Social media can be an addiction. For me, it was certainly a distraction from doing meaningful things -- reading good books, actually talking with human beings and nurturing friendships, and picking opportunities to give back to my community of faith, and community at large.
I chose a sort of nicotine gum approach to this breaking of the Facebook habit: Twitter.
Big mistake. Kind of like leaving Oxycodone for heroin.
So, I suggest this: Best way to leave social media's artificial "social" community -- and the cesspool of extremism left and right politics, and self-righteous, only-we-are-right types (and if you disagree, you are a homophobe, Nazi, "mansplaining," anti-woman for being anti-abortion, hater of whatever new gender identity fad has come along, etc) -- is cold turkey.
On Twitter, I found the same idiocy and anti-intellectual, intolerance-couched-in-"progressive" politics mindsets on Twitter, albeit within a (now 280) character limit.
Fewer words just makes the whole thing more crass. And, the temptation to call out bigots, both right wing and those digital Antifa and the self-defined "woke," is still just too much to resist for a journalist.
And, it is a killer for the humility for which Eastern Orthodox Christian folk are urged to struggle.
Here's the key point: you never, ever convince anyone to consider another viewpoint by arguing with them on social media. This is the realm of the echo chamber, of stating fictional facts to back up morally and intellectually bankrupt declarations.
For someone familiar with logical fallacies, social media is the place where reasonable people risk schizophrenic breaks.
So, today, deactivated my Twitter account.
While I will still have sources on Facebook and Linked In I occasionally need to contact for my freelance editing and writing work, that's rare and all business. The personal involvement is over.
Blinking into the light of reality, I wonder, what awaits.
:)
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