While I’ve never been great with social media, I think I used to understand it. I’ve been active on most platforms at one time or another, except maybe Tumblr, which I never tried. I joined Twitter in 2009, and at the time it felt like it had already been around forever at that point, when in fact it was mere 3 years old. I know I joined in 2009 because I mentioned it in my old blog:

Writer by Night: Jimmy Scripts and stuff… (whatwritesatmidnight.blogspot.com)

It was fun back then. I remember writing late at night and Tweeting with the small community of UK screenwriters I’d found on there. There were discoveries too, like the musician She Makes War (now releasing mucic as Penfriend) who I still listen to today. My feeling at the time was that at 29, I was too old for the internet and it was already moving too fast for me, but actually it made more sense then than it does now.

I ruined my relationship with social media and the internet with the covert, transmedia horror project, Paz vs Stuff. Without me going into too much detail, there’s a decent summary here:

Indie Spotlight: ‘Paz Vs. Stuff’ Is A Pointed Transmedia Thriller Years In The Making – Tubefilter

I was in my mid-thirties by then and had two young children so keeping up the social media habits of a fictional 25-year-old wasn’t easy. However, I also had a long commute to Croydon for my day job so I’d use the 2.5 hours of train travel to Tweet and blog as the character. Paz had more success online than I ever did, some of which is summarised in her final blog post:

paz vs stuff: my last blog post

I did develop unhealthy habits, checking my phone more often than I ever had before and telling myself it was okay because the project was a critique of social media obsessions. The point of Paz vs Stuff was to show how our online personas are created and moulded and become entirely separate from our real lives. By the end of the project I believed this fully, and found it very difficult to rejoin social media as myself.

Now social media feels like a thing I have to do with less visible results. I have things I’d like to promote – books, podcasts, films I worked on – but most attempts to advertise on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook feel like shouting into the wind. I do it because I feel I have to and I feel like I used to be better at it. It used to feel like it worked. It was a way to be your own PR firm and do your own marketing. I’m not sure it works like that anymore.

Over the years, I allowed most of my social media accounts to stagnate. I’d used Facebook to record my children as they grew up but at a certain point I stopped, realising I didn’t have their express permission and not knowing what Mr Zuckerberg was going to do with the photos he then owned. I regret this, sometimes. I like seeing memories of my children as babies appear on my timeline, even if I’m not sure they belong there. I’m not very good at archiving my own photos and most of them only stick around as long as the particular device I stored them on is active.

I haven’t lived in social media land for a while now really, but it used to be a nice place to visit occasionally. Recently, Twitter, or X as I should call it, has not been a nice place to visit. I’ve known this for a long time but I would still go back there to check every now and again. For months now, when I click the search button I’m recommended videos depicting various online extremists I’m not going to name here. I’ve watched friends and organisations I respect leave the platform one by one. Now it’s my turn. I don’t announce this because I think anyone will miss me, but because I’ll miss it. I’ll miss the 2009 version, anyway.

I’m hoping to live here now. I can’t say how long I’ll keep this up, this may be my one and only post, but as the last line in one of my favourite films goes, “Why don’t we just wait here for a little while. See what happens…”