Blue State Coffee Pour from Professor Steve Llano, Ph.D. on Vimeo.
For the greater part of a year I put a short video like this one up every morning on my social media – mostly on Snapchat, since that’s what my students used at the time.
They loved it and we’d talk about the different stickers and things I would put on there and how I would put a motivational phrase on there every day. This video is pretty basic compared to what I used to make in Snapchat.
But times change, and students no longer look at or even use Snapchat anymore. All of them are on Instagram, and that program just never really caught on for me.
Years ago I tried to eliminate Facebook from my life. At the time, it was really the only social media out there so the students used it all the time. I had to return to the platform because students would not respond quickly to other forms of communication – Facebook was the best way to get things to happen when trying to organize people to do stuff related to debate.
Now that reason has evaporated and I think my life will improve greatly just publishing my thoughts here and having conversations. Already since announcing that I’m going to be departing those platforms I’ve had some pretty wonderful conversations with people that were much more in depth and interesting than anything I’ve been posting or reading there in the past year.
In the end I think that I’ll have to keep those platforms open simply because one never knows who or what might come along or happen. For instance, I got in touch with someone who wanted to give away some old debate books through Facebook. Once they get here (more challenging than expected) I’ll be posting their story here as well. I tried in the past to keep them open and unused, but wasn’t successful. I’m jealous of my many friends who have their accounts still open, but their last update or post was from 2012 or even earlier. Occasionally someone who doesn’t pay that much attention might wish them happy birthday or something on their wall, leaving this strange annual pattern of bursts of unliked posts occurring in clusters around the same day every year.
I want to practice writing where I have to develop interesting reasons at length, and Facebook and Instagram do not encourage this. I like to write, and I like the practice of conjuring up a universal audience to address with some claims. I find writing here – even if very few people ever read it – a lot more fun and interesting than posting something on my social media accounts.
I do wonder if pedagogically I’ll need my accounts again. From time to time I have chatted with various students using Instagram recently, but even that has died down. I think that with Discord and the LMS we use (currently Canvas) and some other things like email and Google Voice, online teaching won’t require social media. This is really my only concern.
Comments
5 responses to “Abandoning Facebook, Instagram, and their Derivatives”
Now that it seems all the social media platforms are converging on the same features (stories/tiktok like videos/etc) I am really feeling like the product experience/value is rapidly dissolving. Seeing the same content just in different places is just pretty lame. Don’t think I will pull the trigger on closing them all but I can definitely get rid of a few.
Great point.
After looking at some analytic data, I feel like I might just use them as portals to the content I want to make. People tend to follow those links away from social media into a place where, at least I feel, I have more control over how and what I offer.
The trick is not falling into social media running us and forcing our discourse to be what it wants it to be so it can profit from it.
I’m glad you are writing and sharing it with the world. Hope to see you in Alabama during the holidays! I’ll have your very own box Of sausage balls.
It would be nice Laurie, but it’s far too dangerous to travel. We are back up to April numbers here – very dangerous! I’m staying indoors until it’s safe again!
It has become more stifling to me, less open as my employers demand I have accounts for business, as my candidates connect because their journeys with me take years, and more focused on MLMs pushing their wares. I see your logic.