I have liked facebook on the whole, but it isn't always good for me. I spend time on it to procrastinate sometimes. I find myself getting upset and riled up about political or social media controversies that seem designed for my ADHD brain. It sucks me in.
I have spent some time trying to make this a better place for me. In part I have refrained on commenting on political things - except on Ann Wagner's dumb posts, but she is my representative so I guess I have just one venue for political trolling. The last few years years of the Trump presidency it was clear my political engagement online wasn't good for me or anyone else I also have not posted that much and decided to post from instagram and to put less of my life in the social media frame. I love the way John Green (vlogbrothers) has discussed framing with social media. This has been helpful, but it means there is stuff going on with my life that I haven't shared here. So please reach out and keep in touch. I have a bunch of social media accounts now. I have been posting my work/genetics thoughts on Twitter (@BrianGardunia) and have longer personal thoughts and writing still on my blog (Graduategrumblings.blogspot.com). Even though that is a public blog, I tend to write quite personal things there, but I have stopped using it for daily/weekly regular updates. For example, I have not written about leaving the church here on Facebook. LinkedIn tends to be a spam creator, but it was really useful for trying to recruit people for Bayer/Monsanto and looking for jobs. I don't make videos and tiktok is like cocaine for my ADD brain so I have avoided that platform. The question I have is still how I will continue to use facebook or instagram. Should I stop, when do I stop? Another area that is obvious with social media platforms is that they are commercial money making machines where we as users are part of the product they are selling. Ads are part of the experience and definitely part of what makes Facebook/Google/Twitter/etc money. The social media platform cares more about them than us. Users are really data mining opportunities for ads and sales. I don't love this about social media. To make it more bearable, I have been aggressive about manipulating the algorithm by clicking consistently on certain kinds of ads. Facebook is now full of three kinds of ads for me: 1. Language apps - especially Natakallam a nonprofit that leverages refugees to teach languages like Arabic. 2. Shoe ads - I like shoes. I started clicking on shoe ads now almost 10 years ago when I tried to get tickets to a sold out Brandi Carlile concert at a resort in Mexico that was part of a lesbian travel package. I started getting ads for gay and lesbian cruises and thought maybe clicking on shoe ads would make a very vanilla adscape I could ignore easily. 3. Native American news - I started on this rabbit hole last year at the end of the Trump administration as a way to still get news but from a different lens that didn't make my blood pressure boil. Highly recommend. There are a lot of interesting things I have learned by filling my feed with Native American news and art. This is certainly long enough that it shouldn't be on Facebook. I will copy to my blog and elaborate there, but I wanted to post here to see what the conversation could be about how you are managing what you keep in the frame for social media and how you consume and use social media. What do you do to better manage your time, your profile, and how social media affects your life? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZgkUUEf56s
