joe curlee

After several years of use, I have made the tough decision to abandon my social media accounts as I no longer find these services to be enriching to my life. In fact, I find them to be draining and a burden—a time leech.

There are people whom I have met over the years that I have no way of keeping up with outside social media, and that was the one thing compelling me to stick around, but after some self-examination, I realized that there is nothing truly social about "social media." I was not "socializing" by using these services—instead I was subconsciously seeking validation from groups of semi-anonymous strangers and ghosts of my past.

I find these services to be invasive, not only of my time, but also of my mind. They are designed to get into your psyche and make you feel the need to overshare and perform for others. This constant torrent of brain dumping is simply not how I choose to live my life, so why would I do so on social media? It is not beneficial to my life.

I do enjoy writing and putting some thoughts onto the internet. Blogs have always been my preferred outlet for this. Here I have control over my own website and words without the constant threat of an algorithm ready to flag me. Here I have more control over my emotions, can take more time to think, and put more thought into what I write as opposed to simply reacting quickly and vehemently to words that are crafted to garner that very response. To that last point, and most vitally: I am able to control the content that I see and consume. That is incredibly important.

When on social media networks, I find myself bombarded by content from people with whom I wouldn't share the time of day in a normal situation, yet there I am pumping their thoughts, ideas, desires and opinions into my brain at lightning speed. This inevitably starts to shape one's own thoughts and thus behavior, and that is insidious. Here on my blog, I don't bother to enable comments or reactions because I don't care what other people think about the things I write—but on social media I am supposed to tailor my content for other humans and algorithms. That is a pathetic and dependency-forming habit, and it breeds mediocrity.

I choose to abandon these other worlds and withdraw further into my own so that I can concentrate on my own inner life and creations.

Unfortunately, there is no good way to share the things that I create beyond this blog if I completely unplug, so I may continue to post content such as the games I create—but in so doing, I will only use accounts associated with my LLC. No more personal Facebook or Bluesky or X or YouTube. The accounts I continue to maintain will be used only for content sharing and nothing more, if I choose to use them at all.

• social media