Ben Werdmüller (Ben Werdmüller)Last year, on a whim, I left social media on Thanksgiving, and didn't return until January 1st. It led to massive improvements in my mental and physical health, overall happiness, attention span, and engagement with the world. This year I've been with my mother while she spent months in the hospital...
I’ve been thinking about this since last night and am half-tempted just to give it up all together and go full indie, but I would be cutting out far too many people that I really like and get a lot out of. However, I’ve been slowly moving further and further away from the toxicity of corporate platforms in any case, so, like Ben, I’ll declare myself all-in on boycotting the attention economy in December.
In my case, this primarily means giving up Twitter since I’ve long since jettisoned Facebook (and really don’t miss it) and it’s been ages since I’ve scrolled through my heavily pared down Instagram account which I now only access through a feed reader to cut out ads. So as to not cut myself off completely, I’ll still interact with others online with my own IndieWeb website and through a small handful of excellent feed readers where I have complete control over what I see and when.
I’ll start to prep for the cleanse today by removing the Twitter app from my phone.
I went a few months where I did not really engage with Twitter, only responded to people who may have mentioned me. I felt that there were too many aspects that I missed, although I think that it is possible. I too may try no Twitter for December.