Social Media Fatigue

Like just about everyone else in the world, I created a Threads account this week, before realising that there's absolutely nothing I want to say on this latest social media app.  But what the Hell, I thought, I already have an Instagram account (that I have, likewise, never posted on) and its one in the eye to Elon Musk who is turning Twitter into shit.  Although I don't know why I even care that the South African twat is demonstrating his idiocy by screwing up Twitter as I've pretty much given up on actually using that as well.  My posting on Twitter, which has always been paltry, has dwindled away to practically nothing.  Rather like my use of Facebook.  That's the thing, I quickly found out that I had little use for social media.  I am, after all, deeply anti-social.  Yet I still feel obliged to keep joining new forms of it.  Part of the problem lies with the fact that whenever I think about posting anything, anywhere, I come to the conclusion that I'm already saying everything I want to say on my website and this blog - without the constraints placed on me by social media networks.  I don't see the point of repeating it in condensed form elsewhere.  Besides, I've found that social media doesn't generate traffic - The Sleaze has a Facebook page where links to stories are posted automatically as they are published.  Despite over a hundred followers and lots of likes, the views of the story synopses there rarely, if ever, result in views of the actual stories themselves on the site itself.  Twitter is even worse in terms of converting Tweets into visitors.  

I have to say that I increasingly find Twitter deeply depressing in terms of the levels of human ignorance that it reveals.  At any given time on any given day the trending topics column is full of stuff that you know, if you click on them, will be a stream of people who demonstrably know nothing about that subject pouring out bile about it.  I mean, the other day 'Antarctica' was trending - that can't be controversial, I thought, so out of curiosity clicked on it.  What I found was a load of idiots talking ill informed bollocks and puking out conspiracy theories.  Facts?  They were in short supply.  There were, obviously, the climate change deniers telling us that the Antarctic ice wasn't melting - not that they've been there personally, of course, but some bloke on Facebook had told them it wasn't.  Then we had all the cranks who think that there are secret Nazi/alien bases there or lost worlds full of dinosaurs - the fact that the fossil record shows that Antarctica once had a milder climate seems to confuse them as they never seem to have heard of Tectonic plates and continental drift.  Obviously, 'they' must be trying to hide something there because aircraft are 'banned' from overflying the continent.  In reality, of course, international aviation regulations simply limit how far away from a suitable airport that commercial planes can fly - there are no airports in Antarctica.  Light aircraft that can land on the ice can and do operate there.  But, as ever, conspiracy nuts always find facts very challenging, which is why they always try to ignore them.  Depressing as Hell - topics about politics, though, are even worse.

As I've noted before, though, it is important to remember that Twitter users (or, indeed, users of any social media platform), aren't representative of the wider population, the overwhelming majority of whom never use social media.  Which is just as well, as if one was to go by Twitter, the majority of voters in the UK are apparently Boris Johnson loving neo Nazis who hate foreigners and think that Nigel Farage is the victim of a left-wing conspiracy by the British banking system.  This, des[ite the fact that, according to the polls, Labour is widening its lead over a deeply unpopular (and increasingly right-wing) Tory party.  Oh, and despite the fact that Nigel Farage actually had his bank account closed because he no longer has enough money to meet the minimum requirements for holding an account at Coutts, not because of a conspiracy.  (Apparently, he feels that he is too important to have a NatWest account, which he has been offered as an alternative).  Anyway, back to my Threads account - I still can't think of anything remotely interesting to post there...