I'm done with social media – Or: why I have a blog now

Between the fight over AI, shifting geopolitics reigniting old conflicts, an overly-centralized technology industry, a lack of meaningful innovation from a consumer perspective, and the immense precarity of modern work in general, it feels like we’re at the start of the end of a cycle.

I’m noticing more people taking stock of what’s actually important to them and taking a stand on their values. This is good in the long run, but in the immediate it results in a lot of binary/black-and-white decision-making that results in dustups and conflicts between groups who would normally be allied behind common goals.

All of this is to say that I expect we’ll see many, many, many more of these types of posts in the future, as everyone remembers they can choose to shape their engagement with technology, and that naturally includes the right to disconnect from it - not out of any sort of anti-technology position itself, necessarily, but simply from realizing that a specific thing isn’t something they need or are interested in, and that’s okay.

Props to the author for being so clear about their engagement with social media, their background, and their thought process. If it encourages more folks to reassess their own relationship with social media (or any technology), I’m all for it.

Yesterday I got a mail from Facebook: "*Woman_I_have_known mentioned you on Facebook".

Haven't used FB in years, mail looks legit, I get kinda curious. I tap it, and am immediately logged in, in DDG browser (which has 0 cookies when closing)!

To top it off, she didn't mention me, she mentioned some #tag on some stupid lottery for a van.

It's so disrespectful. So dirty. I know they don't give a * about me, but do they have to put it on so thick?

For those who don't even open TFA: she is a creator, not a consumer in social media, and she only started two years ago.

It's a long ass post about how fake those people are and how fake you yourself become once you start creating that content.

Wishing the best of luck for the journey.

This was a refreshing exception among all those "enough, I quit social media". OTOH, here I am still surprised how many people find it fulfilling to either be a performing monkey in this palm-sized vertical cage, or the opposite, why is it so fulfilling to watch those monkeys hours long, daily. "monkey" sounds harsh, I know, but in reality, these performers are barely more than just copying, mirroring other ones, with possibly more followers.

What a time to be alive in.

Social media's been coasting on unearned legitimacy since at least 2012 or so.

Remember the countless thinkpieces about the wisdom of crowds? Conceivably, social media crowds could somehow solve all sorts of really hard problems because in the mass of people conversing we'd be able to amplify voices who weren't being heard and get harder problems solved.

The truth of it is social media is a massively multiplayer video game where the goal is to build a following through posts, replies, and various social metrics.

This reframing situates it correctly for me: should I play video games for 4 hours straight everyday? Maybe not if I want to feel balanced as an individual. Should I let randos from a video game tell me I should be putting more time in? Absolutely not: they are still randos, regardless of how many Internet Points they have. Do I want their level of brainrot? No, thus I should I always be mindful of the effects on me.

It also makes exceedingly clear that social media should never be confused with whatever your quality work is that needs to get done. It is not a substitute for actually doing things. It offers a pale shadow of communication, friendship, and action. People should want more than the lousy facsimiles that it provides.

I want the old internet back, considering that history is cyclical I have high hopes that it will come back. However I subscribe to the idea that history doesn't repeat itself but rhymes so I expect it to be amazing again in a slightly different form.

Currently its infestation of for-profit content that got even worse with generative AI and curated through for-profit algorithms that drain our life for attention.

However, if you pay close attention to the non-advertiser friendly content and content that AI refuses to generate(which is mostly extremist left and right BS), you will see that there's a sustainable path for content that is not discovered and created the way it is now.

Yes, currently the only organic content is the extremist content. Yes, those de-platformed people actually didn't go away. They create authentic high quality Bull Shit, have audience that care and they are doing just fine. Which makes me believe that there must be a way for non-crazy, non-racist, non-extremist people for once again have authentic high quality content.

Interestingly, when Erdogan of Turkey cornered the mainstream media and deplatformed the non-complying journalists those journalists also adopted new ways. For many years, the advertisement on those channels were laughing stock. It was mostly hair removal cream and ideology oriented books but they survived anyway and the Erdogan acquired media lost steam as it wasn't authentic anymore and those small channels and social media platforms became mainstream. To the point that he is now once again trying to destroy them as his media is no good to push his narrative.

