(“I miss good social media community,” he whispered to no one…)
That is not an euphemism, kids. It’s just real, and the crunching sound of the frito when I press down is very satisfying.
I had a birthday! And when you turn 54, the world lights on fire because it’s too many candles. Just kidding, but also, sort of totally real. We were supposed to go to Los Angeles to see the kids and grands for my birthday but Los Angeles was literally burning, so we postponed. I feel incredibly lucky that my kids are all safe, when so many lost so much. It’s been a devastating season in a variety of ways.
I’m really hoping we get to fly out on Thursday, because we’re finally getting colder weather here in the PNW and the roads might be too icy. If that happens, mark my words, I will cry.
This winter weather is trying to kill us humans and I don’t blame it.
I’ve been researching cults for my next book. In simple terms, a cult is a group of people who all have the same religious belief or devotion to something. Most(ly) harmless cults are like collective sports or musician fans. The worst kind of cults are where they have decided their way is the right way and then try to remove, dehumanize/shame, or kill everyone who doesn’t think the same way as them, like the current U.S. presidential administration.
Cults are everywhere. We live in cults inside a cult inside a cult inside a cult like a Bloomin Onion, only much more disgusting. (I actually have eaten a fair amount of Bloomin Onions and love them because of their disgustingness. If we have to live in cults, we might as well get to eat deep-fried foods that give us indigestion regret almost immediately. It’s called freedom, okay?) Although I haven’t had one in a very long time and that’s ok because deep fried onion is on the list of All The Foods I Cannot Eat, a little zine I wrote and illustrated about a decade ago and Joe is currently hosting among his lovely Smorgasbord.
The cults I willingly belong to are (in a very *particular* order):
- People Who Only Wear Comfortable Shoes, One Style of Blue Jeans, and Chunky Cable Knit Sweaters with High Necks Sporting 70s-Style Fake Wooden Toggles
- Tree, Cloud, Flower, and Bird Worshippers (we mostly incessantly keep pointing and exclaiming until the people around us *must*, at the very least, glance over and offer a weak, “yeah…cool…”)
- And, of course, Box Hoarders, which is self-explanatory, but if you must know more, I have two large boxes, one in my studio and one in our storage unit, that both contain smaller boxes that I absolutely, totally need, Brandelyn.
The cults I unwillingly belong to are (in no particular order): literally everything else including money & credit reports, college & advanced degrees from expensive gate-keeping institutions, medical insurance, self-checkouts, coupons, TSA & CLEAR (I mean, wtf), clothing sizing, societal beauty standards, current social media, and also, if I’m honest, Box Hoarders (because it’s not always a choice. Sorry, Brandelyn).
I’m going to focus on social media, because it’s top of mind as these dillweeds continue to ruin everything as quickly as they possibly can.
Memory Lane
My first foray into social media was a little chat called ICQ in 1999. I can still hear the sound it chimed when you got a new message. I was a Limewire user in 2000 (please don’t tell the federal government) and downloaded Goo Goo Dolls and Bjork (which I pronounced Ba-Jork). I had a Livejournal (or was it a DeadJournal?) for about a year that I updated twice. From there, it was an easy transition to WordPress in 2001 (thank you, Joe ) which meant I no longer had to hand-code my original one page website with my custom domain: passepartout.com (which is currently available and you could make it your very own for the reasonable price of $350,000!)(I kicked it right out of the park in choosing a relevant, easy to spell domain name first try!!)**. The rss website feeds of that time, which are, for me, The Good Old Days, have doodled hearts all over them in my mind. I joined Flickr in 2004, Twitter in 2006, Tumblr in 2007, which I mistakenly thought was dead, and then we make a leap in years to Instagram in early 2011. That was quickly followed by Pinterest which I remember I have about every five months or so, and then mean to go visit, but hardly ever do.
I joined Patreon in 2017, trying to support creators and also be a creator to varying degrees of success, searching for a spot I could do sex education and talk about power dynamics without living in fear of getting bounced. And that, my friends, is where I stopped collecting platforms, feeling much too old in 2018 when TikTok came out to want to start making endless dance videos. (I have a trick knee!)
Most all of those platform have gone by the wayside, either by shutting down, becoming intolerable, or being sold and THEN becoming intolerable. With the exception of maybe Pinterest? I still need to go check it out again. (And I know I’ve missed a dozen or so others, but either I’m intentionally not naming them because that is how much I dislike them, or I’ve forgotten, and we’ll never know which is which.)
I credit early social media apps as being one of the best things in my life. They connected me to close friends I still have 20 years later. I felt less alone and found community, which was huge for me after growing up in rural Utah, labeled the Black Sheep by the entire town. I got business opportunities, like speaking at blogging and mental health conferences. I traveled the world to shoot photos and once met Juan Valdez! (And if you follow that link, you’ll see how many broken photo links are in my website archive because of losing Flickr, which means you’re missing me standing next to the God of Coffee and his burro in Colombia. Sorry.) I got opportunities to write essays for books and I interviewed amazing people for magazines.
Community
But most importantly, for me, it was about community. I connected with folks who also had mental health issues or chronic health issues. I felt chosen and cared about, thought of and loved. That is everything to a queer, genderfluid, nonbinary trans, neurodivergent human who won’t know anything about any of those things for another decade! I found my people. I felt connected. Supported! And then, slowly, over time, I began to lose them.
I would have been happy my whole life with Flickr the way it was. As a photographer, the database of amazing photos and other photographers I got to meet all over the world was really fun. I would also have been totally happy with early-days Instagram. The algorithm feed made sense back then and I got to hang out with all my friends. I looked forward to opening the app to see what everyone had posted. Photo groups and monthly challenges! A feed that showed you the people you actually followed!
Instagram rewarded all of us loyal early users by systematically killing off everything we loved and then punishing us for wanting to be able to see what we wanted to see. All the main social apps out there, including the ones I haven’t named, and including this platform I’m connecting with you on now, have leadership who leave a whole fucking lot to be desired. (I’m trying BlueSky and my fingers are crossed so hard it hurts.)
Blooms In The Garden
I miss community. I miss making real friendships that last years. I miss a place that welcomes me, makes me feel like I could stay awhile, and doesn’t make me jump through hoops to try to see what’s going on with my friends or push an agenda on me. In the current climate, I’m not sure where to find that, so I created my own little spot called Blooms In The Garden.
The Garden is a community for people who want to use community and creativity to support their health. I’m a Spoonie who uses creative endeavors like painting, fiber arts, playing instruments, and writing every day. It’s how I clear my mind, hold my heart, and process grief and trauma. I use different types of creativity on different days, depending on my physical abilities. As someone who has a neurodivergent sparkly brain, I use tools like body doubling to get work done. I also need/love to learn new things pretty regularly for all the sweet dopamine.
So basically, I’ve created a community where we do all the things that are good for me. If you think it might be good for you, too, I hope you’ll join.
I guess it’s my own small cult. But, not like those other cults! We’re a cool cult!
In conclusion, the frito under the F key has been masticated to smithereens by all this typing and I will now go back to my regular ASMR program of watching and listening to this person use a palette knife to mix colored sand together on that particular platform as long as I possibly can.
**Did you notice these back-to-back parentheticals? I don’t wanna brag, but yes, I wrote that!
– Previously posted on Substack