Due to the billionaire baby, I’ve been thinking far too much about social media. I can see no end to the news coverage of Twitter or the various escapades on Elmo, and other platforms are just revolving conversations of the same. Mastodon feels like you’re spending time with a begrudged ex that won’t talk about anything else. As such, those topics bleed through into my thoughts, into my writing and seemingly into every part of my life.

Woe betide anyone who brings up Twitter in real life, you will get schooled on my latest thoughts and wish you ever asked! When I published the latest in my long line of posts about social media this morning, I considered I might have a problem on my hands. In my effort to get away from the subject, I am actually making matters worse and perhaps thinking about it too much when in reality it doesn’t matter.

To any normal person, it is a pretty easy decision on social media platforms. Use it or not. The conversation or thoughts on the subject go no further. Yet in my internet riddle brain I must way up where people are, who is using the service and then worry about whether it is good for me or not. I wholly blame Twitter for this. Never in the history of humankind have so many users hated being in a place, but not been able to help being drawn back to it. What I must consider is that those unique ambivalent feelings probably won’t exist again.

My thoughts about social media go deeper than they should. In many respects, that is a good thing. Spending some time considering where you place your time is a practice missing from most people’s lives. It can go too far, though. I spend too much time thinking and writing about Twitter that I might as well use it. I am not looking for some self gratification that my decision to leave was right, as most of Mastodon seem to be. Yet, social media is too often occupying my brain when I have better things to write about.