So yes, content is king and nature finds its way.

I think posting a note about your graduation so that all your friends and family can read a single note is a great use of social media. Reading about your niece's archery trophy is social media.

You can do this through email. But a personal website is a bit more interesting and preserves some privacy for the audience. Hosting your own site is beyond the abilities of most people, so it makes sense to have some easy hosting solution. A social media service is a fantastic idea.

Doom scrolling through Tiktok is not social.

Most people do not use "social media" services strictly as social media services. They use them as news services, music streaming services, etc. And most "social media" services encourage this and make it difficult to use their sites for social media.

A decent social media provider, like a decent email provider or hosting provider would have to charge money for their service. I don't know how many people would want such a service nor how many people would be willing to pay for it.

Yesterday I woke up, naturally, I started scrolling. The very first video (on Instagram) was an Uber driver getting pulled out of his car, a guy cocking a gun and executing him. I was barely awake and didn't really have time to react.

For the rest of the day I couldn't stop thinking about it, had high levels of anxiety for a few hours. I told all my friends I'm switching off for a bit on the socials. Mastodon and signal for a bit.

Edit: Just thinking about this happening yesterday puts me into a high state of anxiety.. Its absolutely bllsht these companies can effect us in this way.

Second Edit: Its my choice to expose myself knowingly, not entirely blaming meta. And I'm not going to anymore, but this is a more common experience than usual since Zuck got a chain and Tall-T

"Although the blog will be the main home for all my stuff (you can follow it via RSS and I think you should, because RSS is possibly the best and purest tech we still have)"

This. I watch youtube through my RSS feed. The videos actually loads instantly, without their BS loading times if you load it on their page (in FF with adblock). I can set up rules in my RSS feed to filter out previews/trailers from channels I follow. I can sort my YT channels into categories (music, sports, etc). It's actually usable, and the controls are in my hand.

More people needs to use RSS feeds. Don't let algorithms dictate your life. Youtube engineers are the worst.

As I just wrote to the author of this piece (who also happens to send out one of the best weekly roundups of weird and wonderful articles I get), her experience captures what so many authors I’ve worked with over the years in publishing have struggled with. When i can, i try to disabuse them of the idea that social media is somehow a reliable or necessary tool for promoting a book. As Caroline writes, if you already have a platform and it comes naturally to you, great, but I’ve personally never seen an author join social media in order to promote a book and actually succeed. And that’s before you even get to the exploitative dynamics she lays out so clearly here (aptly described as a pyramid scheme). Anyway, it’s all articulated beautifully, and I wish every author, especially those just starting to consider it, could read this and know there’s another way.

"Being a social media star is a skillset completely distinct from being someone who writes books — they may overlap occasionally, but it's not the norm."

Absolutely

I binned off my instagram, it made my hobby (wildlife photography) feel like a job.

Made my own site instead: https://photos.dombarker.co.uk/

Gets about 1 visit a week from google. And thats ok.

In defense of social media, going to share a typical conversation I have with some younger (mid 20s) folks that I mentor:

Me: "Do you use social media?"

Them: "NO! Social media is so toxic!"

Me: "You mentioned earlier that you are trying to get a job in X field, correct?"

Them: "Yes, that's true"

Me: "Have you found the relevant sub-Reddit, part of Twitter etc where people in that field hang out and/or share ideas?"

Them: "Well, no."

Me: "So how about this: first find the online place where those people hang out. Second, why don't you write up a blog post or summary of something you've done in the field and post it there. If you haven't done something IN the field, then maybe talk about how you learned about the field or what you find interesting about it etc. Then post that in the sub-Reddit etc."

<few weeks go by>

Them: "I followed your advice and someone from a firm in the field I'm interested saw it, read it, commented on it and reached about having a conversation."

