Every now and then the topic of social media will come up in my day to day life, and when it did over lunch a few days ago both of us stated that neither of us do it. It also came up in a phone call last night. I don't do Facebook or Twitter, I have no intention of doing either, and although I may have mentioned it here in this blog, I haven't said why.
The short answer is, I have better things to do.
The long answer follows.
I remember first hearing about Facebook back in 2008. I got two invites, almost within one day of each other from people I knew well. "You have to try this! It's neat!" I never bothered to check it out. A large part of that was I was happy with how I was spending my time, and didn't want to take on any new endeavors. As time went on, I kept hearing about it more and more, and now every business out there wants you to "like" them on Facebook.
We also have Twitter. Again, I have better things to do. I can't recall when I first heard about it though I'm going to say it was 2010. Randy Bachman had a forum and he would send out tweets every now and then, which someone would repost. Fred Turner was asked if he did social media, and he said no. (He has better things to do with his time too).
Even then, what have I got to tweet about? "I was on I-10 the other day and I saw some roadkill, and it was a deer!"? On some days that's about as exciting as my life gets, and I don't complain about those days.
That said, both of those platforms have had some bad consequences for those who get involved in it. A former employer of mine had someone over in a foreign country. He posted some disparaging remarks about that country on his Facebook page. To his surprise, that host country had their intelligence agency monitoring that, and they didn't like what they read. He was forced out of that country in short order, and I'm not sure if he remained employed with us after that.
I have also read of longstanding friendships being destroyed. I know of one of them personally, and I suspect that the person that caused that has turned some of his Facebook friends against others who would otherwise have been his friends. With either that or Twitter, once you send something out, you can't take it back. You cannot unring that bell.
Now are there positive uses of either of those platforms? As big as they are, there would have to be. I could have signed up for Facebook and continued my interaction with two of the April Wine band members. As much as I love their music, there isn't much left I could ask either Myles Goodwyn or Brian Greenway. I do have one question for Fred Turner which I'll have to remember to ask the next time I email him, but I don't need Facebook to do that. Yes, it would have been nice to keep in touch with Myles and Brian, and to learn about their projects, but an internet search would turn that up anyway.
Then there's the privacy issue. Is it really anybody's business who I'm friends with? Most of my friends know who my other friends are and where I like to eat and what I like to do. Yes, I write about these from time to time here, but it isn't that anyone reads this blog in the first place and to be honest I'm good with that (this blog is, these days, a platform for airing my opinions and random thoughts, and I have control over posted reactions). I also maintain a ham radio blog, which might have even less of a following than this one, but if I'm on the air and I hear some rare DX I'll text my ham radio friends about it so that they too can get Assinassippia or Crapistan or whatever rare country I get. So why do I need Twitter?
Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh has said on several occasions that the Twitterverse is not representative of mainstream America. Some of the tweets I've seen posted on news sites bear that out. I don't really care to read reactions from Hollywood as to what President Trump tweeted, and I don't need to read the reactions that some folks have for those Hollywood reactions. If I want to know what some people are thinking there are comments on news articles, and from what I read a lot of people are as much anti-media as I am.
Anyway, there's the long answer. I don't do Facebook, I don't do Twitter.
I have better things to do with my time.
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