Social Media Life Hacks

I mentioned last week that I wanted to disengage myself from social media. It’s something I desperately need – I took a Twitter hiatus last year and developed an addiction to LinkedIn because I just needed to scroll something impersonal and unintentionally funny – but it’s so hard to let go of something that, in the modern world, is pivotal to everything from my work to my social life. I haven’t been to a party since the demise of Facebook among millennials, at least in part because I literally don’t know how I would be invited to one, and I am loath to switch off entirely from crowd-sourced news, curated points of interest and diverse community engagement, so here are the steps I will be taking to improve my feed and step back from social media, without deleting my accounts and everything they’ve given me.

1) Find pockets of community

‘Communist Taylor Swift fans’ or ‘emos in academia’ might not be your jam, but they are mine, and by surrounding myself with these folks I have curated a feed that is dominated by communities that bring me joy and positivity and with whom the discourse is more than the fashion of the day – it is, instead, a shared interest and up-to-the-minute news on our own little pockets of gossip. The power of the internet is that whatever your niche, somebody else is there, wanting to share with somebody who gets their jokes. Autistic lesbians with OnlyFans? I know three. Dress historians? There are thousands, what’s your period? Fans of a shop that only has one store and an online presence? Girl, there are whole groups of swappers, ready to exchange dresses or sell their old ones with you. Figure out what would make each space better, whether it’s a political bias or an understanding of an adjacent topic, then find your friends.

2) Engage with the expensive

An algorithmic hack: if you watch a lot of ads for Chanel and Dior, then ‘like’ ads for jewellery brands and click through to their sites, these will become the baseline for your targeted ads. This does two things: firstly, removes temptation (I am not impulse buying a fucking Chanel watch in the same way I might be tempted by fast fashion lies, let me tell you…) and secondly makes your ads into high-quality content starring Zendaya or Marion Cotillard, beautifully curated colour palettes that belong in the V&A and camerawork that’s as informed by film school perspectives as anything you’d see in the cinema.

3) Engage with the free

Follow museums, artists, tattooists, book cover designers, shitposters… all these people are out here, sharing content that you like. My favourite are the dark academia accounts which post dreamy gothic manifestations or pull together extracts of poems, images, and Tumblr posts, curated to match a vibe – these people are putting out work and will improve your feed if you steadily like and follow accounts that bring you the jokes, quotes or images that you want to see more of.

4) Know your poison

I know myself, and I know the effect Twitter has on me. It’s simultaneously the only thing keeping me informed of world events, abrest of developments in my field and in touch with several friends, and a toxic hellscape making me incapable of communication and placing specific narratives and perspectives in my mind. Other social media don’t do this for me at all, so by staying aware of my tendency to over-tweet, over-scroll Twitter and over-value things I read on Twitter, and I can moderate my behaviour accordingly.

5) Limit your time

The way I moderate my behaviour? I have an app timer on Twitter that alerts me every five minutes I spend on the app and tells me not to spend more than 15 minutes a day on it. I move my browser icon constantly so that I can’t let muscle memory take over and take me straight to the website. If I log in on a different device, I use a private browser so I have to log in afresh every time. Sometimes I even put something I’d like to use more – like a solitaire app or a link to Project Gutenberg – in the place social media used to occupy to encourage me to lose myself in something different. Little things to cut down the time you spend and make every minute conscious engagement.

6) Hide yourself

I don’t mean ‘be an anime avatar’ or ‘never engage with other people’, I simply mean that there’s no need to give your whole self, or to show off your ideal self. I’d rather go a month without posting than share the holiday I’m about to take, because that’s just for me and the people I’m going with. You will enjoy your life more if you don’t give those moments to strangers, and enjoy your personhood more if you forget about posting, whether it’s wins or failures or pictures with friends or outfits of the day. You do not need to share it to enjoy it, and if you’re doing it for yourself perhaps try sharing to StoryGraph or Letterboxd rather than more traditional social media? I don’t have friends on StoryGraph, and I love using it.

7) Long-form content

Whether you like long reads in The New Yorker, video essays on YouTube or listening to albums, you can use the same tech you’d be endlessly scrolling to improve your mind, engage with complex ideas and fully immerse yourself in what you love. It’s much more satisfying – even if you have to watch that video essay in bite-sized chunks as you do the dishes.

8) Literally just follow The New Yorker cartoons.

Look idk what to say beyond social media is a cesspit and these lil one-panels just make me smile every day.

On This Topic:

• Updating Late Romantic is the ‘social’ medium I’ll be doing the most this year.
• Yeah communist Tay Swift stans is a real thing, and they do make the internet better.
• New Yorker cartoons are on everything: LinkedIn, Insta, Twitter, probably Facebook… they are what you need.

To-Do:

• Find out if my office has a gym / showers
• Redesign ‘weekly check-in’ page of my journal for 2023 goals
• Set StoryGraph target for reading

Today’s Culture:

• Bernadette Banner’s annual period drama costume round up continues to be excellent
• There’s a new Waterstone’s near me, hooray!
• New year, new skincare regimen.