Last week I had the opportunity to take part in the BCSSA's semi-annual conference for educators. I attended as a teacher representative for my district. I stayed at the Westin Bayshore in Coal Harbour, Vancouver, BC, right above where the conference itself took place. Overall, I had a good time.
Knowing that I would be encouraged to do a lot of tweeting during the conference, I set up a new Twitter account in order to address more education-based tweets; I had no interest in filling people's feeds with my usual sets of links and reflections. Fortunately, my phone makes it easy to switch between the two accounts. I tweeted a lot. For example, I used my clip-on 12x lens to take these photos of the keynote speakers, namely Robert Marzano and Dr. Norman Doidge:
And I tweeted lots of responses to speakers and presenters. For example,
Now, I'm fully aware that I don't use my hashtags with skill or aplomb, and I rarely tweet incendiary comments in order to drum up controversy. I enjoyed writing tweets while people presented; it worked as an interesting way to frame my notes and memories from the content. It felt a little rude to be looking at a screen now and then while presenters were making their points, but it was fun and generally served its purpose.
Unless your purpose was actual networking and meeting real life people. I didn't meet a single one of the people with whom I shared a Twitter dialogue. All those tweets and I didn't come out of it with a single new connection. All that screentime without a new face. The only people I really met were people I met face-to-face without the aid of a phone. What's the point, then? Why spend all this time tweeting if you don't get to meet a real person out of it? All of this only shows me one thing: that if I'm crummy at meeting people in real life, Twitter is not the method I need to use to facilitate more connections.
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Yesterday, while I took Rosita for a walk, I saw a sign through a church window that grabbed my attention. And it prompted the following rant.
Two nights ago, while pulling my dog with the wagon, I stopped walking, looked down at my phone, and posted this:
I posted similar "On hiatus" messages on my other accounts, and subsequently deleted Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram from my phone.
Why?
What I think I'm trying to say is this: Social media has not been making me happy in any way. I make some connections here and there, but the public aspect of social media has grown tiresome. I'm obsessed with looking at my phone and checking for notifications, but I just feel further and further from real relationships and I simply can't do it anymore.
So I'm going for an indefinite public hiatus. I haven't deleted any accounts; my Messaging apps and accounts will exist in order to keep connections here and there. But, for the time being, I'm not going to "maintain a social media presence" per se. What will I maintain over this period?
I started to feel that social media was taking far more from me than I was getting from it and my real-life relationships and my ego were suffering.
So it's time for a break.
My first date was watching The Little Mermaid in a basement rec room. I think. I dunno. I don't remember, really. It was a long time ago.
But I was thinking about how "flipping your fins you don't get too far," and I just realized how little sense that makes.
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April 2024
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