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| "Social Media Break-Up," Cartoon by Clare Walker |
And you can probably tell from this cartoon what kind of a week it's been here.
It all started last Saturday, when I realised that had spent a huge amount of precious weekend time...Relaxing? Oh no, no such luck. In touch with friends...Nope, sadly.
No, I'd spent it wading through "communications" within BoundingSquirrel's Facebook and Instagram accounts, that whilst purporting to be from real people, were little more than spam,
No, I'd spent it wading through "communications" within BoundingSquirrel's Facebook and Instagram accounts, that whilst purporting to be from real people, were little more than spam,
Why on earth (for example, there were many more) would someone contact an *art* channel wanting to know if I would promote their sportswear for example? (Trust me, for anyone who *really* knows me, that's even more of a joke than you might think :-) ).
And those emails were about the best of it. Suspicious, scammy messages from strangers wanting to "wholesale," but strangely not mentioning which products were of interest? Yup, they were there.
And those emails were about the best of it. Suspicious, scammy messages from strangers wanting to "wholesale," but strangely not mentioning which products were of interest? Yup, they were there.
And more that were yuckier and even more phishing in their intent than that.
Yet whatever I do, FB and Instagram keep prompting me to "reply" to this nonsense.
But...
And the number of comments from real people, wanting to make a *real* point?
There was one, just one. (And if you're reading this, I suspect you know who you are...Thank you, and as you well know, if everyone sending messages were like you, this post wouldn't be happening).
And anyway, how could I blame anyone for being silent, when even getting BoundingSquirrel posts seen these days seems like a matter of pure chance?
Worse still, being seen in friends' posts (and thereby being able to be helpful/cheerful/ do some wider good, or whatever), seems just as unlikely these days as well.
Thinking the unthinkable...
My enormous frustration then led me to think the unthinkable. Could I "break-up" with these sites?
As an experiment, I tried going without both sites for the next five days.
And they were the most productive five days I've had for years. (Yes, there will be pics, am just addressing this topic first).
The upshot
The upshot is that I won't be posting on Facebook or Instagram for the foreseeable future. (I would say never, but trying to get rid of those accounts made breaking into Fort Knox look like a walk in the park).
But I'll still be posting here on BoundingSquirrel (and probably more often, now that a huge amount of stress around it has lifted).
If you want to keep following...
Sooo, if you want to keep following (and yes, of course, in fairness, this is a great opportunity for you to assess that as well) then please click on this link and sign-up
With luck, this blog will be back to the kind of, "peep into my sketchbook," calm that it always used to have.
Thanks so much for reading this
Thanks so much for reading this
Take care, and more soon.
