This week I am deleting my Facebook accounts and will no longer post to instagram. These platforms haven’t worked for small unique contributors like Backcountry Nomad and have lost their ability for creating positive community long ago.. I will continue my Backcountry Nomad blog here at bricepollock.com documenting my adventures since it has been a wonderful live-journal and will be a fun place to share experiences.
Main social media platforms from Medium to Instagram seem broken because…
* These platforms work for you, only if you have an existing following.
* The most ‘liked’ content is often stolen from others and reposted without attribution.
* There is a culture of it being more important to ‘look’ like you did something than actually to have done it.
* Most interactions (esp. on instagram) are just echo chamber: people commenting on other’s posts so they can get comments… the same for following behavior.
I ignored these deficiencies for several years because of a hope of creating digital mountain communities. Trying all the things that influencers do: analytics, posting platforms, paid advertising, a “socializing service” to increase followers, etc. However, I just couldn’t get away from the echo chamber and the more I got into it, the more apparent this became… Meanwhile, my ability to create digital community seemed to advance little, while the negative influence on myself increased.
Too Much Like my Job
Finally, managing social media is too much like my job as a software engineer. I see numbers and think about funnels and how to improve reach, etc. Its too hard to turn that part of my brain off and given how fake these metrics are anyways… They really don’t matter, but its conscious effort to ignore.
It has been sad to see these impacts decreasing the audience to my blog to 10% of what it was three years ago. I now feel I am writing mainly to myself which is much easier to accept when I am not actively thinking about social media metrics and campaigns.
Hope to see you following Backcountry Nomad here at bricepollock.com (subscribe below), shoot me a message if you’ve gotten anything from any of these mediums of mine. I could use a pick-me-up to keep creating. I have a fun project I’ve been working on that I’ll share soon.
