What The Hell Happened To My Blog
Howdy y’all, I’m back from nowhere with an overdue explanation of why my blog abruptly stopped. The reasons are all pretty simple/stupid. For one thing, thanks to an influx of tourists, the internet in Pichilemu has been horribly slow and unreliable, to the point that on some days I can’t go online at all (yes it’s affecting my job, but I’ve been lucky with the timing of my class schedule lately).
Secondly, I’ve been spending more time on other writing projects, things that will hopefully be officially published some day, and which require a distressingly huge amount of time to get right.
Thirdly, the last blog post I tried to write was a tad overambitious. It started as a reflection on the role of technology in modern life, and the terror of the outlandish future we are facing. I tried to connect my feelings on those issues to the events of a classic sci-fi novel, which I then tried to tie to an extremely weird anime movie that hinges on a similar premise, all of which would make for a compelling perspective on our relationship with technology, I think. The connections are there, but I almost broke my brain trying to wrangle it all into a single post. I will try to pick it up another time.
Fourthly, Pichilemu has been in a partial quarantine situation for the last month, and I am discovering just how much of an energy vacuum quarantines really are. Last year when the lockdowns began, I escaped with Daniela to her parents far-away cabin, and didn’t have to live through actual quarantines until just recently. I, like so many others already know, now feel like I’m weighed down with sandbags during lockdown. I can’t believe so many people did this for so long, it’s psychologically brutal.
Fifthly, and I know this might not be the smartest thing to say in a blog that I promote on Facebook and Instagram, but I just loooaaathe social media. I hate the experience of using it, I hate the feeling of posting something and wondering forever after if it was a mistake, I hate the business models (of Facebook and Twitter in particular), and I hate the insane amount of power that these sites hold over our society—power that we willingly give them when we use their products, of course.
I don’t like taking such a negative stance on this honestly, because I have a number of friends who really do seem to use social media in a healthy (or at least not-unhealthy) way. Some friends post regular updates on their lives, but know where to draw the line on what’s too personal or not; other friends use it as a forum to discuss more academic topics like philosophy, history, and science.
But sadly, in my experience, the ‘healthy’ users are far-outweighed by those seeking validation (the whole system depends on the exploitation of these people), those venting personal frustrations (the internet is objectively the wrong place to vent because it inherently defeats the purpose—whatever you post gets preserved forever, for anyone in the world to see, instead of dissipating quietly into time and space as during, say, an IRL conversation with a friend), and those looking to start political arguments and/or circlejerks (one of the main reasons U.S. culture is tearing itself apart).
I would have deleted all my social media accounts long ago (save for Reddit), but I begrudgingly held onto them in order to not lose touch with people I otherwise would have. And I have to admit, there have been a number of times where the only way I could contact an old friend was through Facebook. Even so, the damage these sites do to us is enough that I would prefer to ditch them entirely, even if it means losing touch with a few people.
Buuuuut then I learned about how essential it is for writers (and artists in general) to promote themselves on social media. The old avenues of acclaim have more or less disintegrated, and now even the big, corporate, legitimizing forces like Penguin Random House Simon & Schuster (all one company now, as I discussed in this post) use social media popularity as their criteria for choosing new authors. And as someone who has always aspired to be a ‘legitimate’ author, I feel like I hardly have a choice in the matter.
This is a cycle I’ve gone through many times. I try to build up my “brand” (barf), post regularly, engage in conversations, stay positive and avoid all the ugly pitfalls… but slowly I lose my nerve, I start to regret posting things, I start to hate my “brand”, and I find myself scrolling endlessly past the sad sorry online world of 21st century life, subconsciously comparing myself to everyone else despite my best efforts not to… and then I just kind of give up. I stop posting, I stop scrolling, and eventually just forget that Facebook is even a thing (which is AWESOME by the way, to forget about it) until I realize that by doing so I left my own goals and aspirations dangling in the wind.
Soooo this post is me trying to eat my cake and have it too. I want to maintain a platform for my writing and other creative projects, but I don’t want to engage with social media in any substantial way. If anyone knows of a way out of this Huxleyan nightmare, please let me know.
Hope you all are doing fine. Thanks for reading.
Peace,
Fibsonian
