Okay. I don’t think we can put this off any longer. It’s time to talk about that deeply unhealthy contemporary addiction so many people suffer from. (Not me, of course, no, sir, no way. And pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.) I refer, of course, to… Social Media (which I’ll hereafter aptly refer to, with my razor-sharp irony, as SM). Yep, SM, Waster of Time, Sapper of Creativity, Fount of Banality, and Destroyer of Peace/Goodwill Towards All Carbon-based Lifeforms.
If it’s so awful, I hear you ask, why are you on it, then? Well… good question. Mainly because, back in the day, it was supposed to be the way for budding writers to interact with their potential public (we’ll discuss that below) and like most bad habits, I do it nowadays more out of inertia. But I do limit my use. No, really: I NEVER use SM on my phone. Never. Only on my computer, which cuts down the opportunity for idle doomscrolling… at least a little. And I’m only on Twitter, Facebook, and Bluesky. Of the three, I mostly use Twitter, because, quite frankly, despite nowadays being the Elongated Muskrat’s personal hellscape, it’s where I still find the most engagement with the writing community. (And I hesitate to label even the Good Olde Days before the Muskrat as Twitter’s golden age. Because… there wasn’t one. Mostly, when people tell you how much better things used to be, regardless to what they refer… they’re employing heavily rose-coloured glasses.)
So, anyway, here we are. Let’s paint a hypothetical scenario: piqued by my delightfully quirky sense of humour, you’ve followed me on Twitter or Bluesky. For your entertainment and edification, I hereby present several Vitally Important SM Things you should know.
First, kinda like Liam Neeson, I will find (and vet, scrutinizing your feed) you before following you back. It deeply pains me this has become necessary, but the levels of hate and general weirdness on SM have skyrocketed in the last ten years. If you’re a MAGAT, for example… why, no, we can’t simply agree to disagree; we’re not talking trivialities, like the merits of butter versus margarine. No, we’re talking fundamental differences in understanding what’s right and wrong, and I just can’t have anything to do with you. (Memo to his followers: he’s not a saviour. He’s one of the most blatantly reprehensible examples of everything wrong with humanity. And you’re in a cult. Call your mom.)
Second, don’t DM me right after I’ve followed you (in fact, most of you, don’t DM me, full stop). I’m just fine, thanks for asking, but we don’t know each other at all, even by SM’s largely superficial standards, and I have a really hard time believing you care about my wellbeing. Why, no, thanks again for asking, I’m not interested in buying whatever you’re selling (which leads into our next point).
Third, writers, don’t expect to sell your books on SM. For most of us, it’s mainly ineffective. Once upon a time, as I noted above, we all believed SM was the perfect way to sell our books. Of course, once upon a time, we also believed in Tinkerbelle and the Tooth Fairy. The problem for writers on SM is you mostly follow other writers, who --- breaking news! --- only want to sell THEIR books, and have little to no interest in buying yours.
Fourth, similarly, if the only things on your timeline are plugs for your own work… if you’re just using your SM as cheap self-advertising… I’m not following you back. It’s both uninteresting and… well, kinda sleazy: you’re simply using followers to promote your work.
Fifth, stop whining about lack of engagement in your posts. Or as some of you poetically phrase it, feeling you’re ‘shouting into a void.’ YOU ARE. More news: the algorithm sucks like a vacuum cleaner, and isn’t structured to give amazing life and breadth to your pearls of wisdom. Primarily, it’s designed to generate revenue for the Muskrat, because plainly, he doesn’t have enough, poor lamb. There’s absolutely no rhyme nor reason as to why some posts garner millions of views, while others get only a few. It’s Capricious with a capital C. Deal with it.
Sixth, similarly again, don’t ask questions you’ve no real interest in having answered --- or could get answers to by consulting The Google. Many people ask questions which either can’t be properly addressed within a Tweet’s all-too-finite limits, or are transparently, pathetically designed only to generate engagement stats. Stop it! You’re being annoying, and SM has way too many of those people as it is. You want intellectual engagement? SM’s generally not the best place to find it.
Seventh, most of my posts are what I quaintly like to describe as wryly amusing takes on the Art of Writing. (The others are my weekly blog posts, which also generally deal with the aforementioned Art, but in a slightly more serious vein.) I take existing memes, add my own pithy captions, and send them on their merry way, chuckling at my Oscar Wilde-like wit. So… they’re humorous. Or at least meant to be. But damn, there are TONS of very literal-minded people out there who don’t seem to understand humour, because there are always those who reply to my lightning shafts of wit with serious, frequently pedantic, comments showing they utterly failed to grasp my attempts at levity. Oh, the humanity.
And finally, Eighth… for your own sanity… DON’T ENGAGE THE TROLLS. SM is replete with them, smelly and brutish and ignorant and laughing coarsely, oh my --- kind of like an Orc convention at Isengard… and you’re Saruman, staring down at them from your balcony (my obligatory LOTR reference for the day). DON’T respond to them. They’re not worth it. Just block them and move on. They have the same mental capacity as toddlers, and there’s simply no way to argue with them --- logic and reasoning not being part of toddler skillsets, who only know enough to stamp their feet, throw tantrums and say bad words for shock effect. Life’s too short for that bullshit (unless you really DO have toddlers, and hope one day to transform them into rational, functioning human beings).