Me: "Excellent! I always say that the lifetime marginal benefit of going from zero to one social media post about you describing/writing about your preferred industry is ENORMOUS"

(We usually move on to another topic with the mentee after this)

Prior to social media, the only way you could do this was to do one of the following:

- go to college in that field

- hangout, physically, where the folks you wanted to interact with were

- physically send letters to people with your article/summary idea

- etc

I feel like a lot of folks forget this and are blinded by the downsides of social media (which, to be fair, there are many)

I've been trying to use social media to promote my music & mobile app for years, to very little luck. I don't even really like using social media, but it felt "necessary" in order to "make it," even though there is nothing to see for all this effort.

Sometimes Facebook et al feel like a complete ghost town, with algorithmic content completely overwhelming any engagement from friends or acquaintances.

I have a hypothesis - media production [1] will gradually shift from social medial platforms to individualized (decentralized) platforms [2].

I think there are a lot of reasons for this trend:

* People are becoming increasing distrustful of platforms and there owners.

* The platform algos push a lot of noise and inflammatory content for engagement, something that users are getting fatigue from.

* On the creator side, the professional producers of social media will find it increasingly difficult to monetize from their platforms. In fact, I think the platforms will eventually realize how much power they have over their popular creators and charge the creators in order to have full access to their audiences.

* Additionally on the creator side, they can be banned at any moment with little or no recourse. Imagine being a professional creator on instagram, and one day you are banned for no reason. You lose total access to your following.

So I think the attention will slowly shift away from the platforms, which increasingly just serve as a parasitic middle men, back to creators + their followers (newsletters, blogs, private chat, websites with owned domains, etc).

[1] Whatever people tend to post on social media, whether its images, text, audio, or video.

[2] Blogs, websites, email, owned domains, etc.

It's 2025 and McDonald's is still the #1 most popular restaurant in the whole world.

Social Media is fast food. The masses will consume it to their death...

The rest of the population is bifurcating. The only people who will remain on Social Media will be poor, uneducated and the stupid. Not that different than the people who eat fast food, often.

It isn't clear from the title but becomes clear in the second paragraph:

She's saying "I'm done trying to use social media for commercial purposes".

I think the author was a bit confused on what „do social media“ means. This, like any other promotional marketing channel, lives based on building an audience that comes for that value OR is genuinely interested in your content.

Just creating some random videos about god knows what without any overarching context or value (entertainment) provided, leaves the audience clueless about what this channel means.

It’s like your uncle uploading random videos without any sort of narrative and each video being completely random.

Doing „social media“ probably means to either build a following by providing content that involves book or are around the topic books, that regardless of interest in the current book in question, will make the audience come back because they are getting some kind of value and/or entertainment.

Posting videos about a book and then next about a husband walking the dog does not really spark an interest to come back for more (unless I am personally interested to support a particular creator (which these followers also did)).

Unfortunately just trying to build a social media presence to promote a book is naive. The advice to „do social media“ is too broad. But social media IS a powerful channel to reach audiences, just not without either already owning a channel that covers the subject matter on a regular basis to attract the audience or without the willingness to spend money. Placing advertisements or striking deals with book related channels would probably be more effective.

Getting rid of most social media has been one of the best things I have ever done. I didn’t just delete my accounts, I also blocked the sites so I can’t visit them.

The best one to delete was definitely reddit. It’s too easy to doomscroll. It’s such a time sink, and being hyper-aware of everything that’s going on nowadays just made me anxious all the time.

HN hasn’t proven to be much of an issue for me. I guess it’s just less active, so I run out of new content faster whenever I visit.

There’s an easier way to promote on social media without becoming a life consuming personal brand. Get yourself on those accounts that curate content.

Get your song featured on curated Spotify lists or Instagram/TikTok accounts that review books of a specific genre, or get a guest spot on a podcast about your topic.

This is like the old way of marketing. In the old days, you’d apply to talk at writing conventions, table, do book tours at stores, go to relevant events locally, and partner with libraries locally. To follow the song analogy, musicians used to send songs to DJs and radio hosts. Maybe your at a college radio level, or local broadcasting. Find your stations, build up your reputation.

In the end of the day, people have found their networks and communities. You should try to enter them and be a part of those communities rather than build one up for yourself.

The author has this insite when she describes most of her following is through some form of word of mouth. This social media era is the same, except some of the word of mouth is direct (DMs, IRL conversations) and others are through communities.

