Rage quitting all social

Writing this from the future: This post was originally written to my audience of fellow guitarists. I have since deleted my guitar blog and Instagram, and some of the almost 6,000 followers I had there are asking where to find this stuff again, so I've imported some of these "minimalist guitarist" posts over to this blog. If you don't know what any of the guitar gear-talk means, don't worry.

Social media has started to bum me out. It's become a place to present your most recent conception of self to the world, like a press release for your own identity in its latest form. And we get built-in feedback—we can even track our progress—in the form of the likes and follows that keep us on track. Each one says, "We approve of this direction you're taking."

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I feel like I'm spending a considerable amount of time validating myself or defending my own identity to my peers. Declaring who I am in each post to remind myself later on, when I start to forget. But I don't think I'm alone in that at all. I see it all over. I think I know the guitarists following me well enough to know that that new guitar pedal you bought wouldn't be as sweet if you weren't able to show it off online, with the hashtag #geartalk.

And we all do it: The selfies, the rooftop party pics, the expensive meal we're eating, our beautiful families in their Easter best. We are wired to seek validation and we've modified the joy engine to run on likes, follows, comments, retweets, and subscribes. It bums me out that I'm embarrassed to post the goofy pics I take with my sister or my dog. It bums me out that I feel like I've gotta go buy something new and hashtag it to death because the likes aren't rolling in.

I'm sick of it, I'm bored with it, and I want to be a better person—I wanna rise above it. I want to put artful and thoughtful content online. I want to commit to talking about my real life instead of constructing a narrative about myself to the world.

I'm just going to log out.