M. Suzanne Terry

Required for the perusal of social media. 

Now that I finally got around to discussing the social media where I’m able to be true to who I am (which I’ve been promising to do since January), it got long. So you get it in two parts this week. Today I’ll discuss where not to find me; tomorrow, I’ll rave about the ones I love.

[Disclaimer: Some of you who are prone to reading between the lines and fretting that posts are about you – relax. Even if everything I say below about things I dislike (and thus don’t personally want to be) steps on your toes, that doesn’t mean I think you should stop doing them. It means I’m a curmudgeonly old woman who barely tolerates the Internet at all, even though I recognize that as a Gen-Xer that makes me a traitor to my generation, as the creation of the Internet is one of our crowning glories. My apologies to the Microserfs who came before me (and to Douglas Coupland for stealing his term). But seriously – if I follow you, it’s because I generally like what you’re doing. If I click like, I mean it. Don’t fret.]

It will come as zero surprise to anyone that I’m not naturally great at social media. It seems that you have to spend a lot of time there to gain a following. It also seems that you have to not be easily annoyed, and that’s not my strength. The level of repetition needed to establish a platform/have an audience/build my brand *retches* looks like nagging to me. It looks like nagging when others do it, and it feels like nagging when I do it.

[I see you fretting. Stop it.]

So if I don’t have a clear plan, my social media presence is reduced to liking and hearting and *hugs* all around. I have accepted that as the norm on some of them *eyes Facebook* because 1) I can’t/won’t be everywhere all the time, 2) some of them are more annoying to me than others, so the less time I spend there, the better my blood pressure will be, and 3) I prefer using different media for different reasons. In the same way that I prefer different geographical places to look different (i.e., have their own personalities), I prefer my different virtual spaces to look different.

Ergo, the plan.

The purpose of these posts is two-fold. First, I want to let you, dear readers, know where you can find me and what you can expect when you find me there. Second, I want to put in writing what I plan to do so that when I am feeling overwhelmed (probably because I’m trying to do what others are doing and that feels exactly like the train wreck it is), I can come back here and look at it and see that it’s not so big and scary after all. The following is a list of places you can find me online and why you may want to find me there.

So…on to where not to find me. I mean, find me there if you want. But don’t expect a lot.

Facebook:

UGH. I often rue the day I got peer-pressured into joining Facebook, because I can’t seem to quit it, and most days, I desperately want to. It helps me keep up with birthdays and events, gives me an organized space for managing groups and event invitations, and helps me keep up with a select few friends, bloggers, artists, activists, and writers who curate their Facebook pages well. And that’s basically all you’ll hear from me there. I scroll through my feed when I’m bored and click the like button a lot which makes it show up in the feeds of people who are following me (sorry-not-sorry), so that’s a nice feature that makes it look like I’m on Facebook constantly, but I really only spend about 10-15 minutes a day there until I’m tired of it. My wall is a collection of other people finding things they think I’ll like (mostly coffee, food, and kittens) and posting it on my wall or tagging me in it. I find the rest of it click-baity and junky.

Facebook is where it seems the general population likes to vomit their opinions, whether their opinion is based on anything factual or not. It is the place where people who don’t seem to understand how research works claim they’ve done their research (which, unless they actually conducted the study by gathering raw data and analyzing it, no, they did not, because that’s what doing research entails). What they probably mean is that they have read some of the research –most likely just the part of the research that supports their opinion – and are trying to pass themselves off as an expert which they wouldn’t need to do if they were experts because their credentials would speak for themselves. The only reason I can fathom for even bothering to mention that they’ve done the reading (without, by the way, posting any links to the reading in order to give credit where credit is due; ergo, they are also moderately plagiarizing) is to silence the opposition by falsely trumping it with their fake expertise that they have done nothing to earn.

Which I don’t like. Obviously. /endrant

The thing I like most about not quitting Facebook is that having an account lets me have a page (coming to a post near you tomorrow).

Twitter: https://twitter.com/coffeesnob318

One hundred forty characters is not enough for anything but “Hey, look at this!” or succinctly stated fluffy witticisms, and that’s precisely how I use it. I follow a ton of people, and sometimes it overwhelms me. I’ll read my list, scroll back to the top, and Twitter is like, “You have 520 new posts.” *flails* I don’t want to stop following them, though, because on days when I don’t have time to read the real news, I can get the gist by scrolling through my Twitter feed, because the people I follow are well-informed. That’s helpful.

Twitter meet-ups/parties/whatever-they’re-called are what I imagine Hell must be like. I have tried them a few times, and it just ruined my whole night. You pretty much have to buy me shoes and many wines to get me to consider it, and I can almost guarantee I will still back out at the last minute. I am not even sorry (and I’m keeping the shoes).

Tumblr: http://coffeesnob318.tumblr.com/

If I were still active in fandom, I would freakin’ live on Tumblr. I’m bitter that Tumblr wasn’t around when I was still keeping up with Smallville on a weekly basis. That would have been awesome.

I don’t know how I’m going to use it in the future. Maybe I’ll continue to forget about it. Maybe I’ll just continue to pin Tumblr posts on Pinterest and call it a day.

Other:

I don’t have an account on Snapchat (I’m a information hoarder – that it goes away freaks me out). I have a LinkedIn account, but I don’t use it except to add people who have added me and to say nice things about them. I don’t Periscope, because I have no desire at this point in my life to record videos of myself.

What social media don’t work for you?