In an era of everything being algorithmically served to you, I’m impressed by how often personal recommendations weigh far heavier for people. A good example I’ve seen is restaurants. Sure, I might Google or Yelp, but if someone I know has similar taste recommends a place, I’ll give it a shot. It doesn’t need to be someone I know IRL or virtual, it’s just a person who shares the same interests.

I think this works well if you’re trying to promote something real, like what this author is doing. I have no solution for personal content.

I started blogging in 2012, have been going pretty consistently since then.

I currently 'go hard' on tiktok, because I've recently been collecting tons of footage of mobility networks via drone and 360 camera (mostly while I ride my scooter/small motorcycle around)

the tiktok editor is pretty good for that purpose, and then I bring some clips back to my blog.

For instance, https://josh.works/traffic-bean has text, links to some substacks I wrote, a youtube video embed (drone footage) and tiktok embeds (insta360 footage).

It does the trick.

But everything that isn't on my website I count as ephemeral, discard, creative detritus that I create lots of so I can occasionally get the good bits.

I love having my website. I can write whatever I want. I can write about grief, or supremacy, or ruby, or american road networks, and I have a list of subscribers (~300) via email that I can talk to directly.

I love to see other people's blogs. It's so much more interesting to me than an instagram or tik tok or whatever.

:)

I've often wondered if you can't have your cake and eat it too by treating social media as write-only. If you just post, but don't read comments, demonetize, don't track performance, you break the cycle of feedback and measurement that shapes inauthentic behavior. This doesn't mean you take NO feedback, because you can always offer an intentionally "high-friction" means of contacting you (I personally like the idea of a time-limited email address that is the answer to a riddle presented in the content. Or a PO Box).

It's deeply uncertain, even unlikely, that this will work because users crave engagement, feeling like their involved, and this "shape" of social media is more akin to legacy TV and print media which is "fire and forget". But still, I think it's an experiment worth doing.

"I still want to be in touch with those who are interested in my work. I've spent most of 2025 so far working out what that might look like."

I don't understand how you can get eyes on your blog without social media, and with how Google works nowadays, unless you are a celebrity.

I have abstained from most social media since 2012, to include Linkedin. I enjoy that my friendships and social connections feel satisfying but more importantly, consensual. The decision has been to my detriment in some ways, but affirming in others - for instance, I recorded an album for my metal project. It has 200 listens on Bandcamp. Could I have more ears if I blasted shit out over X or intentionally marketed myself and the project? Of course. But do I care to? No. Social media broke its promise by degenerating into a billboard. I have no interest in contributing to that beast.

Part of the problem is that most of these social media platforms have abandoned the "social media" paradigm entirely (which is to say, a platform that lets you interact and stay in touch with people you know via the internet) and shifted to an enshittified attention economy monster that turns users into content producers and content consumers, not always of content that has anything to do with socializing. It seems like this author is effectively struggling with marketing in the attention economy. It sucks, but honestly this just sounds like the same challenge that marketing has been grappling with for ages.

It's always weird when two worlds collide - I listen to Caroline's podcast "Shedunnit", a lovely warm hug of a show about the golden age of detective fiction, so I was a bit surprised to see her on HN. I highly recommend the podcast - it's not a subject I have a great deal of interest in, I just love listening to people talk about a niche that they're deeply interested in, and Caroline's love for the subject matter is contagious.

I understand this place (HN) is not considered "social media" by most guys who leave social media?

For me the (bad) usage patterns are very similar between here and there.

You wrote a long blog post. Shows that you are not done yet. Social media is about craving for attention and spending your attention. That's not bad. Getting attention gives a purpose for what you do. Giving attention gives you new exposures. New exposures cause aging, like the scales in the wood. New attention you get, gives you existence. The idea is to grow bigger in existence without much aging.

I’ve been using social media less and less over the past few years. Especially short videos, they just make my brain feel foggy. At first I thought it was just distracting but later I realized it was affecting my mood and focus. Now I mostly use it to post photos and write more on my own blog, mainly for people I know. There is less interaction but it feels a lot more peaceful.

