R.I.P.

I love thinking about everything as an experiment.

You tell a joke, no one laughs? Experiment, no biggie.

Moving on from [job] [relationship] [something else]? What a fun and data-rich experiment that was.

Store is out of your cottage cheese brand? Have to try something new? Funky fresh, what's this.

Quitting social media after 10+ years? Being a working artist off of Instagram?

Let's see what happens.

-------------------------

People taking a break from social media love to tell you about it, don't they (yawn).

I can see you saying one of several things:

----eyeroll---- (fair)

-----nothing,no one cares--- (doubly fair)

"you're overthinking it"

"reactionary"

"attention seeking"

"just treat it like your portfolio/LinkedIn(puke)/or personal documentation"

"so unnecessary, just limit it"/"try just logging in on a browser, no app"/"take breaks" etc. etc.

"social media isn't going anywhere, if you're quitting in protest it makes no difference"

"you're only hurting yourself by leaving"

"these aren't the kind of times to be out of the loop"

"it's a privilege to be able to leave." (?)

"I've been off for______ years and it's been SO GOOD...but let me also tell you how my problems haven't really magically disappeared"

"good for you"

I've had so many great conversations about this. I want to have more (but I also want to have less)!

But the biggest thing pulling me off social media?

I'M CURIOUS.

I'll write more about this eventually, but one final note:

If we're all sorta hating social media these days...

...if we feel it's exploitive and unscrupulous and just kind of stupid lately....

...if we hate seeing our elderly parents scroll endlessly and send us AI-generated videos... ...hate thinking about our kids being on social media every second of their magical and priceless and sparkling youth...

...hate seeing the political and societal impasses it amplifies and perpetuates...

...feel uneasy about how these companies operate, use our data...what this is all doing to art and artists, to everything, everyone, all of it....

...in the end...aren't we keeping each other there...by being there?

And...don't they know that?

Aren't we the guinea pigs in their experiment and don't we get to decide if we even want to participate in the experiment at all? Is it really an inescapable reality (speaking especially for artists, businesses here) or do we get to decide how much of our (short, tragic, absurd, magical, priceless, sparkling, mysterious) reality it occupies?

And if we're not all hanging out there, could we all be....elsewhere?

I dunno, I am curious.

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Also, check out this article about really amazing urban gardens in Anchorage supporting local immigrant and refugee communities. It's a follow up from a 2020 article, when one of the gardens had first started. Thank you for having me and for hosting this story, Edible Alaska.