Reaction to #GoodFaithTwitter
As part of my recovery and reconnection I headed back to RSS (using NetNewsWire on the Mac) and resubscribed to a few podcasts including Internet Friends by my internet friend Jon Mitchell and his, Drew Coffman.
I'm not sure if it was truly serendipitous or subconsciously influenced by my recent reflections, bit I started with the episode "#GoodFaithTwitter" which ties in to thoughts I've had for quite a while and that I mentioned in passing in Recovery.
One overriding theme from the episode is that of the conflict associated with social media, not just the toxic back and forth between participants but the internal conflict experienced by those who want to love it but are also appalled in equal measure. For me, the latter won out and I deleted my accounts.
As well as the conflict between the good and bad there exists a struggle in using it in such a way as to meaningfully contribute rather than just for passive consumption.
"time spent on timelines amounts to time spent not living your life."
James Shelley's statement is still just as powerful and just as relevant. Indeed, in the episode Jon mentions the "obsessive, passive grazing on the status indicators" of others for which he has no place in his life.
Jon and Drew both stepped away from Twitter; Jon, like myself, deleted his account whereas Drew went dormant. Both, however, are now active again. It is on this premise that the episode is built.
I have, on occasion, considered returning myself - wondering if the self-exclusion was more damaging than the exposure - but refrained due to various issues also explored in the podcast.
From a personal perspective, the struggle with social is wider and deeper than good versus bad.
Why, what, who, how
Something I realised early on is that the different social networks have different cultures, purposes, and that simply cross-posting is not a viable strategy. What works for one doesn't necessarily work on another, shouldn't work on another if you're doing it properly. There is a segregation of duties between them often not realised or ignored.
It was restricting himself to just Instagram that made Drew realise this segregation. Now, despite returning, Drew states that he needs to figure out what Twitter is for him in order to stay on the service.
That is something I battled with while still there and is possibly the biggest reason why I've never gone back.
The old adage says "everyone's on Facebook because everyone's on Facebook" leaving many feeling obliged to be there due to no other reason than that's where friends and family are. That is no basis for a healthy and constructive experience on a social network.
Instead, I feel it's a case of the why and what and who before the how.
Why are you doing it? What do you hope to achieve? Who are you and who are you going to be on the service? There can be a difference. Only when these have been cemented and internalised can you start on the how? The how without the others will only serve to take you down a false path.
Online, offline
What's so poignant about all of this is that the struggle to find an identity and purpose online mirrors that of the same struggle offline. Answering the "why, what, who" for a social network requires those answers to already be in place away from it.
I see the two as intrinsically linked.
It may sound a touch existential but I don't believe you can effectively position yourself on a social network if you are unable to do so in life. To go even further, I don't believe you should even try thanks to the potentially harmful effects that getting it wrong might have.
With the best will in the world, and despite our best efforts to be authentic, we all play a role online - just as we have to offline depending upon the circumstances we find ourselves in. Offline, however, we are more able to gauge the situation on the fly and make adjustments, push the boundaries and allow the different parts of ourselves to overlap.
Online, we often get sandboxed seeking to appear as one thing or another and that false path can become a dangerous one.
Although I may have toyed with the idea of returning to Twitter for a while, depression, uncertainty, a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem argued firmly against it. With all of this how can you expect to navigate an online world fraught with problems and expect to emerge unscathed?
If there are issues in your offline life then social networks, with their mixture of toxicity and carefully curated glimpses of "perfect" lives, are not the places to seek answers or, even worse, to hide from the problems.
Thanks for this reflection, Colin! So we’ll considered.
Thanks Jon.
@colinwalker enjoyed your post. Parallels with where I am at with social media.
I have long wrestled with the concept of identity online and especially on social networks but, as I wrote previously, what happens online is influenced by that which occurs offline. The two are linked for me. But, what is identity? Where does it come from? Does our own sense of self match that seen by others and how does any discrepancy affect us? Is it just a projection of how we envisage ourselves to be rather than anything concrete? What happens when how we have defined ourselves no longer applies? We may have spent so long in a job the we view ourselves solely in that context even after leaving or retiring. This was perfectly illustrated in Bethany's post where she says:
But that's what you do not who you are. How do we separate ourselves from that and really dig in to what makes us us? Identity is transient; we are always changing, growing, responding, adapting, but that very change scares us. It forces us to question. The feeling that we don't really know who we are, that what we think of as our identity is subject to change when we ideally want stability and consistency, can be terrifying. If our identity is an internal construct designed to separate us from everyone else - that which makes us unique - how do we reconcile this and maintain a meaningful self-image in spite of this change? Why does it scare us so much? Because, as Bethany points out, we are afraid of losing ourselves. Worth Our feelings about self-image, often driven by comparisons with others, determine our self-esteem. We may construct our identity but we might not always like it. Being uncomfortable or unhappy with our self-image makes it more likely that we might adopt a false or exaggerated persona online. All too often we will try to artificially fuel our self-esteem in order to feel better about ourselves but this can have negative effects in the long term, especially in our current environments where we fish for likes, requiring an ever greater "hit" to reach the same levels. Instead, it is advised that we work on self-compassion: a way of relating to yourself with kindness and being more forgiving, even when things are going badly. Not having, or losing, this self-compassion begins a downward spiral and self-esteem plummets. Self-esteem is normally defined as "an individual's subjective evaluation of their own worth" but I stumbled across an interesting paper from 2014 which proposes three dimensions of self-esteem: worth-based, efficacy-based, and authenticity-based. These are linked to social/group, role, and personal identities respectively. Rather than just a simple measure of acceptance and self-worth, this paper pulls on research that shows "three motivational aspects of the self that ... makes oneself feel good" being:
the motive to feel worthwhile and accepted the motive to see oneself as efficacious or agentic (effective and having self-agency) the motive to find meaning, validity, and coherence in one’s life This final aspect is interesting as it relates to one's authenticity and being "your true self" - this is what really interests me and is what links back to personal identity. Our identities are a combination of personal (the self) and social (our roles) but the two are distinct. In her post, Bethany says "I seem to be losing all the pieces of what has made me me over the years" but this is very much the social identity, the what rather than the who. And that's what I want to separate: the role itself from what it means to you as a person and what it allows you to be. Contextual I mentioned before that depression can be contextual or situational. In my experience, there is an interplay between these aspects of self-esteem with different weightings based on context that determine how I feel at that time. Although I may be feeling relatively good on a personal level I may not feel particularly agentic or in control with regards to work or my social roles and, based on the circumstances, those can be the overriding factors. Remove such negative stimuli, however, and the balance is redressed. It seems obvious when you write it down. The Stoic philosophers advise that we shouldn't worry about things that we cannot control but maybe we can go deeper. By better delineating the different aspects of self-esteem we truly identify who we are and what really matters with a more evolved sense of self-compassion.