Riki Tiki Tavi?
More like Diki Liki Crab meat.
Anywho…
While not technically inaccessible, I am, for all intents and purposes, considering my Instagram gone, and it feels great. Here's what happened:
Last week, I decided to participate in this week long blackout of Meta services. I can't remember what random political reason it was supposed to be for this time, but it would supposedly show Zucknuts...something? I don't know. It just seemed like a great excuse to disconnect and feel morally superior in the process. I logged out and, for good measure, went ahead and deleted the app for good measure. So far, so good.
A week goes by and I ready myself to reinstall and get back into my groove. I don't necessarily want to, because being disconnected still holds a certain cathartic relief. It isn't just the doom-scrolling that gets to me. I dislike the compulsion, don't get me wrong, and the constant validation that we as a species absolutely do not deserve to survive certainly gets to me, but a lot of it is about art. Being on social media, there is still this deep, aggravating feeling of hope that comes with seeing everyone else's art and the amount of engagement that goes along with it.
It begins innocently enough by seeing other's artwork, seeing those view counts and then thinking to myself that I can do that too. This is where it starts to slide downhill pretty quickly. I am not a terrible artist by any stretch of the imagination. My drafting skills are quite solid. I won't attempt to claim originality or depth, but there is certainly some skill there. On the surface then, it should be easy enough. Except it isn't. Of course it isn't. Any belief that it is, or even that it should be, is delusional. I am, for all intents and purposes, not really built much for social media success these days and I don't really care except when I'm on social media.
I make schedules for myself, set deadlines and pretend that I'm going to reach them and I certainly continue to push myself to create, but look at how well I maintain this blog. Look at how easy it is for me to go long stretches without making a single post. What's more, this is easier than the art. This is just rambling. Seriously, I barely do any editing here and even this habit is difficult for me to get myself into. Social media posting schedules? Fucking forget about it.
And like I said, this doesn't bother me, except when I'm on social media. That f.o.m.o. over views and engagement and success just eats at me and I hate it. Some time ago I wrote about pursuing what mattered to me in art rather than what I thought people wanted. It sounded great, maybe even read okay, but being on social media causes some serious issues there and I'm ready to not have them.
Or at the very least avoid them.
Fate, it would seem, was looking out for me on this one.
I tried to log back in to my account and, of course, did not remember my password. The only one I had saved was for an old, unused account. My email addresses are linked to old, unused accounts. Attempting the 'forgot my password' function kept giving me errors. Basically, all the standard ways of getting into my account failed me. That's not to say that there is no way to get back the account. I'm sure there is. I just don’t feel like jumping through all the hoops for it. Good riddance I say.
Dicks for listening!