#i can do shortform video. thats dispassionate.

[the1312daysofchristmas]

hi i wanted to ask something but also share something personal as well. my q is: do you feel like your relationship w social media has changed? meaning, do you catch / notice when you are on it for too long and you start to notice, and then you say: okay let's take a break. for me, i have been online for a long time ever since i was a kid, and now my relationship to it is i only limit myself an hour to being on my phone. as an adult now i am no longer social media "obsessed". like, when i am in school i am not thinking about online, i am present when im at school. i feel like i am really close to just deleting sm tbh. it does not grant me happiness like it used to. now as an adult i feel this need to live my life freely.

i also wanted to ask what are ur thoughts on content influencers? to me when i see these ppl i think...i could never post about everything about my life, but then again understanding that it is just a highlight reel. no one is posting every sad / frustrating thing that happens in their life as influencer, only the "great" parts.

this is an interesting question! i think ive never really had a relationship to social media where i feel like i need to post constantly or felt pressured to share everything. while im definitely the most online out of my household, compared to a lot of other people im not really very present online. i dont like using twitter, i only really use instagram to look at and post art and occasionally post a picture of my cat or nature or food on my main account, i dont really get up to much and i never use facebook unless i have to. i hate it. even here on tumblr i dont post a lot about my personal life unprompted, and this is the social media site i use the most by far. i do scroll tumblr a lot, i do watch a lot of youtube videos (though almost exclusively video essays on politics and recently also artist vlogs) and i do notice myself scrolling a bit too much, particularly when im overstimulated but instead of doing something less stimulating im anxious and looking for a distraction so i like. scroll harder. but ive never been like doing something else and thought 'man, i wish i was scrolling right now'. i dont really know. i do have trouble putting my phone down, like when i need to sleep, but i have trouble putting ANYTHING down. games, books, art or writing or projects im working on, music im listening to, i dont think tumblr is special, its just another activity for me to be distracted by.

all that being said, i did leave social media for a while. i had a really bad experience in a fandom on tumblr (not the pwams incident. that led me to step away from bandom and move to another fandom) and honestly it made me realise that the problem i had with social media wasnt that i was using it too much, but that i had a toxic relationship with the communities i was interacting with on there. the nature of my relationship to social media was unhealthy, not the fact that i had one that was a large part of my life. i think when i wasnt using any social media i actually wasnt in a great place either, because i was isolated from people id cared about, especially since i had just undergone a very traumatic incident, and because of that became very isolated from my in person friends as well, even before the pandemic pushed me away from even the acquaintances i had made. i was worried about coming back to tumblr, but i think ive grown and learned in such a way that i know how i like to comport myself in cyberspaces, and that its been good for me in a way. which is weird, but. i think id kind of have to go in depth about my life and how the pandemic affected me and the specific nature of coming of age in st lucia and stuff. which i dont want to do haha.

as for influencers. i hate the concept. i understand it, and i dont universally hate influencers as a whole, but like. theres this specific kind of content creator where the thing they are sharing is just their life and there isnt like a specific thing theyre logging, like an artist sharing their creative process and how they manage their life around that, or a chef sharing recipes, and its not like theyre doing it just to do it, they have the goal of growing a following, and theyre not advertising anything but themself, like JUST themself, as a person-brand, and i find that so deeply annoying and repulsive. and like thats strong wording its a dog eat dog world and the girlies of all genders need to secure the bag like i get it. i get it. but its revolting to me. like. the vlogbrothers werent trying to get famous they were using youtube to communicate with each other and as an open video diary and people found them to be interesting personalities to watch. right. do you get it. annoyingly i gotta put myself out there if i want people to find my art and pins and stuff so i have to fuckin. make videos. sell people on me. the idea of making vlogs makes me dry heave bc im not important i dont want to have to sell myself like im important i dont want to put my face on a camera and implicitly say with every quirky performed statement i make 'i matter, pay attention to me, i need to exist so look at me' but unfortunately i might have to. a video essay i could do. thats me saying something. but a vlog? with the goal of people finding my stuff? good god. it sounds like poison.