Quitting social media

That’s your response to quite a few things on here. No offense — total offense — but it’s condescending as fuck.

 

It's interesting that you feel condescending comments don't deserve condescending replies.

 

Maybe bc I don’t stand on some imaginary mountain range always trying to gauge where people stand

 

It boggles my mind how much time, energy and resources people put into trying to "figure out" something as unwieldy as social media.

 

I technically have Twitter and Instagram accounts, but I never use them. Those of you in the business have a completely different experience with Twitter than those of us now outside of it. There's no lure to it for me because there's absolutely zero feedback loop. Everything I ever post just goes out into the ether. I've posted a handful of times there, sometimes just to keep my online Tourette's away from Facebook, where people actually read it. As far as using it as a news feed, the waterfall is just too much for me. I know that technically I can set up various feeds to control it a little bit better, but that just seems like a lot of work without a significant payoff. I seem to do OK with ESPN.com, my two local papers, the NYT's Web site, the plethora of print magazines I take, and a few podcasts I listen to. I have no desire to be "part of the conversation."

Instragram I've used even less. Basically I just wanted to dick around with it out of journalistic curiosity.

I do use Facebook, although I have a love-hate relationship with it. I've come to some peace with the fact that it's never going to be what I want it to be - an open market where people from all stages of your life participate in thoughtful conversation about things great and small. I used to talk a lot of baseball on there, but people are more emotional about that than they are about politics, so I try to limit my baseball post now, particularly as concerns the two Chicago teams. I try to post thoughtfully about current events - no different than here - but I think that the majority of people view everything from a meme about Hillary Clinton molesting an order of pepperoni breadsticks to 800 measured words on a local referendum as "posting about politics," and you're marked. I do like to use the Facebook photo albums to keep things organized by season (Summer 2017, Fall 2017, etc.).

This site here is, honestly, the closest thing to what I envision an ideal social media site to be. It's unfortunate we didn't all go to high school together.

 

Most Likely to Earn a Timeout: Dick Whitman

 

There would have been a lot of faces punched and asses kicked.

 

Twitter as a "news source" . . . does it really tell you anything that you won't find out just a little bit later anyway? And given the credibility issue with knee-jerk tweets, isn't it worth waiting just a bit?

 

I can see using Twitter as a news source, because that’s how I use this place. News hasn’t happened until it has been addressed at sj dot com.

 

This is pretty much my take, too. If I need to know it, at least one sj.com poster has got it fucked up!

 

Whenever I see a post here saying some football team is "shitting the bed," and it's not even halftime, I am tempted to call in a big bet for that team to win or cover the spread.

 

I try not to waste too much time on social media, but I have accounts on almost every platform. I almost never use or check anything but Twitter, and that largely as a headline service and to keep tabs on what my friends are writing or eating. There are lots of great institutional follows as well, especially if you're into the arts.

That said, as a matter of modern journalism practice, social media can be invaluable if you're trying to track someone down. Much easier sometimes to find someone on Facebook than it is to track down their phone number.