Slip inside this house - 2020
One of the problems with social media ( and its primary strength) is its ability to reach everywhere, Follow me on Instagram/Facebook/Youtube etc etc etc, if you become well enough known your work can be shared and re-shared multiple times across groups and even across platforms ( for example Reddit to Tumblr or Instagram to Facebook ) there is a kind of critical mass you reach which draws in more and more likes and re-posts , so far so obvious, one post can spawn a thousand re-shares ( apologies for the Helen of Troy analogy).
What happens when you deliberately burn down your account on Facebook or Instagram ( given the one month grace period for you to reconsider the error of your ways?).
Essentially (and especially if you decide to take on another persona to distance yourself from what you were before) you become a stranger to new platforms with no reputation or exposure points ( exposure points being the amount your work is liked and shared and re-shared and commented on given that that is the currency of online interactions) and even more you see that the community you were part of was actually really really good with great interaction ( apart from that one time when I got stomped on by a pack of crypto bros) but as everyone stays in their silos that reach only extends as long as you remain in that silo.
You are never more alone when you leave a place and you have to mine for reputation points again, on some sites you can literally see and hear the hollow as you move around.
If we consider social media in terms of gamification and in games to level up you sometimes have to do repetitive things before you get the shiny things that make it worthwhile then that is exactly what leaving one platform for another entails.
Then of course there is ideology to consider do I go open source/ fediverse and accept the hit on possible connections and shares, in exchange for better quality of connections and less feeding into the military industrial surveillance state or swap one walled garden for another given that the platform you show your work on says a lot about you creatively and ideologically, the choices we make social media wise have consequences irl. Choose surveillance state because its easy or build something better outside of that state given that its harder and more difficult for reputation mining.
Or alternatively just shut down the computer and walk away.
