Social Media Platform Fatigue
I joined Twitter in September 2010. I gave up on it a few years ago when I no longer had the same energy in me to be quippy every day, multiple times a day, in 140 (now 280) characters or less. But when I was at my height in 2012, I was getting multiple retweets and making strangers across the world laugh with original, funny content.
(John Cena now follows me so I will always keep my Twitter account active, even if a few tumbleweeds blow through my page every so often.)
I gave up on Facebook a year ago in the middle of the racial uprising and right before the 2020 election. It just felt too much like a longer winded version of Twitter. No creativity and no substance, just self-righteous drivel from everyone and their mamas. Literally. ‘Boomer’ accounts are often toxic and hilarious, however, because I don’t think they realize their problematic posts and comments can be seen, screenshot, and shared.
Keeping up with “old friends” proved fruitless since over time many revealed themselves to be racist, anti-choice, xenophobic gaslighters with such guff behind a keyboard.
I’m mainly on LinkedIn to learn from Black, female HR DEI leaders and to post articles on the BS Black women face in the workplace while simultaneously kicking butt in every single industry.
TikTok
TikTok is where white creators go to steal and regurgitate Black creators’ content. This is while subsequently and obsessively posting anti-Black and other racist videos and challenges. I never even bothered creating an account.
The popularity and viralness of TikTok videos and dance trends forced Instagram into its own video content version called “reels”. Forget your feed of breathtaking photography and small business promotion. Do you have daily reels lip syncing to pre-recorded audio? No? Okay, no post reach or engagement for you!
Hashtags barely matter anymore, and the algorithm already hates anyone posting content with intent.
Q: So where does that leave the non-conformists?
A: With dwindling interest in posting at all.
My content is better than some shitty algorithm. I’ve also never felt good about utilizing platforms that support Zuckerberg which is why I created this website space in December 2020 to house my content. Increasingly, Black creators and pages are the victims of hyper-surveillance, “community violations”, and are almost perpetually shadow banned on Instagram. Our reach across the feeds of our followers is consistently reduced, even with notifications turned on. “Community Guidelines” just sounds like another term for policing Black people, especially when you look at the number of violent, white nationalist pages and comments that stand strong within this “community”.
It’s as though Facebook wants to frustrate Black creators into leaving the platform but, ironically, if you even post about dissent or encouraging your followers to find you on a different platform, the post is removed for “hate speech or symbols”. The fuckery. I would rather work to bring people to my site than be another cog in the social media machine.
At this point I barely scroll through my Instagram homepage because, in addition to the continued removal of chronological posts, I’m tired of seeing mediocre and regurgitated content getting thousands of likes, or not seeing some of my favorite Black activists and content creators because they’ve been shadow banned for the 179th time.
Additionally, I thrive on engagement and Instagram has a bad bot and ghost follower account problem. “Ghost followers” are inactive or fake IG accounts that may follow you, but never interact with your content. Therefore, when I see followers via IG stories, who literally know me in real life and claim to be “friends”, essentially stalk my content but never engage or interact with my feed, I often remove them myself. If you want to act like a ghost, you can get ghost. *Shrugs*
All in all, if you’re reading this: thank you. And hopefully you’re subscribed to my website notifications as this is where you will always be able to find me. (You can find that at the bottom of this page.) And as my page continues to evolve, I want you all to be there for the journey. This page is my heart, and it isn’t controlled by the social media powers that be.