My first interaction with a social network on the internet was LiveJournal. I was going to college and also doing comedy at a local theater. I was the youngest of the cast and a handful of the other performers encouraged me to join as they would post mostly hilarious stories smattered with some professional updates. It was my first time writing content that was viewed by friends and strangers alike. My tone started out like I was chatting with my best friends. Turns out, that tone sometimes was just meandering thoughts that didn’t tell a cohesive story. It was arguably bad writing. At least that is what I took away from some of early feedback. To this day I edit the shit out of any blog post I make. I’m worried about what people that I’ll never meet might think of how I write, what I have to say, and if I sounds stupid.
As a young comedian working temp jobs that were computer based (mostly excel) to get by, the internet was your playground. I had hopped on the MySpace wagon pretty early and was exploring the blogging function instead of LiveJournal. After Facebook became available for the general population, I coexisted on both platforms, with MySpace eventually dying. It was a magical time for a tech-curious kid with time to kill at jobs with a lot of downtime. Youtube was this landfill of shit videos, but if you dug around enough, you could be the person who found the diamond. Google was doing some interesting things at that time as well. Google Wave, precursor to Google docs was this shiny new thing where our comedy group tried to all write one chapter of a book at a time. That lasted for like two weeks.
Then Twitter came into my life. I really didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand it for a few years after I had an account. 140 characters just wasn’t enough to relay the verbose blog type thoughts that I was used to authoring. How could anyone really understand the gravity of the thoughts I was trying to share if I couldn’t use all my $10 words. Then a couple of my friends start posting jokes. Like really dumb jokes. And it clicked, this was a place to just put dumb thoughts and witty remarks. I loved it. I posted so many jokes. I got so few likes and retweets. It’s rough to admit, but there was definitely a time that likes and retweets were how I measured my comedic talent. It’s a rough when you measure your funniness on these metrics, especially if you have been striving to make a living in this profession for years. Everyone needs that fix of affirmation. Especially if you are a comedian that feeds off of the approval of strangers.
Eventually comedy took a backseat in my life and I focused more on my professional career. As I started to carve out a piece of the pie for myself, I decided that Instagram was the right social media for me. Not only could I show off my photography skills, but I could brag without words about all the amazing stuff in my life. What a time that was. Getting the same 15 likes from the same 15 people and never growing my followers over 230. It’s funny now looking back on the amount of effort that went into trying to impress acquaintances and strangers. I also didn’t realize the social politics of Instagram when you’re in a relationship. Good lord, what a mess if you don’t like your partner’s post. Or god forbid, you tag them in a photo they think is less than flattering. Keep your head on a swivel.
Then a year ago I just kinda gave up on it all. I had deleted Facebook a few years prior because scrolling through the feed was exhausting. I likened it to having a package of Saltine crackers, and eating one at a time expecting the next one to be an oreo cookie, but it’s never an oreo cookie, it’s just another bland saltine. Next was Twitter. It was exhausting. The amount of time I put into trying to craft the most amazing joke that never would be seen, or later finding out someone made the same joke 2 weeks earlier. Fuck it, delete it. Then Instagram. This was was hard because it’s pretty much just a dating app at this point and I’m still single, but I was on a roll. I had a Snapchat, but it’s just for nudes right? We’re not really calling that a social media app, it’s a naked picture messaging service. Anyway, I don’t have one now, and I never got any naked pictures, so good no loss here.
Now you internet stranger might be asking, why did you write this? It’s kinda rambling and honestly maybe a little TMI. You’re not wrong internet stranger. I guess I’m just excited to be able to post stuff like this on my own terms, on my own site. I used to love blogging and putting my dumb thoughts out to whomever. Then it became about social capital. In some cases it became about trying to start a revenue stream. Whatever the motive, it led to a lot of self-censoring and writing in a voice that I thought would be most palatable. I’m excited to really just start writing with my actual voice and about the dumb dumb shit I think is interesting, likes be damned.