What Does Your Social Media Platform Say About You?

It's not just about your content, but where you choose to say it.

I recently went to lunch with an old friend, who confided he had deleted his social media. His reason? Scrolling took time away from his writing. I chewed on a piece of bread and contemplated all of the extra writing I’d get done if I never opened the apps. I considered how much time I spend engaging and congratulating other writers, cultivating my own brand and posts, how much energy is sapped coming up with ideas, videos and images that only a handful of people might see, and even less who engage. It made me want to log in and deactivate it all, hop off the hamster wheel, especially considering the monopolies that be our current social media landscape, and the monsters that run them.

But then I heard the voice of every agent or publishing expert, doubling down on the notion that author platform matters, particularly for memoirists. “So how do you get around that?” I asked him. His response was as cool as he has always been, “I just tell them I don’t have one.”

I shook my head with envy. I’m not that brave. I’m not accomplished enough to pull that off. And that’s true. But I’ve recently made a conscious decision, that if it’s necessary to maintain a platform, it will be something I’m happy(er) about - it must err on the side of ethical.

So without further ado…

Goodbye Goodreads: sigh, Bezos. You now have to rent all the good stuff on Prime Video, despite paying an annual subscription (which is exorbitantly high considering the shipping rates and prices are virtually the same for anyone with or without a subscription). I easily transferred all of my data to Fable, and am loving this female-owned alternative.

Twitter? X? Who? Never heard of him: I don’t care who owns them, I’m on to bluer skies. I said I wasn’t going to download yet another social media app, but all my favorite writers are now on Bluesky, (a public benefit corporation) so in order to stay connected to some semblance of the writing community now that I’ve finished grad school, it’s somewhat necessary. I’ll mostly assume the role of lurker here, but feel free to add me!

TikTok, My Shayla! Since the early days of COVID, TikTok has been my muse. An unfettered, unhinged, playground for all things related to literature and updates on my mother’s unsolved murder case. I built that FYP brick-by-brick. I experimented without fear. I still believe BookTok helped save the publishing industry and is increasing literacy. You can’t tell me otherwise. The community, education, and content is unmatched, and I’ll be sad to see it go if the next President doesn’t intervene in some fashion.

Crusty Dusty Musty Meta: I’m still on Meta (Instagram and Facebook) for the moment, these will be the hardest to delete, but my plan is to rebuild on YouTube, which seems like the least deadly poison at the moment. Their monetization structure also seems fair compared to Meta. I’m wholly against old Zuck’ leaching our data and pirated books to train Llama, his AI pet project, and like most, I question nearly every life, career, (and fashion) decision he has ever made. I’ve recently started navigating Pixelfed, an Insta alternative. It isn’t owned by a single entity and is maintained by the community of contributors. It’s still in infancy imo, but could really take off.

I can’t be alone when I say I’m increasingly getting the ick about data privacy hypocrisy, misinformation, algorithmic bias, content moderation, monopolization and lobbying, and election interference, and the only power I really have in change or accountability is removing myself, to limit their opportunity to make money off of my free labor and content. All this to say, by choosing platforms that align with our personal goals and values, we can project a more coherent identity to our audience.

If you feel so inclined, I’d love to hear your thoughts - comment or like below.

And if you’re around, let’s link up:

Bluesky

Youtube

Fable

Pixelfed

xoxo,

Shannon Tsonis