Times are getting hard. Everyone knows that Twitter has been a dumpster fire since even before “that guy” took over, and I found no real use for it. TikTok was tremendously unwelcoming to me. I saw a video on there that unapologetically said that male authors weren’t welcome in their community. I deactivated my account right then and there. Facebook is a lot of posting and no one interacting, and their algorithm buries posts if it even thinks you’re trying to promote something for free. I have almost 600 followers there and my all-text posts on average get seen by 20 people.
So that’s left me with Instagram and Threads. Instagram has been very useful, but it’s more work than I usually want to put in, since it’s photo-based. I don’t always have the time to put together graphics, even though Canva makes it super easy, and I just don’t see the reach being that much better than Facebook. Threads has been a surprise hit for me, though. I’ve enjoyed the quick-hit text format, but unlike Twitter of old, it feels like people SEE it and interact. Sure, there are bots and trolls and everything else that goes along with platforms like this, but it feels like the experience is more easily tailored to what you want it to be.
Recent news indicates that experience may be short-lived, though. Meta has announced that it’s dropping its fact checkers and moving to a model similar to X. Modeling anything off of X is a terrible idea and will only go badly for anyone but the trolls and people who shout the loudest. TikTok may be banned because of its Chinese ties (not that I’d use it anyway), and BlueSky has been overrun by fembots, apparently. So what’s there to do?
The only thing giving me comfort right now is that people sold books before there were social media. I still have this space, which is not owned by any billionaire (no offense to Bluehost, but probably thousandaires at best). I’m thinking about alternatives like BlueSky, Substack, etc., although these platforms are not without their own problems. The hard truth of the matter is that I sell FAR MORE books at in-person events than I do via social media promotion. Social media has proven time and time again that it prioritizes controversy over community, and AI above all else. It may be time to stop feeding the beast.