My almost post-social media life has been interesting. I ditched Twitter, came back to it briefly, then ditched it again when it was purchased because I found m

My almost post-social media life has been interesting. I ditched Twitter, came back to it briefly, then ditched it again when it was purchased because I found my mental health growing increasingly fragile with the constant outrage, the need to keep track of who the main character of the day was or risk the ire of your circle, and the increasing filtering of my timeline. I quit Facebook, other than keeping an account for announcing major life events to the older people who were still on it, because I was frustrated that I never received any posts from family or close friends in the heavily filtered timeline, I kept receiving time-sensitive posts (say about a hurricane event) for weeks after the post was no longer relevant, and Meta's increasingly metastasized privacy practices. I joined Mastodon and found a calm, down to earth, almost boring place. The decentralized nature of the platform certainly means there are some not-at-all boring parts of the Mastoverse, but it felt more like being in an old-style forum than anything else. I'm still there, though my participation isn't significant. I tried Blue Sky because all my Twitter people were there ... and it was IMMEDIATELY like hitting a drug after being off it for a while. It was all about main characters and outrage. For me, in hindsight, it was like sitting in front of a slot machine, feeding in quarters, waiting for one to win. And watching people who did win inevitably milkshake duck themselves out of favor. It was briefly an amazing, buzzy world to share both humor and excitement about whatever events you wanted, but that certainly didn't last. I don't miss it.