This insight on Social Media’s Shift Toward Misery explains a lot:

Modern social media, which largely displaced the individual feed model with the algorithmically-generated timeline, instead emphasizes passive content consumption, as the amount of times you can check on your friends in a given week is relatively small, while the time you can dedicate to content consumption is boundless.

I praised the Serial Reader app last month, thinking at the time it would be a fun & significant boost to my reading time. But following Dorian Gray, I started and abandoned several others that just weren’t for me. As I dug deeper into the titles, I felt like I was grasping for something good, instead of picking from the (long) list of books on my existing “to-read” list. I tried a couple that were on my list, like Little Women, and Middlemarch, but didn’t enjoy either of them. So, although it’s clever, I decided Serial Reader isn’t for me, after all.

But the strict daily reading time still seemed good, so I’ve been trying simply sticking to that habit, with the help of the iOS app Streaks. It’s a simple daily reminder app that’s meant to keep you from “breaking the chain”, maintaining regular daily habits. I’ve tried it before, but eventually rebelled against what came to feel like tyrannical nagging. So far this time, however, for reminding me to stay on something I enjoy, it’s been going great. That’s 17 days in a row, since I’m counting. The books I’ve read this way have admittedly been quick and light: the first two omnibus editions of an anime my daughter recommended: Vinland Saga. I may continue graphic novels for this daily habit for a while; I have Watchmen sitting over there on the shelf.

On another front, I admit defeat, for the third and final time, at trying to get through Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. I want to love this book, and the second (Bring Up the Bodies) which is also on my shelf, and the third which is due out next year, but it’s just not happening. I pride myself on being undaunted by tougher prose: The Odyssey, Don Quixote, some of the deeper Tolkien, including his Beowulf, but I find Mantel’s style a slog too far. The setting is too foreign, the characters too numerous, and the pronouns too ambiguous. I’m pretty bummed by this concession, but also looking forward to starting a book I’ll look forward to each night.

Some years ago I thought I’d start posting links to some favorite music in my music library. I called this #musicMonday, and some of it was on this site, some on Twitter, it went back and forth. I had fun doing it, but rarely got much “engagement” (pardon my language) on Twitter, and so felt like it was a failure or waste of time.

In my ongoing social network rehabilitation, I’m thinking just the first part of that previous sentence (“I had fun doing it”) is justification enough. And so I think I’ll try it again, see how it goes. In honor of the weekly unveiling of newly released music on WOXY (RIP), the coolest radio station in Cincinnati back when we lived there, I thought I’d rename it and shift it a day.

Despite the “new” in New Tunes Tuesday 🎵, my criteria is the same as before:

Not “new” as in recently released, necessarily, but more like “new to you”. Or possibly not either of those, maybe just a pointer to some good music that you’d forgotten about.

From Nick Cave’s fan-mail site, responding to a rude, “anonymous” question:

So, in the interests of free speech, George, I have given you a platform. However, and I am speculating here, I think that probably ninety-nine percent of the people who read your question will think that you are being, well, a bit of an asshole. I could be wrong. It could be more. Now, you may say “So what? No one knows who I am. How can this possibly hurt me?” You may say that. But you would be wrong. I do not believe that your anonymity protects you, any more than I believe the anonymity of the hate trolls on social media protects them. I feel that there are psychic pathways that exist between us all, and that the negativity we create eventually finds its way back to us.

The opportunity to act in a better way is one that is continuously afforded to us – to try to make the next thing we do the best thing, rather than the worst thing, the destructive thing. In this instance, George, it’s not too late for you. If you close your eyes and apologise to my fans, just maybe that negative attention will begin to dissipate. I think my fans are smart enough and sufficiently forgiving to understand that your words extend only to the margins of your own individual evolution.

We went to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston this weekend, and it was great. I felt like we barely scratched the surface of the truly beautiful artworks on display there.

Yet I also often saw people sitting on benches in the galleries, staring at their phones. Not that it should be a phone-free place, at all. I took pictures of some pieces for myself, as well as sharing them via text with others. Maybe that made me less present, but I feel like that was okay, that it broadened the experience without pulling me all the way out of it.

But some of the folks I saw were doing the time-killing thing, staring blankly at their screens, thumbing idly through some feed or other. Which I won’t pretend that I don’t do sometimes, let alone claim it’s some horrible thing that nobody should ever do.

But.

