So, if you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, then you may have noticed that I'm not there an awful lot anymore. This is not an accident.
I've gradually come to the conclusion that 2021 will be my final year on both Facebook and Instagram.
If you'd like to know why, you can carry on reading. If you'd just like to find out how to stay in touch with me beyond 2021, you can skip to the bottom of the page. And, if you really don't care about either, then I'm guessing you ended up here accidentally while looking for Eurovision drinking game rules...
So, why are you doing this Oliver?
Well, my malaise with social media probably began during the divisive 2016 period where the world (in my opinion) went a little mad and voted for both Brexit and Trump. The levels of vitriol rose across the board. The ability to have civil conversation and discussion diminished. And, while I made a pact with myself not to delete anyone simply because I disagreed with their views, that wasn't the case for a number of my Facebook 'friends' who deleted me when I wouldn't accept their (alternate) facts.
But, by 2020 with Covid-19 in full swing, I had to abandon my policy of not deleting people because I just simply couldn't deal with all those people in the early days insisting coronavirus was a 'hoax' or 'less harmful than the flu' or 'invented by Bill Gates as a means to vaccinate us with a chip that would allow us to be tracked by 5g' (I'd love to pretend this wasn't real).
So, that's part of the reason.
Then there's the fact that it seems difficult to reconcile my feelings on how humanity should be building towards a better future with my continued usage of a platform that knows the damage it is causing and seems to simply not care as long as it's profitable.
But, amid all those vaguely noble intentions, is the simple fact that I just don't really care enough about it anymore.
I've been with social media since the early days; Friends Reunited, Myspace, even Google+; but - to quote BB King - the thrill is gone.
So, there you are. Vitriol, ethics, and boredom if you want to boil it down to keywords.
Should you want to keep in touch with me, then I'll still be keeping my LinkedIn open (for now) - so, feel free to add me there if we know each other professionally.
I also will be keeping this blog running (and possibly finding time to update it a little more frequently).
And, I also have a more work-centric website that I update far too infrequently but which I hope to find time to work on slightly more frequently in 2022.
And I have email; so if you'd like to stay in touch through the power of the written word then you can always contact me via this blog (or message me on Facebook/Instagram) to get my address.
And that's about it. I won't attempt to proselytise.
Curiously, there's a small degree of nervousness as my finger hovers over the button that will publish this, but I guess that's natural when you've been on social media for more than two decades. But it makes sense to me, so I guess I'll see some of you elsewhere in 2022 and some of you not at all. Best of luck, no matter which group you're in!
