What a shitshow.
We’re not even through January, and it’s already turned into another installment of Bizarro World.
It began with Meta’s announcement of the launch of AI “agents” to assist small businesses, while all we’ve been asking for FOR YEARS is a broader reach so that the people who signed up to see our content actually get to see it. It’s not that difficult to understand, right?
Then the other shoe dropped: the end of fact-checking on all of Meta’s platforms, at least in the US, and the freedom to denigrate people because of gender, sex, race, religion, etc. Women can now be referred to as property, Mexicans as trash, and LGBTQ+ as mentally ill.
Even before these announcements, I have been reconsidering my use of social media. However, now that it is gradually becoming a propaganda tool for a fascist government, I feel the need to distance myself from it.
The house always wins
Meta doesn’t prioritize enhancing its apps for users. For years, Instagram has received updates that very few people requested. Despite the numerous negative comments Mosseri received under each post, no action was taken.
Since 2020, I haven’t been able to exceed the 2K follower mark, no matter how consistent I was. I dreaded creating content for a platform that provided nothing in return—not even “exposure.” I dreaded how it shifted towards prioritizing Reels as its most important feature.
As an introvert, I dislike standing in front of a camera and acting like a circus-trained monkey, dancing and making a fool of myself. So, my refusal to become a performance act affected my reach and the chance to get more eyeballs on my work.
The “entshittification” of Instagram, characterized by an increase in ads and unfamiliar accounts in my feed, left a bad taste in my mouth.
Every week, I asked myself, “Why do I keep posting there?” It was like playing roulette or pulling the lever on a slot machine. Maybe next time, one of my posts would exceed 500 views, and I’d finally make a sale or two after a year of just getting by. But I forgot that the house ALWAYS wins, and I’m not the house.
The desired “success” never arrived, and it still hasn’t. The Algorithm doesn’t operate that way. While others flourished and started monetizing, I was left with a body of work that no one cared about unless I paid a ransom in the form of a boost.
And even then, that was a leg pull. A $5.00 boost would bring in far more eyeballs during the pandemic than today. Call me stingy, but I see no benefit in paying a ransom or feeding the slot machine if I can’t earn back all the free work I’ve done for Instagram since 2015.
But how will you generate any sales? How will you market yourself? I’ve often heard this from friends when I consider not posting on Instagram anymore. The truth is I don’t know. But staying on the platform for ten years has yielded nothing for my small business but frustration, self-doubt, and the constant fear of making it through another month without enough money to pay my bills.
I now regret investing a decade in establishing a presence only to watch it diminish under the relentless unpredictability of an unseen, manipulative algorithm.
Recovering my peace
At the end of 2024, I was so overwhelmed by all the changes on Instagram that I took a two-week break and left my scheduler to do all the work.
I picked up knitting again, watched Squid Game without the constant distraction of my phone nearby, and started reading books once more. I felt at peace and happy not having to post online or being bombarded with identical Reels of creepy AI-generated dancing cats. Time moved at a slower pace, and my anxiety gradually faded away. My attention was all mine again.
Only after I logged back on did dread and anxiety resurface. I dislike how I feel when using social media, and I’m unsure how much this relates to the current state of the world. However, being inundated with constant rage is detrimental to anyone’s mental health. I no longer want to be exposed to that.
Shortly after the Meta debacle, I deactivated my Threads account and reluctantly moved to Bluesky. I still feel sad about this transition because Threads felt like a large community in its early days, and I made friends there who have yet to migrate to Bluesky and whose content I miss.
On the other hand, I don’t want to keep changing platforms whenever they become entshittified. It’s time to stick to one platform without an algorithm I have neglected for so long, chasing an unattainable clout: my website.
I will now focus all the energy I wasted trying to succeed on Instagram on my little personal space on the Internet, where I will do things more organically.
I’m not sure how long I’ll stay on Instagram. It remains the best way to connect with potential clients in Mexico but with Meta’s plan to introduce AI users (seriously, what’s the point?), I anticipate even less opportunity for my business on that platform. AI users won’t help me pay my bills, and there’s no incentive to post for a bunch of ghost users.
The truth is that social media is no longer social—it hasn’t been for a while. Billionaires merely pretend to care about building a community to access our invaluable data and manipulate us. We have been glued to our phones for far too long, and we hardly notice democracy eroding around us.
Now, more than ever, owning your platform and building a community away from social media is a form of resistance.