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I’m soooo OVER social media!

Yes, I am included in the mass followers of social media. Yes, I have accounts in a few platforms. Yes, I spend abundant amounts of my time on them daily. No, I do not particularly find mindless scrolling on Facebook enjoyable or engaging. No, Snapchat is not then end all be all of comedy. Yes, Pinterest has some neat ideas. Instagram, meh. Well, that pretty much sums up my not so impressive social media forums. I mean, I did at one point have MySpace but I’m certain all of that is lost somewhere in cyberspace.

MySpace

Awe, MySpace! Such a fond memory. I think MySpace was the introductory social media platform for most people in my demographic group. Oh, the days of old! Ha. A space online for yourself! Fill it with who and what you want!

It was new, seemingly uncharted territory. Create a profile. Add your friends or anyone that sent you a request. It was a new exciting way to connect to people in a way you never had before! You could chat with them. You could post on one another’s page. You could send messages. You could play games. Farkle was my favorite. Just when it was great some hacker, I’m guessing, introduced background codes for your page! I mean there were blinking stickers and everything. It was so posh. If you did not have a MySpace you were behind the times.

Out of nowhere, Facebook was the new kid on the block. Everyone was jumping ship. MySpace had been great but for some unknown reason was being left for Facebook. I still do not know why this happened. I’m not sure what happened with MySpace. I thought a while back it may have just been a dead fish in the water. I looked into it and it seems to be a music group forum now.

Facebook

So there’s Facebook. Mmmk. A forum intended to keep everyone together. Connected. Great, I can see what classmates from grade school are up to! Yes, that was nice, at first. Oh, I can see what the bestie and her family did today! Wait, she just told me about that on the phone. Looky, there’re community events and invites to friend’s milestones. Crap, I haven’t checked the goings-on this week tab, did I miss something? Oh and then relationship statuses!! Ha! The best part!

Idk, the status update seems to have replaced the phone calls and even text messages between family and friends. The constant connectivity definitely swayed my decision on my lack of attendance to our class reunion. Invitations sent by snail mail are dwindling down to a near non-existent status. Relationships were, at one time, private and personal. Today, they are shared with the world! It seems status quo for dirty laundry to be aired multiple times daily. Can anyone say soap opera; I mean how many women can Victor Newman really pull?

Now, Facebook has become a place where the majority get the gossip and latest updates from rumors to fashion to political fallacies. I, myself, find no desire within my own being to pass my time with any of that junk. I have found myself scrolling aimlessly through just such news feeds. I’ve even unfollowed most of my friends’ status updates. When I look at my feed and it is the same person regularly, nope. For me Facebook has become a news update. My preferred political pages and word events with a side of family and friends along with a dash of comedy.

Snapchat

On to Snapchat! Snapping pictures of yourself, thus selfies were born. Alright, seems great for females, teenaged females full of themselves. Cool, my teenaged daughter is on here. She created an account for me so I could see what it was all about. Mainstream chatter says it’s all about inappropriate pictures that disappear never to be seen again. Skeptically, I proceeded with caution.

Snapchat quickly became my favorite app on my phone. There are pictures and filters. Before long, trophies and more filters. Snap filters make it possible to look amazing before you even get out of bed! I made snap friends with true live friends and people I am cyber friends with on Facebook group pages. There is a steady stream of snaps incoming and outgoing. It is fun. The filters are silly. There’s also STEEEEEVEN! Ha

In time, I grew weary of the unknown faces on my snap stories. I weeded out people I no longer was interested in watching. I had narrowed it down to three people I actually even watch entire stories from now.

Pinterest

Oh, Pinterest! Look at all the pretty stuff!! There are shiny pretty things! There are so many ideas here. Any category you can possibly imagine. It’s a plethora of pictures shared hundreds of thousands of times between people with similar visions and dreams. Idea sharing at its best!

I zealously began creating boards and filling them with my thoughts, dreams, interests and goals. There is virtually an unlimited database of pictures to scroll through and pin, love or send. Oops wait, you can no longer love anymore. They removed that option. Thx Pinterest gods.

Anywho, I kept pinning and sending, expanding my boards. In the beginning I would loose literally hours of time pinning ideas I knew would never happen. As time went on, Pinterest became cumbersome. So many things. So many boards. So hard to find that exact version you really liked.

Instagram

Instagram, meh. Another social media forum to keep up with, yea! Ok, it seems to be similar to Facebook but pictures. So from what I’m getting it’s pictures and hashtags of people, events and business. Neat, I like pictures.

I, not so wholeheartedly, began my instagram journey. Instagram always seemed to be an afterthought. It was oh yeah, I can put that on instagram. Once I figured out # was now a hashtag, (no longer a pound sign or a tic-tax-tie board) I started playing with tags and figuring out how it all works. Ok, awesome, I like hashtags! You can search for people, tags, places, posts.

Everything considered, instagram never really did anything for me. The pictures were never as exciting as the hashtags. Click. Edit. Hashtag. Post. Oh yeah, you can heart the pics you like in your feed. Nope still not excited. Next!

Other forums

Above is the extent of my social media adventures. Yeah not so exciting. Not extensive. No Twitter. No LinkedIn. I could not even begin to tell you what either of those sites do or their intended purpose. I’m also certain there are other forums but have no knowledge or need to know about them.

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I am curious exactly how different life would be without social media. It takes up hours of our day. Most of us don’t realize how many hours we are on it everyday. Most people have multiple forums downloaded on their smartphones. Think about that, they are in the palm of your hand. How many hours do you mindlessly spend on various social media sites?

No longer is a computer required to go into a chat room. Woah, yep, I just dated myself and many others. Ha!

I have not deleted any accounts. I simply uninstalled them from my phone. Is this permanent? I have no clue. I just know for now I need to disconnect from social media and reconnect with reality.