Not everything’s doom and gloom, however. I’ve met delightful, interesting people on SM, and even count some of them as friends. But it’s a strange old world out there, folks, and as one of the memes I posted recently said, we seem to be living in the timeline where Biff read the sports almanac.
So be careful.
If it’s so awful, I hear you ask, why are you on it, then? Well… good question. Mainly because, back in the day, it was supposed to be the way for budding writers to interact with their potential public (we’ll discuss that below) and like most bad habits, I do it nowadays more out of inertia. But I do limit my use. No, really: I NEVER use SM on my phone. Never. Only on my computer, which cuts down the opportunity for idle doomscrolling… at least a little. And I’m only on Twitter, Facebook, and Bluesky. Of the three, I mostly use Twitter, because, quite frankly, despite nowadays being the Elongated Muskrat’s personal hellscape, it’s where I still find the most engagement with the writing community. (And I hesitate to label even the Good Olde Days before the Muskrat as Twitter’s golden age. Because… there wasn’t one. Mostly, when people tell you how much better things used to be, regardless to what they refer… they’re employing heavily rose-coloured glasses.)
So, anyway, here we are. Let’s paint a hypothetical scenario: piqued by my delightfully quirky sense of humour, you’ve followed me on Twitter or Bluesky. For your entertainment and edification, I hereby present several Vitally Important SM Things you should know.
First, kinda like Liam Neeson, I will find (and vet, scrutinizing your feed) you before following you back. It deeply pains me this has become necessary, but the levels of hate and general weirdness on SM have skyrocketed in the last ten years. If you’re a MAGAT, for example… why, no, we can’t simply agree to disagree; we’re not talking trivialities, like the merits of butter versus margarine. No, we’re talking fundamental differences in understanding what’s right and wrong, and I just can’t have anything to do with you. (Memo to his followers: he’s not a saviour. He’s one of the most blatantly reprehensible examples of everything wrong with humanity. And you’re in a cult. Call your mom.)
Second, don’t DM me right after I’ve followed you (in fact, most of you, don’t DM me, full stop). I’m just fine, thanks for asking, but we don’t know each other at all, even by SM’s largely superficial standards, and I have a really hard time believing you care about my wellbeing. Why, no, thanks again for asking, I’m not interested in buying whatever you’re selling (which leads into our next point).
Third, writers, don’t expect to sell your books on SM. For most of us, it’s mainly ineffective. Once upon a time, as I noted above, we all believed SM was the perfect way to sell our books. Of course, once upon a time, we also believed in Tinkerbelle and the Tooth Fairy. The problem for writers on SM is you mostly follow other writers, who --- breaking news! --- only want to sell THEIR books, and have little to no interest in buying yours.
Fourth, similarly, if the only things on your timeline are plugs for your own work… if you’re just using your SM as cheap self-advertising… I’m not following you back. It’s both uninteresting and… well, kinda sleazy: you’re simply using followers to promote your work.
Fifth, stop whining about lack of engagement in your posts. Or as some of you poetically phrase it, feeling you’re ‘shouting into a void.’ YOU ARE. More news: the algorithm sucks like a vacuum cleaner, and isn’t structured to give amazing life and breadth to your pearls of wisdom. Primarily, it’s designed to generate revenue for the Muskrat, because plainly, he doesn’t have enough, poor lamb. There’s absolutely no rhyme nor reason as to why some posts garner millions of views, while others get only a few. It’s Capricious with a capital C. Deal with it.
Sixth, similarly again, don’t ask questions you’ve no real interest in having answered --- or could get answers to by consulting The Google. Many people ask questions which either can’t be properly addressed within a Tweet’s all-too-finite limits, or are transparently, pathetically designed only to generate engagement stats. Stop it! You’re being annoying, and SM has way too many of those people as it is. You want intellectual engagement? SM’s generally not the best place to find it.
Seventh, most of my posts are what I quaintly like to describe as wryly amusing takes on the Art of Writing. (The others are my weekly blog posts, which also generally deal with the aforementioned Art, but in a slightly more serious vein.) I take existing memes, add my own pithy captions, and send them on their merry way, chuckling at my Oscar Wilde-like wit. So… they’re humorous. Or at least meant to be. But damn, there are TONS of very literal-minded people out there who don’t seem to understand humour, because there are always those who reply to my lightning shafts of wit with serious, frequently pedantic, comments showing they utterly failed to grasp my attempts at levity. Oh, the humanity.
And finally, Eighth… for your own sanity… DON’T ENGAGE THE TROLLS. SM is replete with them, smelly and brutish and ignorant and laughing coarsely, oh my --- kind of like an Orc convention at Isengard… and you’re Saruman, staring down at them from your balcony (my obligatory LOTR reference for the day). DON’T respond to them. They’re not worth it. Just block them and move on. They have the same mental capacity as toddlers, and there’s simply no way to argue with them --- logic and reasoning not being part of toddler skillsets, who only know enough to stamp their feet, throw tantrums and say bad words for shock effect. Life’s too short for that bullshit (unless you really DO have toddlers, and hope one day to transform them into rational, functioning human beings).
Not everything’s doom and gloom, however. I’ve met delightful, interesting people on SM, and even count some of them as friends. But it’s a strange old world out there, folks, and as one of the memes I posted recently said, we seem to be living in the timeline where Biff read the sports almanac.
So be careful.
RSS Feed