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Happy Sunday, happy December, and happy one-year not-posting-on-social-media anniversary to me. That's right, I realised a few days ago that the last time I shared a post on social media was December 1st 2023. Looking back, I don't remember deciding on a specific date to cease posting on social media. Rather, it was more of a gradual decline in my desire to engage with social media. 

I've previously shared how my use of social media has evolved over the years, starting with limiting my use of the apps on my phone to a few minutes a day, to deleting the apps entirely from my phone and only periodically checking up on messages and notifications on a computer. I must admit that all the while, I felt the need to share the occasional photo of me from a gig, or a photo of me posing with one of my published books, or some other kind of text-overlayed image announcing my latest substack essay.

I see now, with the benefit of hindsight, that I felt the pressure to keep up the online engagement and foster an active presence. I had to prove I was still an artist, still playing gigs and still writing and releasing music, to not leave people wondering whether I'd given up on art and music. I had to prove I was enjoying married life, sharing selfies with my wife and photos of us out and about doing nice things, to not leave people wondering whether there was trouble in paradise. I had to prove I was living the good life, presenting a wholesome front to the world with all my highlights, so I could continue to engage in pseudo-realistic connections with strangers, arms-length acquaintances and people I might not even recognise in the real world, to not leave said people wondering whether my life had taking a downturn. Who I was trying to prove all this to, I don’t know, but I marched to the constant beat of this drum nonetheless.

Until I didn't. I think what happened was I became increasingly disenfranchised with the platforms even as I posted photos posing with my guitar, or my books, or my hot beverages, or my wife. And one day I decided I would skip a post. Just one. I had a weekly schedule at the time, with a plan to post twice a week, and every time the designated moment came around, I felt this pressure to (1) find a nice photo to post or take one if it wasn’t already available, (2) think about something witty to caption the photo, (3) come up with appropriate hashtags to accompany the post, and (4) check that the content put together was all consistent with the tone and aesthetic of previous posts. 

Sometimes I'd agonise over it all before posting. Needless to say, I found it all stressful, so I thought, what if I just didn't post, just once? And then not posting that one time became not posting that week, and it turned into not posting for two consecutive weeks, and then three consecutive weeks, until it became not posting for a month. One month of social media silence turned into two, and then three, and then it became something in itself. I realised I was gathering momentum with this thing I’d fallen into by accident. Time was ticking on and not only did I not miss posting, I found that life just carried on as normal. I wasn't under any illusions that my posts would be missed, but the thought did cross my mind as to whether there was anyone out there in Internet land wondering why I'd gone quiet on Instagram, Facebook and what used to be Twitter. As far as I know, there's no such person out there, and if there is, sorry, not sorry. Then there was the worry about whether it would result in fewer opportunities for gigs. As I've previously written, that worry is moot.

All this reminds me of the thought experiment that leads with the question: if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? To reframe this question for this discussion, I’m tempted to ask: if I make art but I don’t go on social media to talk about it, am I an artist? I’d like to think the answer is a resounding yes. So what now? I don't know, really. Maybe I'll post again at some point in the future, maybe not. I do know it's made me reassess my approach to life and creativity and I intend to carry on as I have for the past year, for as long as it behoves me to do so.

P.S.: My debut non-fiction book, Art Is The Way, and my middle-grade novella, A Hollade Christmas, are out everywhere now. You can get them in all good bookstores and from all major online vendors.

drfabola Uncategorized