I know nobody is going to read a wall of text but...there's something I need to really really get off of my chest.
TL;DR I've been thinking of going away from Twitter and Facebook for I don't know how long in 2019. They are affecting (and getting) into my brain too much to the point where anything that upsets me becomes too vocal when I posted about it on the platforms. I'm going to take the time to do other things that are IMO more productive than trying to catch up with lewd or news.
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Thinking About Attention - What issue they had might not be exactly the same per se, but there are some correlations I think is worth noting about.
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So, all of this thought is stemming out from the fact that Tumblr banning NSFW content on 17th December, and while right now I think that's fair (eventhough, y'know, it's kinda a ballsy move for Tumblr that basically has 90% of its users dumping their lewd stuff there), I didn't think very rationally 24 hours ago. It was an outburst, almost an enraged one sorta? "Oh no where should I look for non-furry lewds", dissing Newgrounds while I was at it (I still think it's a funny but sad move, but it's gonna happen isn't it...even Inkbunny doesn't allow humans to be posted)...on the 5 stages of grief, I'd say I was in the denial stage.
Then I brought it up on Twitter, because of course it's such a big kinda news that everyone's going to discuss about. Hell, people on Mastodon had shitposted about it. It wasn't smart--the tone was cynical; Even while writing this I think it's cynical looking back at it, because in my head that means some people are moving to Twitter and God fucking forbid I have to use Twitter more to catch up with artists. It's not that I don't use Tumblr regularly anyway, but there's a different kind of experience when you're scrolling down your Twitter timeline and suddenly there's a news or callout post while you just want to look at lewd stuff. And muting won't be very effective; that'd be like writing a lot of 'if' statements while you code--it's inefficient and an ongoing process. I won't put up with that.
As I wrote the tweets, I realized how emotional I was about the inevitable shutdown of just one site. Once I was done tweeting, I looked back and it and realized that...this is unhealthy. I'm being too upset about this. I shouldn't. It's just a site. I'm getting upset over people prospectively moving to Newgrounds for no reason. And this happens whenever I see some big news that people are going to constantly talk about in the social media--say Trump being elected in 2016 for a very obvious example--I just need to take a break away from Twitter or any other website so I don't have my mood ruined because of them. Hell, at worst case scenarios, might as well be that I had suicidal thoughts. That's not a very light thought. That can incur serious problems.
The main reason I still need to use Twitter is because I want to catch up with all the art and drawing tweets people do. But sometimes opinions are put inbetween them. Inkbunny's or Tumblr's system is fine in that if I don't want to look at the journal or the caption i can just focus on the images and scroll through the pictures that I want. But on Twitter it's the opposite, which makes it that the tweet is presented first as a context, rather than the picture. This is pretty frustrating because that means I have to read what something is about first, and then look at the picture, which already puts me in some kind of mood. I can't skim through it. And that's not what I want to use the site for.
The Tumblr news is when I said, that's enough. You're going too emotionally attached to these websites. You need to stop being affected so much by these posts. It's going to be a big deal and people are going to keep constantly talking about it, but I don't want to add anymore stress in my personal life. I need to quit it for real if I want myself to be better mentally. My main issue is how the tweets have somehow gotten into my brain and amplified my emotions, as much as I want to keep it stoic so I can take a neutral stance at them. I also noticed I keep switching back to it, thinking and waiting to see if my tweets elicited a response, or if someone followed me--it's not great. I might as well come out of this and concluded that I'm probably a bit narcissistic about my presence on social media. This is what I feel like my experience on Twitter is getting on about lately. It's becoming more and more engraved in my brain, and I need to step back. So that's what I'm doing.
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Social media is a powerful platform. They try to catch your attention on a certain topic, hooking you back into them, while showing you ads (even trying to make it so more power users use their first-party services--by killing off third-party ones) so they can survive. Notifications, user engagement, algorithmic timeline--whatever questionably ethical decisions they'll do to make you stay and keep using their service. The red badges on Twitter taskbar, Discord notification pings, Facebook's persistent friend request badges--anything. Just earlier today, after I've had the (what I'd call) Twitter emotional burst accident, I had this urge to mute Discord servers I don't frequent often, realizing that I have the urge to remove every single unread arrows I see so I can catch up to them. CGP Grey explains this issue better than I do, and I've linked to his video above.
This is really really getting on to me lately. I apologize that I'm rambling, but if you've read this far, I thank you for sticking around. I'm not very sure I'll be successful in avoiding Twitter altogether (I can do that with Facebook because I don't really have a lot to catch up with), but...I need to do it. I need to step back and think about what next in my personal life, and being concerned about the death of a site because they want it to be less lewd should not be on the list. I don't know when I'll be back on the social media. I did say I'll be away for at least a week...at least. It could be more than that, who knows. I just need to spend some time evaluating what is it that I want from these services.
Thank you for reading. I'll be in Discord if anyone wants to talk about it, I guess.
