“Oh, baby, you’ll freeze out there.”

I left Twitter, I deleted my TikTok, both mainly due to privacy concerns, not being on a platform owned by awful people, not wanting everything I posted fed into AI, etc.

I’m still using Facebook, Instagram and YouTube though, so… it’s really a matter of which one shows their most evil hand next. (Meta, put your hand down, we know it’s you.)

The drop off in engagement was instantly noticed. And I know that “views” are generally not a social media statistic that means anything. But it was the “gold star” on your test paper of being on a social media platform. It got you into the “gifted studies program”. Most importantly, it was a path to getting paid at least some pennies¹ on what you uploaded.

I know this is not the biggest concern going these days, but it stresses me out that basically every artist/writer/critic is now expected to create their own tiny empire instead of getting paid by any existing entity to perform a job they've worked to get good at!!!!

— Josh Gondelman (@joshgondelman.bsky.social) 2026-06-25T19:13:48.317Z

Seeing this Bluesky post from comedian Josh Gondelman the other week made it all coalesce a bit. Not that it hasn’t been mentioned before. But nowadays you pretty much have to “be good at social media” to get eyes on your work. And then hope that those eyes convert to someone being interested in your other work.

Which sucks if you aren’t a photographer or videographer. But you still have to participate in these platforms in some way if you’re a creative of any kind or you get frozen out.

It’s bad enough that you already had to arrange a social media post just right: thumbnail, tags, no “forbidden” words, etc. just to get eyes on it. But now, after doing all that correctly, you need to worry that your perfectly arranged content is going to be fed to AI for others to do with as they please.

There's just something that is so insulting about platforms built on user-generated content—which is legitimately EVERY social media platform—now saying, "Hey, we already pretty much claim to own what you post, now we'll let other people fuck with it and use your likeness for whatever they want!" 😑

— Brian G. aka urbanbohemian 🪩🥂💖 (@urbanbohemian.com) 2026-07-08T00:01:45.669Z

I got a little peeved after seeing that Meta was allowing this. It’s not opt-in, of course, only opt-out IF you’re even aware of it. And it’s insulting. It was the user-generated content that made social media what it is. Now it’s that same content which is being devalued by the platforms.

And it’s a big part of what Cory Doctorow has aptly named “enshittification”. You can leave, but at what cost? I instantly noticed when leaving Twitter and TikTok, but I considered it worth it. (Also, we all just moved to the next most similar platforms, so it wasn’t a huge burden.)

It also had a slight side benefit of my attention span not being taken up by more infinite scrolls, but the number of people finding their way to my YouTube or Twitch or even this blog absolutely dried up.

At the same time, this isn’t my livelihood. The skills I’ve gotten from what I consider my hobbies: streaming, blogging, photography, video editing, TTRPG actual play, hosting/presenting, etc. are beneficial to my well-being. They’re the things I get to do and learn because of the support from my day job. (Which I do not take for granted.)

But it’s hard not to feel like I’m putting a message in a bottle with every post, video, stream, etc. and on some days you get a bunch of people showing up like, “I like this.” Other days, there’s no response like, yeah, I enjoyed making it, but it would be nice if someone gave me a thumbs up, y’know?

Even if I’m doing it for me, I don’t deny that the way the platforms are set up, it’s hard to do the thing that’s always in the Top 10 list of creator advice: ignore the numbers.

If I’ve learned anything from having this blog for over 25 years, it’s that no one reads it unless I make an effort to post a link anywhere else. One gets sent out to subscribers (many of whom I think are spambots) and to my Discord and that’s all.

It’s a blessing because I can generally write stuff here that no one sees, and if it’s not about anything popular or with links to anything, no one finds it. But it’s also a curse because if there’s something I might actually want people to see, I have to share it out on social media, and then come face to face with the painful reality that… people don’t click on things².

Ok, enough feeling sorry for myself. This isn’t how I wanted the “write at least one thing a month” for July to go, but at this is a place I’m allowed to scream into the void. That’s at least one joy of having my own website. Every now and again, I get to pretend it’s LiveJournal and get a little maudlin and in my thoughts.

I’ve also probably been inside too much, to be honest. It’s hot as balls outside. Summer is really not letting up on the high temps. And when I don’t want to go outside, I spend more time on social media, which starts the cycle of feelings all over again. I gotta put down my phone, close the browser tab and just read or watch more stuff³.

I feel better for having written the feelings down. Now… will that strengthen me against refreshing the YouTube Dashboard one more time? We’ll see about that.

Stay cool and hydrated, y’all!

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1. TikTok still owes me literally one cent. I left shortly after qualifying for monetization. ↩︎
2. I’ve seen more likes and reposts on a blog link than visits for a lot of entries. ↩︎
3. Even if it’s just “Murder, She Wrote” reruns because only J.B. Fletcher can judge me. 😉 ↩︎