But maybe when you’re in the middle of one of the largest museums in the United States, with a permanent collection spanning more than 6,000 years of history, with some 64,000 works from six continents [citation provided], just maybe those Insta stories or tweets or even “breaking” news can wait for a little while. Maybe (certainly) I’m writing this to remind myself of this, for the next time, and the time after that, and not just when I’m in a world-class museum.

Leave your phone put away, and look around.

[caption id=“attachment_6403” align=“alignnone” width=“475”] The Corn Poppy, by Kees van Dongen[/caption]

Reading this FiveThirtyEight article on the advancement (or lack thereof) of the women’s game (written prior to last night’s US-Thailand match), this caught my eye:

For Thailand, South Africa or Argentina, a win in the group stage — or even a goal or two — can help raise the profile of women’s soccer back home.

People rightly celebrated Argentina getting their first-ever World Cup point from their 0-0 draw with Japan. Hopefully that does raise the profile of the Argentine side back home.

But it also occurs to me that Thailand getting absolutely, completely, record-breakingly demolished by the US could serve to raise their profile, too, if in a different way. I don’t mean to claim the US purposefully hammered them for this reason; it’s certainly a silver-lining point of view. But just imagine what the heads of the Thai football association must be saying to each other today. Or even the heads of FIFA itself, as they prop up their feet on stacks of money and sip cocktails garnished with hundred-euro notes.

Maybe it’s something like: Ouch. What can we do to help keep that from happening again?

this is it, Tribe’s got it:

The point would not be to take old-school House impeachment leading to possible Senate removal off the table at the outset. Instead, the idea would be to build into the very design of this particular inquiry an offramp that would make bypassing the Senate an option while also nourishing the hope that a public fully educated about what this president did would make even a Senate beholden to this president and manifestly lacking in political courage willing to bite the bullet and remove him.

I recently started The Library Book by Susan Orlean, via an audiobook that somewhat ironically I bought, rather than getting from the library. (This title was also just selected as this year’s Mayor’s Book Club book, so I have a head start there, ha ha.) It’s really good so far, a unique blend of LA history, in broad strokes and small ones, with a little mystery and a huge dose of detailed examples of how awesome libraries are.

And they really are. They’re kind of a miracle, in many ways. I spent the afternoon yesterday working at our big, beautiful new Central Library, and then attended a wonderful talk with Rachel Kushner, author of the excellent The Mars Room. The circumstances that led me there last night were Byzantine, when I thought about it, but it was so nice. I feel happier just being at the library, and I should make the effort to get there – including branches – more often.

librarians should “read as a drunkard drinks or as a bird sings or a cat sleeps or a dog responds to an invitation to go walking, not from conscience or training, but because they’d rather do it than anything else in the world.”

• Susan Orlean, quoting Althea Warren, director of the LA Public Library 1933-47, in The Library Book

The song from the very first post on this incarnation of my blog came up in shuffle on my drive home tonight. Coincidence? Probably. Regardless, the connection to quitting Twitter is almost too on the nose.

Ladies & gentlemen, Ship of Fools:

The bottles stand as empty As they were filled before And time that was in plenty But from that cup no more Though I would not caution all I still might warn a few Don't lend your hand to raise no flag Atop no ship of fools

Ship of fools On a cruel sea Ship of fools Sail away from me

It was later than I thought When I first believed you Now I cannot share your laughter Ship of fools

I wrote the first draft of this I’m-leaving-social-media post a month ago, at the beginning of March. It said I was leaving, probably, but also hedged that maybe, possibly, I’d cave and come back. Then it dawned on me that I could just quietly try out said leaving for a while without a Big Announcement.

As I stepped away, and thought about it, and missed it (or not), I also came across a copy of Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, which helped crystallize my decision. The very shortest distillation is: ok, sure, social media can be fun and helps give a voice to good people and good ideas, but in the bigger picture and longer term, its net effects on users – and society generally – are much more negative.

I’m out.

Facebook is an easy one, as I haven’t been “on” Facebook in any meaningful way in years. I can’t completely delete my account there, because I still need it for occasional work (barf) and event-RSVPing purposes, but it’s never really been part of my day-to-day life, anyway.

Twitter is another story. I’ve been active on Twitter for nearly eleven years, and the link to this blog post will be tweet number 10,000. Ten thousand! That’s a lot of free content creation!

Without being on Twitter, I don’t hear about the outrage-du-jour as quickly, and if it’s not a big enough deal to make it onto one of the news sites I read or podcasts I listen to, I may (gasp!) never hear about it. I confess to a twinge of smugness when someone asks, “Did you see what So-and-so said now?” and I have no idea what they’re talking about.

