I think I'm done. Throwing in the towel, hanging up my hat. I'm retiring. Quite frankly, I've had it. It used to be an amazing experience, but today, it's toxic as fuck, and I'm washing my hands of it.
Let's begin with Facebook, shall we? When it came online, it was the place to connect with family, old friends, and meet people of similar interests. There were no avatars, screen names, and everyone seemed to be their honest selves. Looking back over the years, Facebook has devolved into an advertisement basement. Every other post seemed to be a cleverly disguised ad. Sometimes it was something if interest, other times it was a fan page, and rarely it's just spam. I left Facebook sometime last year. It's no big loss for me, because of the 35 friends i had connected with, only two were my family -- one of whom only writes on my birthday or holidays, the other I haven't heard from in years. And there was only one friend from high school who still randomly FaceTimed with me. I guess he hates talking on the phone as much as I do.
Next is TikTok. I found this quite addicting, but what started out as a coping mechanism that fed me the humor of cat videos, and a breathe of fresh air seeing other human beings having fun or just being goofy, eventually morphed into watching-- and engaging in a political shit show. Then the ban came in January 19th, and I said enough of this bullshit.
I won't even get into Twitter. I never could wrap my head around short form updates. Honestly, who cares when I poop? If I recall, I had like three followers. And of course, we all know how politically toxic X has become, from its start.
Reddit. The Super Forum! The place where you can post long form content on any topic, again, with the occasional advertisement. But, as awesome as it is for finding community, it's automated bots are insane. The reason I've decided to leave social media is because of yet another violation, a ban. Of course it was automated. A human being would have recognized the sarcasm in whatever it was that I said and may have commented.
So, this leaves my online presence to SubStack and old school Internet forums. We'll see how long I stick around here, because I'm truly sick of being censored. Sometimes the truth hurts. Maybe I'm the violent asshole? All I know is that I'm tired, and I'm not seeing the situation getting any better.
Social Media was sold to create like-minded community, but it turns out that hiding behind a keyboard is a powerful tool for propaganda. All that's happening is more division, more strife, and more hatred-- the opposite of what was supposed to happen. And I don't think I want to participate in that game anymore. So, I'm out.
Sure, I'll miss the discussions about anime and role playing, aliens, and other conspiracy theories, but maybe I can find a better resource -- face to face even! That's right! Less time online consuming crap makes me a bad consumer, because I'll stop spending my money with the convenience of a button click. Hell, I may be ultimately responsible for completely imploding the Economy!
Oh well. My bad. Did I do that?
![[The] Anime Misfit](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Jt56!,w_80,h_80,c_fill,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc0a32db9-7aa2-4a29-85e8-fc988ce12ff6_500x500.png)
![[The] Anime Misfit](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dD2x!,e_trim:10:white/e_trim:10:transparent/h_72,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F923ffc40-7b74-4c17-896e-1c9d3b771787_1344x256.png)


I'm really sorry things went south for you. The net is a different place now, but surely there's genuine, kind people out there. I've tried my best, at least...