Staying Social.

I’ve always treated social media like a pub. I’m not sure that’s been a good thing from a selling myself point of view. I mean, if you’re not into the NFL – more specifically the Philadelphia Eagles, then Sunday night’s offering from me really won’t have been your bag. But I post how I am. And that sometimes means that it’s not relevant to my writing, because, weirdly enough, I’m not just about my books.

I did take onboard some social media advice a few years back from an old uni friend who genuinely knows his stuff in this area. At first I applied that advice to everything I posted, but then, I kind of got bored posting. It was all too salesy. Not really me. And if something isn’t me I can’t connect. Then I realised what he meant was to apply his advice to the posts about my work. I could still be me. 

There’s been a huge shift in the way we connect with each other online in recent months. Last Tuesday’s American election result seems to have been the final straw for many, with people leaving X and signing up for replacement services like Bluesky and Threads. It leaves authors and other creatives like myself in a bit of a quandary. Do you stick around on the old site with your established audience, or do you strike out and start again?

Actually, for me, it wasn’t much of a quandary. And it wasn’t one I was making this last week. I binned the old bird app a while back. I’d left my account dormant just in case things got better, but they aren’t going to. It’s like when your old local gets a new landlord who turns a blind eye to three lads a time in the cubicle. The lowest bar is what sets the tone.

There are of course a lot of people still there. Many major businesses and news outlets won’t leave numbers behind, because that’s all they care about. Engagement isn’t a thing. It’s all about reach. Personally for me that wasn’t what it was all about. In the end, it became about not being surrounded by edge-lords and contrarians. We only get so much time in life and just because you’re online, you’re still not duty bound to have to deal with morons. So I don’t.

Therefore, if you haven’t already, you can find me over on Threads or Bluesky. I’m not sure which one will become the ultimate successor to Twitter. If even one will. They’re both a little different. Threads has a larger userbase and there seem to be more “official” accounts out there, which will probably bring along more casual users, especially given it’s links to Insta. Bluesky is more like a green room for creatives. Everything is a lot more laidback, kinda like the old days of Twitter. Both have their quirks when it comes to UI and finding people, as well as their algorithms. Probably the best thing is somewhere between the two. I seem to recall there was a place like that once…

One thing I do really enjoy about Threads, is that a block nukes a person not just from your view, but any post they’ve made on your content is also hidden for the rest of the world. It’s a really useful tool in starving the oxygen of contrarians who seem to thrive on spaces where they can cause an argument. True, there are always going to be people who feel getting into it with them is worth their time, but it’s not worth mine. I don’t know many arguments I can adequately get into, never mind settle, in a short character allowance. Probably why I write newsletters. I’d rather just block and move on. 

But that’s not to say we just need to block those we disagree with. That isn’t helpful. Everyone should have their line in the sand, but we also need to be able to engage and listen. One of the things that I’ve noticed in the aftermath of last weeks US election, is a lot of people wilfully ignoring some of the reasons people voted for Trump, or more accurately, voted Republican. Ironically, it’s the reason why a lot of people voted that way to begin. They didn’t feel that they were being listened to about what mattered to them, and it wasn’t always immigration or the MAGA mandate. It was that they felt they were being left behind. It’s a lesson I learned post-Brexit when talking to some of the people I know who voted to leave. They all had valid reasons and very few of them pointed towards immigration being the reason, despite what we on the left may have felt. A lot of them were just reflecting conservative with a small c views. 

Ultimately as a society, we only succeed if we work together. If we socialise. Social media is the frontline of the culture war at the moment, but it doesn’t need to be. We don’t hold the grudges we hold online as we do when we’re down the pub. I’ve stood at the bar and drank with many people on the opposite side of the political spectrum to me and I’ve never once thought about not speaking to the next time I went in. Now, a dickhead is a dickhead, but they tend to come from each direction. But if we can be social with each other to people’s faces, we need to learn to do it behind a screen as well.

I did manage to do some proper socialising this month however. I want to give a big shout out to the Friends of the Creatives @ Cogs, based at the Copper Cogs in Long Eaton. They invited me over to talk to the group about myself and my books, which must have gone all right, because some people were even convinced to part with their hard earned cash afterwards for copies, which I was more than happy to sign. (See the pic above!)

Next month is another busy one. I’ve got two Christmas specials to edit, the first of which you’ll find a link to in the next email from me you receive! Hopefully that doesn’t leave you reaching for the unsubscribe button.