In the past year or so, in an effort to not die of an outrage embolism, I had already scaled way back on the number of accounts I follow, and how verbose I’ll put up with them being. But cutting off more completely has been pretty great. The times I was tempted back (“Ooh, there’s been Big News, I wonder what they’re saying about this on Twitter!") were without exception either a disappointment or left me feeling vaguely gross again.

I will miss having a place where I can easily promote, retweet, or share things. Maybe that mattered sometimes, maybe it didn’t. I’ve decided to trust that my online pals will still somehow hear about the great new podcast I would have tweeted about (or survive without it).

I will still post here, on my blog, which is a more genuine effort that’s under my control and doesn’t hand our data on a silver platter to a giant online advertising company. I know that many fewer people will see those posts, and that’s okay. (Note that you can subscribe to new posts, if you like, or just visit whenever. No login required.)

I haven’t decided about Instagram yet. I like Instagram, and it’s the only place online that several friends and family members share anything. But since it feeds the even nastier beast of Facebook, its days may be numbered for me, too.

Lastly is the tiny upstart, Micro.Blog. Part social network, part independent web movement, it’s everything I want from being online. Maybe it’s only because it’s still small, or maybe the design decisions they’re making are actually working, or maybe it’s because it takes a bit of effort and/or money. In any case it’s an open, pleasant, ad-free network that’s nice to spend time on, with lots of interesting and genuine folks. The posts here are also available there.

That’s where to find my next 10,000 posts, give or take.

I write this from the FW side of DFW, from a slightly below-average Hampton Inn that was at least “free” with Hilton points. We came up yesterday to drop the daughter off at UNT after Spring Break, thinking to split the driving up a bit and make a little day-trip of it. We had a handful of random things to do & see, which turned out about as I expected: some pretty cool, some less so. The stop at an area art-supply store (Asel) was a big hit, as they had all kinds of things she was excited about, especially a rack with hangers of large sheets of handmade papers. Sundance Square was so-so; cool area but full of chain shops not at all different from what’s at the Domain in Austin.

We ate at a fancy-looking Actual-Mex (not Tex-Mex) place, but the loud couple next to our table put a serious dent in the experience for me. When we left, the woman had switched from threatening her tiny daughter that the Easter Bunny wouldn’t come if she didn’t sit still and moved on to chewing out the waiter about the service, even though they go there “all the time”.

A brewery was next on our loose agenda, but it turns out longtime favorite Rahr & Sons isn’t a brewpub situation; they’re only open on 2 days, for a couple hours each. So we went to Collective, where I found a bunch of sour and “funky” beers and not a single one I even liked well enough to get a crowler of. Oh, well. Then a few more errands, including a Half-Price Books stop with no treasures that we found. We spent the rest of the evening watching Ghostbusters in the hotel room.

Well, that all sounds less than great, ha ha. But it’s okay. Breakfast out this morning, drop off the daughter, and another trip down 35. Bought some new (to me) music for the drive: Invitation by Filthy Friends, the supergroup that includes Corin Tucker, Peter Buck, a King Crimson dude, and others. Plus, here I am finally writing something here as I’ve been meaning to.

Sunday evening of a pretty-good, not-bad weekend. I’m not sure if I’m following through better on my to-do list lately, or if I’m sandbagging more accurately, but either way it’s nice to feel like I did some stuff I wanted to, and not end the weekend with half a dozen things hanging out, unchecked-off. Not that that’s a big deal, either. But crossing off the last thing on the list is nice.

I don’t recall where I recently came across Jen Myers' blog, someone from Micro.blog I think, but I really liked her idea of a simple, chronological media log, so I stole it. I like that it’s just a simple list, adorned only with a simple key. Though I couldn’t resist using emoji instead of plain letters for that, I am resisting links to anywhere, reviews, or stars. It’s there. If you come across it and wonder about anything or want to tell me about it, then please do.

Spent some time today loosely planning a trip to Montana this summer. We’re going for a nephew’s wedding, but weren’t sure how much more to make of it. We love Yellowstone, which is near where the wedding will be, so we considered making it a whole big trip: stay somewhere in the park, the whole deal. But instead we’re planning to take it easier than that, just staying in Red Lodge and Billings for a few nights. More relaxing and retreating than go-go sightseeing, and I’m looking forward to it.

