My need to place minor thoughts where people can see them, but also to not give my time and attention to Nazis, has led me to open a new BlueSky account. You may follow me there, if you so desire.
Tag: social media
A quick note
I deleted my TikTok account last night, because I can’t take it anymore. Or, at least, I sort of did; if I log back into TikTok in the next thirty days it will reactivate the account, and I have never managed to take a 30-day break from the service, so I don’t have high hopes, especially since my wife has already told me she misses sharing videos with me.*
This leaves a sad, neglected LinkedIn account under my real name as my sole social media presence.
Also, if you were wondering (no one was wondering) if I was going to watch and/or react to the State of the Union tonight … no. No, I am not. I’m going to go sit on the couch with a book until it’s time to go to bed, and then that book and I will go to bed.
(*) Yeah, yeah, the government is trying to ban TikTok again. I wish a motherfucker would. I continue to maintain it’ll never happen.
Melted puddle, ctd.
Not really, actually— l have spent most of tonight in a towering rage that I have not been able to shake. Everything is pissing me off and I can’t do the sensible thing and just stay off of the one social media account I have left because it’s the main contributor to the free-floating anger.
I wonder what being an emotionally intelligent adult might be like? I should try it.
Advantages
One thing I miss about the YouTube channel is that if I got buried in work and Baldur’s Gate III for a couple of days and forgot the rest of the world existed, at least videos would be showing up to confirm that I was still alive.
Also, I don’t know if I ever announced this, but I’m off damn near everything now. My sole remaining accounts are here, GoodReads, and TikTok. Everything else has been shut down. Technically I suppose I have a Discord account but I only interact with one community and it’s closed, so it doesn’t really count.
Anyway. Did I mention disappearing into video games? Because the PS5 is calling again.
Quick social media note/proof of life
I shut down both my Twitter account and my YouTube channel yesterday; Twitter for no doubt obvious reasons and the YouTube because frankly it was getting to be too much damn work for too little return and I was feeling guilty over playing Diablo and not recording it, which is ridiculous. We’ve also been working hard around the house for the last several days and I’m tired and achy and haven’t been in the mood for posting. Other than that, nothing is wrong, do not panic.
And let me know if you want a Bluesky invite; that’s where most of my non-here energy is going lately. I don’t actually have any at this exact second but if anyone wants one I can let you know the next time one pops up on my account.
Some updates
I have created an account at Bluesky— you can find me over there at @infinitefreetime.bsky.social— and so far I’m enjoying the place. It’s Twitter, basically; most of the differences are on the back end where the end-user is never going to see or notice them, and the main thing is that Elon Fucking Musk doesn’t own it. I’m trying to reconstruct my Twitter lists as much as possible; the lack of actual verification is a bit of a problem right now but since it’s still a small service and invite-only, impersonators aren’t really an issue. Hopefully it stays that way. I don’t have any invites yet, but if I happen to get a bunch I’ll let people know.
I drove to Indianapolis and back yesterday (well, went to Indianapolis round-trip; my wife did the driving on the home leg) came home, took a nap, and then that was pretty much my day. Today was the second day in a row my blood sugar level has gotten low enough to kick my ass and both times there have had to be naps afterward. I have a doctor’s appointment in a couple of weeks and I’m really hoping that she agrees to let me have a continuous glucose monitor because I’m tired of poking holes in my fingertips. I’ve mostly got my numbers under control right now– mostly through eating better– but getting low really sucks and the idea that a CGM warns you that it’s heading that way before you feel it really sounds like a good thing.
My birthday is the 5th. Buy me something. I’m going to be 47, and Christ, 47 feels old in a way 46 really didn’t.
Speaking of 47, now I’m looking at this and my brain is melting because I know I had a couple more things I wanted to talk about — Oh! I have officially been gifted a Prone Pillow, and it ought to be here in a few days, so you can look forward to that. I’ve been sent plenty of free books and ARCs over the ten years I’ve been doing this blog but I think this is the first time anyone has sent me any other kind of consumer goods to review. I have to admit to being slightly ashamed of myself– I wrote the dude back to say that I thought it was ridiculous for him to say my blog’s demographics were a “perfect match” for his product when I didn’t know my site’s demographics, and he pointed out that I’m an author and therefore my blog probably has a lot of people who like reading looking at it, and reading while lying on your stomach is one of the major use cases for his pillow.
Uh, yeah, that’s … that, uh, makes sense, and … uh … I’m kinda dumb sometimes okay shut up. Anyway, it’ll be here Friday or thereabouts so expect a review next week sometime.
I still feel like I’m forgetting something, but that’s what editing is for. Try not to blow any body parts off tomorrow, y’all.
In other news
I suppose technically I’ve posted today, since yesterday’s post just went up (oops) but seeing as how I need two episodes to finish uploading to YouTube before I can do anything serious involving my computer I may as well go ahead and write the post I was going to post.
If I can remember what the hell it was going to be about, that is.
I nearly Tweeted tonight. I removed Twitter, Mastodon, Instagram and TikTok from my phone a couple of weeks (?) ago in a fit of social media hatred, leaving only a single Discord server to represent social media on my phone. I reinstalled TikTok a couple of days ago because my wife has been out of town and I was bored but I’m already tired of it and about to take it off again. My wife is back in town again as of this morning, so we’re starting to return to normal around here, which is good. I haven’t necessarily missed interacting with people on Twitter, but occasionally a thought occurs to me that I want to throw out into the void and I lack a place for stray thoughts at the moment.
(Yes, I know that not every stray thought I have needs to be shared with the world. Sure. I know. Still.)
At any rate, I deleted the proto-Tweet unsent.
Friday featured one of my girls telling one of my boys, with a fair degree of certainty in her voice, that yes, she did have a scrotum, and that it was in her lower back, just like everyone else’s. I pulled her over to my desk and explained the difference between an scrotum and a sacrum to her, and a few minutes later had to ban further use of the word scrotum by any of my students, whether they possessed one or not.
Ah, middle school.
Just a quick thought
I think at this point it’s safe to say that I have rid myself of Twitter. The blog is still cross posting there and I check in once a day but I’m not posting there any longer.
What, do you think, will it take to be quit of TikTok?