Today was something of a breaking point (well, ANOTHER breaking point to be honest), for me and my ability to cope with the flood of rage inducing muck that I wade through every day. It is time to find alternatives to Facebook. I started out innocently enough, trying to learn about how people fared overnight when a major hurricane hit. I started reading about people who refused to evacuate and just assumed that rescuers would come save them from themselves. I was practically screaming at my computer about how selfish and terrible those people were. Pretty unpleasant way to feel at 8:00 a.m. Sadly, it isn’t the first early morning sense of rage or existential dread I’ve felt lately.
I stopped checking the weather news and moved on to catching up on my social media mentions on Facebook, not realizing that I was still hopped up on stress and rage. All of the rest of the utter shit-show that our world has become was plastered over my feed. I found myself boiling and angry because of the signal boosts that horrifying “news” pundit with the initials of TC was getting because people were sharing his picture while being (justifiably!) upset over his attitude toward violence and murder. Disgusted over the latest DT BS and having to see his face plastered over it. I get unreasonably angry just seeing pictures of certain politicians. I felt soiled by participating in a platform that has been misused in so many ways, that lies and manipulates and facilitates hate groups.
Convenience… it leads us to accept so many compromises when it comes to what we consume and share online. We give up so much control, share so much of our data, we enrich so many people who don’t deserve it, all because we “need” to be where everyone else is. We’ve become addicted to platforms that are not good for us. Facebook (among other corporate media sites) has become a very unhealthy place for us to be. Not only do we give them all the content that lets them exist and grow, businesses pay them for the privilege of doing so, waiting for the scraps of visibility and exposure they give up in return because it gets us more eyeballs on OUR stuff. I spend a lot of time on Facebook on behalf of my business and my networks, but I have to cut back. I need to find alternatives to Facebook that don’t require me to post or read things there as often (or at all?!).
Today, I started down the path of researching alternatives to Facebook. I found something really interesting while reading one of the sites I have on Feedly. An article on Smashing Magazine about Autonomy Online. It was very timely. The IndieWeb, the idea that everyone should have their own website, post their content on what they own, and then if they choose to do so, syndicate it out to the social media world. I visited the IndieWeb wiki page, I read up on some of the tools mentioned in the article, I watched a really interesting video about it from Webstock. In the course of learning and listening, I found my rage slowly fade, my stress levels drop, and I started to think about positive change.
Whether I manage to bring enough of the people in my world along with me that I can delete Facebook remains to be seen, but I’m looking forward to giving it a try. At the very least, if I syndicate my content automatically from my site to their platform, I won’t have to spend as much time being exposed to the rage inducing, mind-bending, signal boosted garbage that makes me doubt my sanity and lose faith in humanity on a daily basis. Wouldn’t it be nice to not feel rage first thing in the morning. I can promise you this, I refuse to spend another dime on Facebook ads.
Have you researched the IndieWeb yet? I’m glad I did. It gave me a path to finding some sanity in a sea of horrible content. Now I plan to syndicate content from where I own it, rather than post directly. Less time spent posting on someone else’s platform, more time owning my own stuff.
Want to learn more about me? You can read my About page.