engagement without engagement
I've been enjoying my time over on X as of late, in truth because my analytics jumped up and me (like a good little boy) started using the platform more to keep that momentum.
Lately I've come to realise how hollow the feeling is when it comes to consistently seeing these numbers and having nothing to show for it.
For a business or a content creator, it's obviously important because you want to convert them into customers, but for me who isn't selling a digital course or some random e-book, it's pointless.
Now, I've always enjoyed looking at analytics (particularly when they're going in the 'right' direction) yet I've made no friends from my socials, in fact, there's maybe two people who regularly interact with me by throwing me a like every now and again.
As I'm getting older and have a very limited friend-pool, my use of social media has become less about stats, likes and follows and more about making an actual connection.
Unfortunately, despite my use of:
- X
- Threads
And these which I no longer use or deleted:
- SubStack
I have found my friends from the online world to have remained at 0 and in truth, this makes me sad. Not sad as in like, I'm lonely. Sad that I've seemingly missed the entire point of 'social' media.
I've fallen into the trap of interacting with these sites for the entire purpose of having the analytics keep going up.
And that's not how I want things to be, I know that I've not helped myself because I don't talk to anyone but that brings up an entirely different problem of me not being interested in what most people have to say (which I am going to make a post on, because it makes me sound like a dick, which I don't mean it to. But I can't think of a better way to say it at the minute).
In terms of where I go from here, I'm not quite sure. The appeal of seeing those graphs going up is still very enticing and I've been posted every day on X since January, so it's difficult to try and break that now, but I know that it's all a hollow victory.
I have started looking at alternative social sites and things like the Fediverse, where I might have more of a chance of finding my 'tribe', 'crowd' or audience.
This isn't a call to say 'I want friends' or anything, I'm far too anti-social for that. I suppose it was more to act as a reminder that one real connection is better than 1,000 views or impressions that have nothing behind them.
Of course, if you want to connect - feel free to email me:
matt [at] matterr [dot] wtf