I don’t usually drink on Tuesday evenings, though then again I don’t usually start drinking at 2:30, even on weekends. But today was a special occasion - the official official announcement that Major League Soccer (MLS), the top soccer league in the country, is coming at last to my hometown of Austin, Texas. It’s been a long road, littered with the roadkill of multiple previous lower-league attempts (RIP, “Aztex”, a truly terrible name that we nevertheless supported wholeheartedly during its two brief incarnations). It was always clear that we wouldn’t get a top-flight team here until some rich person came to town and decided that’s what they wanted, and sure enough, here he is. It’s a couple more years until we’ll get to see them on the field, but that’s all right. I’ve been waiting, and I can keep waiting. I heard the league commissioner, the owner, and Austin’s mayor - plus gloriously ridiculous Alexi Lalas, as well – say this was going to happen, and though that doesn’t really seem like it could be real, it seems more like a dream or something I’d watch happen on a livestream from some other city, this swag on the table came from somewhere. I mean, someone was giving away Heineken (until thank god it ran out and they let us have non-MLS-sponsor but tastier beer, e.g., 512 Oatmeal Stout) all afternoon. So here’s to it actually, for real, can-you-believe-it happening. ⚽️

We’re taking our daughter back to college today. She had an eventful winter break, featuring a ten-day study-abroad trip in Germany, with an added few days in Vienna for fun with a friend who also went. It’s been exciting, for us vicariously as well, but I’m also glad to return to normal, such as it is. Though my wife also starts a new job next week, so maybe I shouldn’t count my normal-returns before they’re hatched. Thankful that these are good things that are interrupting that normalcy. This year is getting off to a good start and I’m feeling pretty optimistic about what it holds for us. Though I’m superstitious enough about jinxing myself that it’s taking real effort to not delete that before publishing this, ha ha.

Did some thinking this morning about what I want to do here, in my morning pages writing (a practice I’ve found to be valuable; I should write about that sometime). I was trying to understand a justification, a why, for this urge to write more personally and at more length. And the old “who cares what you had for lunch?” question came to mind.

One effect of that attitude was to dismissively discourage people from sharing anything mundane or non-fabulous. And another, further effect is the tendency to only post the good stuff, the living-my-best-life stuff. The artfully composed and beautifully filtered Instagram pictures of an amazing lunch. Now you’ve answered the question of who cares about what you had for lunch, because look at it, it’s a masterpiece!

But then people do look at it, among the dozens of other jealousy-inducing pictures of fantastic meals in their feed. And maybe they start feeling a little bad about their own plain, non-amazing meals. Which they’re certainly not going to share on social media now, it would be embarrassing. Next week, on vacation in Hawaii, there might be an Instagram-worthy lunch, but not today.

So the tendency drives what’s published to ever more rarified heights, while also keeping people from sharing their more genuine lives. But on the other hand, would I follow a random person who posted boring pictures of uninteresting lunches? No, probably not. It’s no strategy to increase social media “engagement” or grow followers or go viral, that’s for sure. But why do those have to always be everyone’s goals?

Because what I realized is that I would like to see my friends, the people I actually know, post more about their lives. Not every meal, not even every lunch, but the occasional boring, mundane glimpse would be great.

I’ve been thinking I’d like to write more, and more personally, here on my blog. I like Micro.blog, and I like having my tweets (most of them) originate here. But it’s still only been just tweet-style stuff: links with an excerpt, or a joke or pithy comment. I have some hang-up about opening up too much, but lately, at least, I’ve become so tired of nobody ever doing it that I guess it’s kind of getting to me.

I also have come to feel like writing anything online is a big effort, that requires a lot of work and planning and thought and polish. And the other side of that coin is how it may or may not be received - who and how many read it, like it, comment, retweet, etc. Which for me, somewhat to my dismay, is rarely ever many folks. So there’s high effort on one side, and low reward on the other. The result of that calculus is unsurprising: silence.

After hearing her on a recent Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me, I listened to an old comedy album by Maeve Higgins on Spotify. It was odd and not super funny, but it had its moments. She admits right up front that her style is more rambling storyteller than punchline-joke-deliverer, and that’s accurate. But a turn of phrase in one of her stories stuck with me. She said that she and her sister used to think people who used potpourri were “try-hard losers”, and they laughed at them behind their backs.

I think the barb of the comment was directed at herself and her sister much more than it was at potpourri people. And it’s kind of muddled to me so I’m sure it will be to anyone who comes across this (I mean, talk about rambling), but something about that scoffing aloofism resonated with how jaded I feel – and think many of us have become – in particular as members of the online “communities” we’re in.

So. I’ve disconnected automatic crossposting to Twitter of everything I write here (or I think I have, anyway); going to try to get back to being a try-hard loser for a while.