UNFOLLOW EVERYBODY.
If you want social media to work for you, instead of you working for it, drastic measures are necessary.
Society is not going to catch up fast enough to help this generation. Anybody alive today needs to save themselves from the digital media beast. Engagement algorithms and clickbait culture threaten to eat away at your sanity, your spare time, and your clarity of mind.
BTW — keep in mind that the average person spends 2 hours per day dragging their thumb on their cell phone screen while random photos and videos scroll by. Seriously.
The absurd can become so extreme and still feel normal. Everybody does this, it must make sense… right?
Or — are we the frogs being boiled?
Social Media as Tool, Not Hobby
I view social media as a productive tool. My goal is to get as little entertainment as possible from it so that I don’t get sucked into the hypnotic trance of scrolling.
The way I do this is simple. A few weeks ago I unfollowed EVERYBODY.
My Instagram account is now following 0 people. My twitter account only follows my brother’s account. These two feeds now show me nothing but my own posts and some hashtag related content.
There’s no more reward for checking Instagram or Twitter. It’s just a boring content distribution channel for me now.
I feel free.
There is still a strong urge to entertainment myself with nonsense on social media. I get bored and it’s like, I just wanna grab my phone and look at it. I get pretty thirsty for the social media. Unfollowing everybody is helping to remind me of how I am supposed to use these tools… sparingly.
Will You Join My Mailing List? Click Here
I no longer have social media apps on my mobile device apart from a Mastodon reader. If I find myself staring at my phone's apps too long I realism I have nothing to do there and just put it down.
A big turning point for me was when I used a launcher called T-UI for android. With that launcher, you have to type in the name of the app you want and not just tap it out of habit. This made me see how much I was using my phone to kill time.
Glad that habit is broken now.
PS: I have a twitter script that unfollows users not following you back that can be easily tweaked to remove all followers. ;-)
That T_UI app sounds awesome! I do something similar, I finally found what I wanted in an app called "Habit Lab." Rather than block sites, it makes me wait 5 seconds before loading the page, every page. This is amazing on twitter in particular - its not worth it to wait 5 seconds per reload lol
It is indeed one of the easiest ways to save 1-2 hours per day. I hope this will free you up to be more creative as well.
Yes!! Thanks @elbrava
Who checked his steemit followings now ? :D
😂
haha
tbh, I'd love facebook if I didnt have to have friends! I love all the interest groups and pages but they piss me off when theyre not kept private. I dont want everyone in the damn world reading my comments on my interest groups.
Haha yes I completely agree. Honestly I don't ever want to see a reminder of some random high school friends who I havent talked to in 10+ years. I've thought about jumping off of facebook. That one is so weird, its so common yet so shitty, I dont even get sucked into it anymore Im just baffled
Wait till youre 52 and got a whole life time of history behind you! it gets worse, trust me. I commemted recently on a post about aircraft on a group Im in, and I get a reply saying "you always were a boring ginger cunt'....a kid I hadnt seen orspoke to since college in 1983! The fact he was probably right takes nothing away from the fact that the group didnt give a fuck about my privacy by staying as a public group. lol
Nightmare...
Since I discovered steemit I have a positive outlook on social media platforms. However like what you mentioned about twitter and instagram I have declined to use either platforms. The amount of time "wasted" on social media platforms is growing exponential but a human life time is limited. So I rather spend the time on quality posts on steemit than other social platforms. Thanks.
hey man, did you quit steem or? what's happening? :)
@heymattsokol you were flagged by a worthless gang of trolls, so, I gave you an upvote to counteract it! Enjoy!!
Wow... I'd like to follow hour example, however, I try to estimate the scrolling. I think we loose tve pount of Social Media if everybody unfollows everybody. 🤔 BUT, some times we need "drastic" actions to avoid certain behaviours! People in the room should get more attention than those on social media. 🙏🏼
Matt, are you okay? I can see you were powering down and had no activity for 2 months now. It's scary.
Hey - where have you gone???
Just getting back to things after a break, kind of missing you in my feed.
Hope life's OK!
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I was wondering the same thing today and went looking for him since I knew he was crossposting and trying to make ends meet on a variety of platforms.
Looks like he posted his farewell on Medium: Why I Left the Steem Blockchain
It's pretty telling that he didn't want to post it here.
Hey thanks for the link - I'll defo give that a read.
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It's a good read. I understand where he's coming from.
Unfortunately me too... I think it's worse than he says.
However I still think steem's going to expand massively in the future - human greed should see to that.
There's still a couple of thousand people on here worth following on here as well.
And he mentions cross posting on multiple platforms which I already do.
Looks like he's had a bit of an image change too.
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