My easy protip for being purely on fediverse: have no friends.
Okay, but jokes aside, maybe consider seriously paring down your friends circle. I have basically three friends that I stay in relatively frequent contact with. All of them use Signal and I can communicate with them however I want there. Hence I have zero need for Facebook or Instagram or Tiktok, or Snapchat, or Twitter. Let me tell you how nice it is to never be on any of that bullshit. Whenever I see someone else on it and really get a picture of what the experience is like, I want to blow my brains out within just a few minutes. I understand how it can feel real and authentic and valuable while you’re in the middle of it, I used to be on Facebook too long ago. But this is no different from the people in Plato’s cave feeling that the shadows on the wall are real. Once you’ve seen the real world in the real sunlight, you can’t go back.
Really ask yourself if the 50 people that you “stay in touch with” on social media really constitutes staying in touch with anyone, or if you both just sort of mutually stalk each other from afar, transforming your relationship into a parasocial one completely unnecessarily. I’m sure some people really do have more than 20 people that they actually talk with frequently and like to stay in close touch with, but I bet that it’s only a very small percentage of the people who think that’s them. I will always sing the praises of aggressively pruning the friend group down to the best of the best. It’s already hard enough to find time to hang out with two or three people frequently enough to really feel close to them, while also having your own interests and things like that. There is limited time to go around and limited time in life, and I would rather have really deep meaningful connections with a few people than shallow connections with a ton.
My easy protip for being purely on fediverse: have no friends.
Okay, but jokes aside, maybe consider seriously paring down your friends circle. I have basically three friends that I stay in relatively frequent contact with. All of them use Signal and I can communicate with them however I want there. Hence I have zero need for Facebook or Instagram or Tiktok, or Snapchat, or Twitter. Let me tell you how nice it is to never be on any of that bullshit. Whenever I see someone else on it and really get a picture of what the experience is like, I want to blow my brains out within just a few minutes. I understand how it can feel real and authentic and valuable while you’re in the middle of it, I used to be on Facebook too long ago. But this is no different from the people in Plato’s cave feeling that the shadows on the wall are real. Once you’ve seen the real world in the real sunlight, you can’t go back.
Really ask yourself if the 50 people that you “stay in touch with” on social media really constitutes staying in touch with anyone, or if you both just sort of mutually stalk each other from afar, transforming your relationship into a parasocial one completely unnecessarily. I’m sure some people really do have more than 20 people that they actually talk with frequently and like to stay in close touch with, but I bet that it’s only a very small percentage of the people who think that’s them. I will always sing the praises of aggressively pruning the friend group down to the best of the best. It’s already hard enough to find time to hang out with two or three people frequently enough to really feel close to them, while also having your own interests and things like that. There is limited time to go around and limited time in life, and I would rather have really deep meaningful connections with a few people than shallow connections with a ton.