Volume 4, Issue 3: On Community

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Hi friends! A couple (few?) weeks ago Nicole and I had seen a Tweet that was something to the effect of “quit posting boring shit online no one cares” and I was like, wow, okay, I don’t know who put Saran Wrap on that person’s toilet seat but okey-dokey. Nicole mentioned she rarely posts on social media because she feels that not much in her day-to-day is interesting enough to put online and when she said that it gave me pause because I rarely think of what I post in terms of its potential of being interesting to other people. I am in no way judging that use of social media and folks use social media for many different personal and professional reasons.

It did get me thinking about why I, personally, use social media. It’s a frequent topic I mention to my therapist, mostly in the “I scroll through social media too much and there are other things I’d rather be doing than staring at my phone.” I have been trying to think about what I do get out of it, especially as I am not an influencer and I am not dependent on my social media following to pay my rent and keep food in the fridge. I do love the access to information, of course, and I like seeing cool art and fashion and people doing neat clever things but that is more about why I look at social media and not why I actively participate by sharing out.