Nothing but Blue Sky

I recently joined Bluesky, for some reason, and I spent the morning deleting most of my posts and comments so far. Actually, the reason I joined was because I have heard that, if you hope to publish writing one day, you have to show publishers that you have a social media following. I made an account similar to the name I write under.

But I did not make a proper plan for how I would conduct myself on the site. I am very, very bad at social media. I actually despise social media. I think social media has been, on balance, an incredibly destructive force in our culture. (But really only “incredible” if you suffer from the naive delusion that most people are reasonable and not profoundly stupid.)

I’m bad at social media because I take it both too seriously and not seriously enough. I foolishly attempt to have actual conversations and arguments with people, which most people in my life seem to understand is not possible, and not even what social media is for. Then I become enraged at the casual stupidity and ignorance of almost everyone I interact with, and I tell them so.

Which means my account quickly becomes useless for the purpose I ostensibly set it up in the first place, because apparently writers are required to have one and to collect thousands of followers. So I’ve deleted every substantive post or response I made, especially the angry ones, and instead made a bunch of joke posts that featured Trump quotes from his press conference today and details about how much, and in what form, he shit his diapers as he said them. Is this the right way to do it?

I don’t know how to navigate the competing notions that I personally hate social media and want to delete my accounts and never even read the news again, let alone be constantly exposed to the gutting stupidity of my fellow humans vs. I need to build an audience if I want to write books. It’s depressing.

What I’ve realized, though, is that my low social media IQ stems from, perhaps, the biggest problem I have in my life. Namely, as a person with ADHD, I speak without thinking about 75% of the time. Now, in my fifties, I am zeroing in on this habit and trying to learn how to reduce that percentage dramatically. I can sometimes stop myself from posting a little more easily. But overall, my emotions boil up until I’m in a fog of rage, and I don’t stop myself.

So, I guess I’ll work on that. I’ve been thinking that I might need an actual, physical gag.