… from social media for a bit.
I catalogued the accounts I have on various sites and what I do with those, and found a variety of things that I get out of Twitter, Tumblr, the effbook, Flickr, and Instagram. I weighed them on nobility of purpose, suitability, and likeliness to earn punishment in the hereafter, paused for about 14 seconds, and deleted them all from my phone, which is pretty much the only place I look at them anyway.
I’m going to miss seeing mpdrolet (rather, The Photo Registry, following the early 2017 deletion of the excellent mpdrolet tumblr), la beaute de Pandore, Wil Wheaton, and various others on Tumblr: I got loads of inspiration and saw many great pictures thanks to Tumblogs, but I also bought loads of books that I looked at once (if at all) and stuck on a shelf to rot, and rushed out to buy some bit of gear after a recommendation. I’m going to miss kristenwithacamera, Brian Eno, and Delouze & Guattari, on Twitter: the random mix of stuff from different periods of interest always keeps me guessing, but I find myself scrolling and scrolling and scrolling instead of, say, reading one of the books I bought after a recommendation tweet. I’m really going to miss all the updates from Mattie, Joe and other friends on Instagram, but I deleted the effbook off my phone months ago and while I miss the reminder of old friends and miss the friends too, the endless scrolling isn’t worth it: I have much better things to do on this blog and out in the world.
I’ll be syndicating the blog to my effbook, tumblr, and twitter as always, and you can reach me via email, phone, text, or the US Postal Service, and if you don’t have one of those, reach out via the Contact Form and I’ll happily pass along the contact method of your choice.
I’d love to get a letter every now and again, but I’m not great at replying with any quickness. May Allah forgive me, and if you write me letters, please forgive me. Maybe if I’m not scrollingscrollingscrolling I’ll actually scribble out a reply.
I might be back one day: Allah knows. And the social media might not be the problem at all. I also burn some hours staring blankly at screens. There are 24 hours in a day: some are slept, some are worked, some are spent eating or brushing teeth, some belong to my darling, adorable wife, but the rest are more or less free, and while it’s not much, it shouldn’t be spent making money for some corporation.
Thanks, and keep reading. God willing, I have some fun things ahead.