> I'm not a natural on camera and I don't have that talent for talking effortlessly and engagingly to a lens when alone in a room that successful social media personalities need. I was forcing it all the time, making myself record multiple takes and doing things again and again until they looked "natural" (a highly unnatural behaviour). My video editing skills are basic, so turning out regular videos took me a long time.

They would have done better and would have resented it less if they had just owned it and not worried as much. They would have become more comfortable on camera as a result. You first attempts at this are going to be rubbish anyway.

So it better to just put stuff out there and iterate. All the big mistakes have been made by others and if you avoid those you will be fine.

When I first started doing YouTube vids. I was determined I should be like some big coding channel. I didn't have the video editing skills, nor really knew enough OBS to do it effectively. So I was stressing about it. My videos did pretty decently (I had less than 50 subs and I had 1200 views on one of my videos).

Now I am doing as if it is a hobby that I will hopefully turn into something more and I am enjoying it a lot more. I get decent engagement / views for my channel considering the size (200-1000 views per vid) when you have less than 500 subs is decent IMO. As I get better with the OBS/Kdenlive/Resolve I am sure I will have more fun editing.

Same thing with LinkedIn for me specifically. I heard that it could be a great way to get a job. But then I tried it, was inundated with AI slop, and contacted by recruiters from companies that sounded dreadfully boring. And when it came to nearly 100% of the people I encountered there who were actually active, I'd rather freeze to death than work with them.

> I think the persistent advice to authors to "do social media" is, at best, part of a strategy that can be generously described as throwing everything at the proverbial wall in the hope that something, anything, will stick.

It also probably was pretty good advice until ~3 years ago.

My rule for social media is “don’t feed the sirens.” Like Caroline, there are many things I’d rather do than donate my time to help Mark Zuckerberg sell ads. This is why, for example, I don’t post my art on social media.

Wrote something related on my blog - https://www.rxjourney.net/decoupling-from-social-media

We as engineers did this and we should fix this!

Personal plug:

https://nabraj.com/blog/swipe-scroll-repeat-addiction/

Another step toward the ultimate wisdom which is: who cares?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41115911

I just got declined for a job yesterday because I had a post on my blog talking about my history with major depressive disorder and medication to address that. That's not just a cope on my end, they actually said that. I don't think I'm ambitious enough to try and sue them for it, I might report to some department in NYC for it though.

But I think I learned that being candid about yourself on the internet is a mistake. I have no idea why the fuck it would be a good idea to be upfront about my mental health history; who the hell knows how many jobs I've been declined for where they were smart enough to not say that that's why they were declining me.

I had already deleted most of my social media, the only ones I use regularly are Hacker News and the aforementioned blog [1], and I think I should probably just stop mentioning anything that isn't purely technical on either of them.

[1] Not really social media, but it is a public-facing thing with my name on it.

I even went further, I moved my WEB page to gopher and gemini, the real gemini :)

She has a blog, podcast, and email newsletter- is she really not using social media?

>One evening, as I made my husband walk our dog past the same scenic view multiple times so that I could get the best shot of it for a video, I experienced a sudden wave of revulsion for myself and what I was doing.

There's a beach in Northeastern Brazil called Maragogi. The water is calm and warm, and you can easily see schools of fish passing through your legs in many points. "Brazilian Caribbean" is its moniker, but if you ask me, the Caribbean should be called the "Central American Maragogi".

Anyway, I rented a small apartment there for a while, and this one morning I observed this couple acting quite strangely. The young lady was repeating some movements -- none of them naughty. She was going in and out of the sea, splashing theatrically through the surf. Then I noticed the man of the couple: he was chasing after her maybe 4 or 5m away, holding and looking at the phone all the time. I went about my morning, walked a bunch, enjoyed the water, and started back after a couple of hours - the Sun gets dangerously strong around noon. The couple was still at the same spot, tirelessly repeating the same sad, pathetic choreography, again and again.

I still can't understand those people. What a miserable existence we've built for ourselves.

The only real sign that you're free from social media is that you don't have the compulsion to write long posts and tell internet strangers all about it. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Reddit, Substack, Hacker News...it's all the same. If you want to be free be truly free.