Growing up, I never had any social media. The only social media I had was Facebook, made when I was eight, and a Snapchat. Personally, I do not count Snapchat. I used it more for texting than anything else. It was not until recently that I began posting on my story. It was not until even more recently that I created a private story. The only reason I did this was so my parents would not see. To me, the allure of social media never kicked in. A few weeks into creating this blog, I decided to join Twitter and Instagram. I only use these two things to promote and connect with other writers. However, I have noticed just how life-sucking and consuming these platforms can be. I wake up and check. I check the numbers. I look for replies. I look for messages. I look for likes. I look at my followers. God, the followers. If the number feels like it has dropped, panic enters my mind. If the figure rose, joy invades my heart. I now have apps on my phone telling me when people unfollow. When twitter puts me in its jail, my heart sinks. This is not healthy. This addiction to validation from complete strangers, which we will most likely never meet, is toxic. If I am happy with the content I am putting out, why does it matter if my Insta pic only received 35 likes instead of 70. I like it, this should be enough. Yet, it’s not. Discouragement, pain, jealously fill every thought I have.
One thing that I had no idea was a thing until I joined these apps were following trains. See, I do them. I can’t sit here and say that I don’t. I take part in follow trains, writerslift, and more. I have automated messages that go out to my new followers every day. I can say with 100% certainty that tomorrow, I will be posting this on multiple writerslift when this goes live. I will be promoting this post. I realize this may sound hypocritical, and I agree. Yet, its an addiction. Whenever I have free time, I need to or else everyone forget about me. I will join follow trains and will message the current list and groups I am in. They make no sense to me, yet I will continue to do them.
See, I can sit down one day and follow 100 people. These 100 people, in turn, follow me back. That’s great. I gained 100 followers. But of these 100, only 1 interacts with me and the blog I am trying to create. Give it a week, and this one person leaves the blog. While I may have these followers on paper, my blog, my baby, I am not growing. There is no genuine interaction occurring. To me, I find this pointless. Yet, I do them. I do them because it lets my brain see growth. It allows me to look at the numbers and see a positive change. Currently, I think our Instagram has around 1,300 followers, our twitter has about 750. My blog averages 20-50 views a day. That should not be the case. I want the blog to get to the point where I do not have to spend hours promoting and blowing up twitter, hoping people will take a look. However, I know that I am the one who put myself in this position. My need for instant validation on my work lead to me to the point where my followers are not genuine followers of my blog.
Now don’t get my wrong, I do have some consistent people who tune into the blog every day. I have their profile picture and names memorized. But the majority of my “followers” on my social media never tune into the blog. I never see their names pop up. I never see them interacting with the blog. Instant validation may produce momentary bubbles of joy but will never get me to my end goal. Yet, I wonder if there is any other way or if social media allows no other way to grow.
Expression of my life 
This is a well written post and an excellent set of points.
I’ve recently had to step back from follower trains myself because I realized that I ended up bringing people together who didn’t want to be mentioned in the same posts. Growing up and living in relative social isolation, I never really learned all the divisive rules that everyone seems to follow. Instead, now, I simply re-tweet, re-blog, or otherwise promote things that I like. I try to interact where I can.
Perhaps it was due to the initial push I did to gain followers that gave me the ability to now interact and gain followers passively instead of making promises or committing to follow-backs. So I can’t say that writers lifts and follow trains are bad, especially since I’m still included in them as a tag by supportive people, but I can say that once you’ve reached a certain point of being known it becomes easier to set up your profile tags to let others quickly identify you and your content, and just let more people find you.
I gained about 3,000 followers on Twitter in about 3 weeks. Writers lifts after that point have produced very limited results, perhaps because the same people are doing them over and over. I probably interact with a dozen or so on a weekly basis, much fewer on a daily basis. But 45 days ago, I had never met any of them. So it’s entirely possible that in the next 45 days, I drop from their radar forever and find a whole new set of people. I guess we’ll see what happens.
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Thank you for your feedback. I tried to mention throughout the post that I did see the good in these things. I just worry it doesn’t bring people who want to stay. For me it turned into wanting numbers to rise fast. I forgot about the work and what I was trying to build. However I do see all the good that can and is done by follow trains and writers lift. I still do them as well. -Kathrine
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Recently, I deleted Twitter off of my phone, and stopped taking part in Snapchat ‘streaks’, and strangely enough, it feels really refreshing that I did that. Now, I only look at Twitter on my computer and using Snapchat for, like you said, texting.I really like the way this was written, good job!
SMP – https://t.co/JHfmJqL7Dp?amp=1
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