Though It Sounds Paradoxical

Though it sounds paradoxical, the frenetic, bubbling world of social media, as artificial as it might be, could be seen as an introvert’s dream space.

A way to socialize in a controlled and safe manner. To interact, even occasionally put oneself out there, without the terrifying aspects of actual physical engagement. Those face-to-face encounters filled with too much noise, too much stimulation, too much unscripted voice-robbing small-talk, too much uncertainty, too much judgement, all contributing to agitation, high blood-pressure, and brain-shutdown. (I initially misspelled that as brain-shitdown, though that could also be applicable. Been there, done that!)

And it’s worked for me!

Outside the daily interaction with The Wife, conversations with myself, occasional text-flurries with distant (geographicly speaking) family members, and the three-finger steering-wheel-wave when passing random vehicles on the county roads (Maybe that’s a Texas thing?) on the way to a curbside groceries pickup, blogging is my only other ‘social’ activity.

One that I’ve engaged in more or less successfully for a number of years now. But along the way I’ve occasionally fallen into the quagmire of the digital phenomenon of followers and hits, as in never enough of either. (I originally wrote "uniquely digital phenomenon", but followers and likes is also part of the real, face-to-face world too, so it's hardly unique.) Not to any obsessive level as of yet, but I’ve sporadically gotten at least one leg, sometimes two, stuck knee-deep in the murky muck of follower-chasing. Not to the point of it dominating my day and altering my actions, but, while it’s there in front of me, when I’m checking my blog, I do sometimes get frustrated at how few hits I get on most of my posts.

However, I just finished reading A. M. Hinkman’s latest article Incognito in Delaware, or The Hazards of Living in Public and it reset my internal bookmark even before I finished the read.

Now, at least for the moment, I’m grateful that I’ve got the same paltry 13 followers I’ve had for over a decade (clearly not all of whom actually follow enough to generate hits). That I haven’t, along the way, bent my inherent personality and morals, or gaked my reality in the pursuit of numbers. That I’m living my life and not a corrupted digital version of myself. That I am a nobody living contentedly out of sight.

What it boils down to, is that I want to be heard, but not enough to be noticed. And I’m fine with that.

But I’m going to bookmark Hickman’s article so I can revisit it when necessary, because I’m under no illusion that over time I will be able to remain uniquely immune to the insidious siren-call of the digital-verse’s need for numbers.