Enough is Enough - Deleting Meta and More

Meta is toast.

It took a policy change that allowed women to be referred to as property for me to delete all of my Meta accounts. In addition to the other policy changes plus the transformation of the app into a ad-first people-later platform, plus the endless barrage of spam and sex chat invites and random creepy men in my DMs (that’s direct (private) messages for you non-social media people, aka Mom), plus the previous data scandals, plus the general toxicity of being on a social media platform run by tech-broligarchs…(she says as she plans to publish on another platform led by a tech bro, UGH!)

The latest Meta policy changes were the last straw. That last Jenga block slowly removed only for everyone to watch in horror as the tower instantly crumbles to the floor.

Social media (and the internet for that matter) is a reflection of human society, and all the positives and negatives that come from that. The positives are what kept me on IG and FB so long.

And TikTok of course, RIP my beloved BookTok. 🙁

ETERNA 250T - from the Celluloid Collective!

Network platforms are great for making connections and finding inspiration. I’ve found many of these over the years and it’s one of the main reasons why it’s so hard to delete the apps even though we all know the companies that provide these services are far from ethical. It’s a business and users are the product, not the customer.

Blah, blah, we’ve heard this for years.

But now, I’m finally out. Everyone who matters to me has my number (or newsletter ha!). And I’ve got theirs. And maybe I missed a few or you missed me but we’ll find each other again if it’s meant to be.

The one I will actually miss is TikTok, but it’s probably healthier for me not to have it. I made the mistake of deleting it when it shut down and now I can’t redownload it. Ah well…it will probably end up the same way as Meta and all the rest anyways if it survives. And I can’t ignore that TikTok does have its problems, NOT related to my personal Chinese spy.

Dang, I’m gunna miss them so much…

Yes, YouTube is still there, but the thing about Youtube is…well…how do I say this? It’s kind of MEH for me at the moment. It’s also similar to the others in terms of data scandals and ethics. Maybe even worse…

The other thing with YouTube is the imbalance of genders in the community viewership doesn’t make it a pleasant space to create and publish in.

My YouTube studio tells me my audience is 90-95% male and it’s always been like this for over 3 years now. This is also reflected in my comments (ohhh the comments LOL). They are such winners sometimes…and nobody sees the best ones because those are deleted and the user blocked without a second thought, zero tolerance or space for trolls or disrespectful comments here.

It’s been accepted by many people for a long time that photography is a “male dominated” space, but I disagree with this. It depends on what circles and spaces you are in. I know SO MANY women in photography and they have always been there. The more you research history, the more you find they were there all along, despite the patriarchy’s best attempt to ignore or squash proof of this. It’s astounding the numbers. The stats on TikTok and Instagram were more level at 50/50 split between men and women. So, it seems to be a YouTube thing?

Also - I’m not saying anything new, this is a well-known thing in the YouTube film photography world.

I do have many lovely subscribers and commenters and people I have come to know, and I love you all. There are plenty of lovely men in the film photography spaces (and way too many that are not), but in my experience there are more that are not on YouTube and it’s getting old for me. I’m being more ruthless and intentional about protecting my peace and what I spend my time on and who with and doing what these days.

And that puts YouTube on the chopping block.

ETERNA 500T from the Celluloid Collective

So, other options? Initially, I wasn’t going to try BlueSky, but I did end up making an account on there although I haven’t posted anything yet. It feels exactly like Twitter and I never liked Twitter. That’s a hard no.

TikTok really was my jam! The music! The memes! The HUMOR! I loved it. And I’m not ashamed to say. It was actually fun, but I had curated an impeccable feed by the end of it. My TikTok experience felt way more relatable, real, and down to earth than any other platform. And it was miles ahead of the others.

It felt like a place where you could be more of your real self, the unpolished version. Instagram as we know, loves it’s aesthetics. But TikTok loves it’s rawness, its silliness, its weirdness, etc.

speaking of wierdness LOL - from the fair on turqoise film :)

Alas, the only option I can see for myself is Substack at the moment. Substack and fresh air. Maybe something else like TikTok will come along again and I’ll try it out. For now, that ship has sailed.

ANYWAYS…all that being said…I think I’m going to have some extra free time on my hands without all of this social media!

It’s why I’m getting chickens and starting a garden and baking sourdough this year. LOL. This city person turning into a right country homebody! I will continue to share on film photography Substack though but it might be or a little different than before.

The internet and social media can influence our minds massively, especially given the amount of time we spent on it now, and we might not even realize it.

It’s powerful. And dangerous.

If you think of all the experiences that you have online and what they would be like in 3D - it would be outrageous. If you would walk away in real life, why not on the internet? Why go through that if you don’t have to? Why not close the account, unsubscribe, block, etc?

Protect your peace.

Delete the apps.

Don’t spend time in toxic spaces.

~M