I have a love-hate relationship with social media. I love scrolling through the comments and pictures, but I hate what it makes me do. Let me tell you about my time on X, formerly known as Twitter.
First, if you aren’t on social media, don’t start with X. It proves it is a cruel world out there! After my car accident this winter, my eyes got out of whack. It is something called non-convergence. Long story short, the right and left eye no longer work together. I’m in eye therapy now, and they said in 14 weeks the problem will be resolved—they hope. Anyway, I can’t read books or magazines, which for me, is a problem. (This is why you haven’t seen any Hooked on Books reviews recently.) So, I turned to X.
My first mistake was commenting on things like I was on Facebook or Instagram. Comments like “good point” or that “sounds great” resulted in people responding back “Cite your source.” Or “What do you know? You only have three followers.” Whoa! I had gone from the world of “You look beautiful in that dress” to “I can tell you are out of touch with reality.” Being a know-it-all, I couldn’t just delete the app and live my life. I decided to become the smartest, snarkiest person on X.
My specialty is U.S. history and politics. In my prior life, one of my responsibilities was to keep up to date on all the tax legislation moving through Congress. I still have the bad habit of actually reading the proposed bills. Yes, I am a nerd. On X, someone would post something factually wrong about a bill currently before Congress, and I would find myself saying things like, “According to section B, paragraph 3 …” Or the always helpful: “Did you not pass sixth-grade civics? That’s not how the branches of government work.”
If only it just stopped there, but no, people would comment something snarky back, and I’d give a snarkier reply. If my mom was still around, she would have put me in time out and taken my phone away. Instead, I would wake up in the middle of night to scroll and snark and then remain agitated all day. Yes, over comments from people I didn’t know and will never know. So being an adult, most of the time, I deleted the app and went cold turkey. No more X for me.
Then I discovered the world of Threads, where people are funny, a bit snarky but never down right mean. People posted pictures of their cats and dogs or kids going to prom, and everyone else left comments with no hate thrown back! Threads’ algorithm was just sending me certain people—the ones who agreed with me! So, I no longer doom scroll and get enraged. Instead, I comment on people’s beautiful blueberry muffins and adorable golden retrievers. I am five weeks into my eye therapy. Another nine to go, and once I am healed, I will be deleting all the apps and heading back into the wonderful world of books. Peace me Peeps.