Social media is not something I’ve ever been much interested in participating in, with rare exceptions. At least not Facebook or Twitter, both of which strike me as high school all over again. Not to mention that both are also just a cacophony of poor web design and poor usability — they’re frustrating to wade through and simply ugly to look at. I do understand that for certain groups of people or organizations or families, Facebook serves as the main clearinghouse for information, and can be valuable.
But for me, none of that applies. I tend not to be a joiner, if for no other reason than just because I don’t like the peer pressure, even if subtle, to behave a certain way that tends to come with participating in most groups.
Also, in groups, behavior tends to come down to the lowest common denominator, so things degenerate into either: (a) online flame- or slag-fests, or (b) the opposite, a bunch of meaningless Kumbaya or Pollyanna praise to whomever or whatever, or failing those, (c) people trying to top each other with clever one-liners, or (d) the feed gets polluted with too many jerks promoting either themselves or their wares. Or, (e) most common of all, the comments are just plain mundane, vapid, and uninteresting the majority of the time — a huge waste of attention span.
My response to all that is usually: No thanks. I’d rather go my own way in my own independent fashion. And then with Facebook, there are the privacy issues, which we needn’t get into here.
That said, I do have a fake Facebook account so that when needed I can log in anonymously to obtain needed info posted by someone there, but generally don’t bother with it other than that. I also signed up for a Twitter account a few years ago in an aborted attempt to try and help promote my self-employed work, but after a few tweets, the account has sat there silently since.
Once in a great while, though, I’ll make an exception for some online group or forum, if there’s enough meaningful “meat” to it to pull me in without too many of the above-mentioned cons. One of the online communities that has meant something to me has been Strava, the popular workout-logging and social-media site for endurance athletes — though perhaps not for the usual reasons many Strava users join, as it turns out.
