A little housekeeping

and the bliss (or not) occurring therewith.

How I imagined myself, looking at my feeds after doing a severe AI clearout.

I’m not online much these days, but when I am, I want to be happy about it.

I want to be able to connect with the people I actually care about, and see things that aren’t going to piss me off instantly or make me feel desolate about the future of humanity.

You’d think this would be an easy thing, but…well…y’all probably know it’s not as easy as it sounds.

I’m reading a book called You Are What You Click: How Being Selective, Positive, and Creative Can Transform Your Social Media Experience by Brian A. Primack¹ right now. It starts off with the standard facts and figures about what social media’s doing to our collective brains (which is old news for most of us), but then transitions into something I’ve been saying for years about your various feeds: you are in control of what you see. Algorithms can only read your behavior and mirror it back to you, based on what you engage with. If you didn’t participate in that online argument about pantyhose, Facebook wouldn’t be showing you seven bazillionty ads for them. That kind of thing.

Feed your algorithm what you want to see, not what you don’t, et. al..

That’s obviously a gross simplification, since these companies have a whole herd of really smart people finding new and more invasive ways to usurp our autonomy in order to make us all dance like the mindless little consumer marionettes they wish we would be. But the gist of it stands: wrestling control from the algorithm can best be done by stridently controlling what we like, subscribe to, and allow onto our personal feeds.

It seems simple, but even I — with my carefully curated feed of dogs, artists/interesting people, and bookstores — occasionally forget that we hold the remote control on our social television set. I end up leaving even short stints online being angry or sad or wanting to buy a thing that will prevent me from being angry or sad.

Today was one of those days.

I’m sorta trying to see if I can balance being on Facebook just long enough to catch up with some folks who, for some reason, haven’t come over here to say hi². I did okay yesterday, leaving a few comments and finding out how people were.

Today, though, I was just going to log into it for a few minutes to see if anybody knows of any encyclopedia sets for sale locally, and ended up losing half an hour scrolling, getting increasingly annoyed. By the time I realized something was up, and noted my scrunched up shoulders and slow declination of mood³, I was actually angry. Not at one thing, but at a whole spate of things, simultaneously⁴.

I had to sit back, take about fifteen deep, cleansing breaths, and identify what it is that was turning me into a hunchbacked bog troll with a bad attitude. And it took another good fifteen breaths to get my shoulders out of my ears, even after becoming aware of the tension.

And I tried one of the things Primack talks about: focusing on reducing exposure to those things in order to keep protecting my own peace. I went through and left any group that encourages or allows AI imagery⁵. Muted a few folks who might not know better yet. Deleted a few who do. Refreshed my feed to see if anything changed.

…..drumroll….

It changed nothing. The AI was gone, but then it was other things. Politics⁶. Memes that were gross⁷. People griping about being silenced by Facebook⁸.

(sigh)

Algorithms are complex critters.

Since I don’t have roughly four million hours a day to continue screwing with it, I just logged off again. I’ve got books to dismantle and strange recipes to try⁹. A dog who’s thrilled with every minute I’m not sitting at the keyboard staring blankly into the magic lightbox, because it means more time for him.

A whole world of things that don’t make my shoulders embed themselves into my skull.

I’ll keep trying again, because connection is worth a little effort, even for those of us who could probably be considered cave-dwelling bogwitches by now¹⁰. And I’ll celebrate the wins as we go.

Here’s hoping your week has been 67% less annoying¹¹.

Are you making things? What are you making? Tell me, so I can restore my faith in humanity, algorithm-free¹².

1. insert the standard FCC disclosure bit here: if you buy it via this link, I get like a third of a penny or something from Amazon, blah blah blah not sponcon.

2. I mean, I’m baffled that my blathering on about nothing isn’t absolutely scintillating enough to attract folks here like a magnet, but here we are.

3. which had been pretty darn good today, if I do say so myself.

4. (For the record: the big one is generative AI. I can not believe how many people — especially artist people — think it’s perfectly okay to use it because “it’s fun” or “it’s pretty” or “I can’t draw so it’s the only way I can make art”. It is not okay. That is stolen artwork. You are literally taking money out of your own freaking mouths and that of your supposed friends. Legal or not, it’s unethical AF, and yes, you’re a bad person if you knowingly use or promote it. Period. AAARGH. Frothy! I GET FROTHY.)

5. there are a startling number of groups that are all MEH WHATEVER about this, and that’s just one more thing that makes me all be-frothed.

6. Is the election over yet? Because OH MAH GAWD STAHHHP.

7. Like People of Wal-Mart level gross. Seriously, peeps, don’t post that crap. You don’t know that person’s struggles and honestly…when in doubt? Don’t be a dick on the internet.

8. Ironic, since I, also, was just bitching about this very thing. In my case, though, it’s known that certain words will trigger the algorithm to suppress your post’s reach. (Like, say “FOR SALE” and it’s almost assured that a veeeery small percentage of your peeps will see it. FB wants you to pay them for that kind of connection.). I mean the folks sharing memes from 2009 about how FB is shadowbanning you unless you copy and paste that entire post to your own wall, bah blah blah.

9. Bacon fudge, to be precise. Bacon. Fudge. I like both of those things, but am questioning my sanity for trying this out.

10. but we’ll have bacon fudge, so…we can’t be all bad.

11. a little annoyance can be motivating, since we, as a species, seem to do the most growing when we’re avoiding the inevitable annoyances in life.

12. granted, by typing it out, the FB bots will totally hear you and you’ll be getting ads for those supplies until the end of time, but…modern life, eh?