greatest limbic response.

And the result is that I feel like I get distracted by interesting but ultimately irrelevant things less often, and I get more done. I think those decisions were key to making the space in my head to start this blog.

And I don't have a following or fans like Marko does. But as he points out,

I really appreciate all the fan mail and social media messages I have received over the years, but I simply cannot take the time to keep reading them all, much less replying, or I will be doing that all day instead of writing novels. (And much of the fan mail I have received can be summed up as “Love your work, when is the next book coming out?” I’m sure everyone involved will be much happier if I get the books out faster instead of responding to emails more quickly. Even a form “thank you” response takes a minute out of my day and fifteen minutes out of my focus.)

And then a link to Neal Stephenson's "sorry-not-sorry" apology for being a recluse as well.

I think we're at the beginning of an era of this type of disengagement. A return to curated instead of algorithmic content. A return to individual relationships instead of shouting into the void and listening to the echoes.

I know I certainly am.