Math, fluid dynamics and leaving social media

Everyone else seems to be leaving social media, but can I ? Should I?

Lately I’ve seen a trickle of people on Substack writing about their decisions to leave various social media.

Sari Botton

left Twitter.

Marlee Grace

logged out of their IG account.

Elise Loehnen

got featured on Substack Grow for migrating her Instagram followers to Substack. A host of other people I can’t remember anymore have stepped back in a variety of ways.

Those of you who read this newsletter a lot will know that my first reaction when I read one of these essays is jealousy. I, too, would like to quit social media. I’ve felt this way for years. I’ve written about it for what feels like decades. I’m tired of writing about it. I’m sure you’re tired of reading about it.

This summer during which I tried to use social media to sell and market a self-published book was especially tedious and soul-destroying. Up until that point, I was pretty much off Facebook altogether. Twitter was already in its death throes and therefore easier to avoid. And I felt like I’d developed a somewhat healthier relationship to Instagram.

All that collapsed when my young adult novel came out. I hustled like a madwoman, all to not much effect. As one reader pointed out in the comments, there’s not a lot of evidence (outside the #booktok phenomenon) that social media actually helps sell books. And yet, when I tried to imagine some other way to sell books, my imagination feel flat. The in-person events I organized were so sparsely attended that I am still recovering from the trauma.

Photo by mk. s on Unsplash

So every time someone writes the now ubiquitous I’m-leaving-social-media-post, I click on the link and greedily consume their story. Then, inevitably, I look them up on social media to see exactly how many followers they’re giving up. Every time it’s many, many more followers than I have. And, of course, they also have more subscribers on Substack. This is when I begin to contemplate math, which has, frankly, never been my strong suit.

On the one hand, if these leavers have more followers than me, then they have more to give up. If Sari Botton can give up her 11,000 followers on Twitter, it’s no big deal for me to give up my measly 1,176. Right? That math tells me that I should clearly follow suit and leave social media.

On the other hand, Marlee Grace, who left behind 87,000 Instagram followers has 26,000 subscribers on Substack. Less subscribers, true, but as we all know (or would really, really like to believe) engagement with subscribers is much higher than with those followers on IG. Our Substacks are going into their inboxes, so maybe 26,000 subscribers is equal to 87,000 followers. And Sari Botton has 22,000 subscribers to her

Memoir Land

Substack and 23,000 to

Oldster Magazine

, so she has a net gain.

I have 451 Substack subscribers (even as I write these words, I can feel about ten of them running away). Is that equal to my 710 Instagram followers? Do I have more or less to lose by leaving social media than those heavy (heavy-ish? I have no sense of scale, either) hitters? This is where my math gets fuzzy. Honestly, my math got fuzzy way before this.

What I do understand are the reasons that people give for why they’re leaving social media. Many of them had a good time on Instagram or Twitter. They met lovely people. They made a living, maybe (I suspect no one makes as much money on IG as we think). It was a good thing in many ways.

But also, it took them away from their lives. It felt like an addiction. It might have been a creative outlet, but they didn’t own the product of their own creativity and now that creativity will be used, in the case of Twitter, to teach AI how to be witty and snarky, if such a thing as witty and snarky AI is possible (some AI-assisted papers have begun to show up in my grading and based on the real shittiness of the writing, I’m doubtful). What happens on Instagram or Twitter is less and less within our control and, yes, nothing is truly under our control, but nothing is more frustrating to our poor primate mind than randomness. Seriously. It drives us crazy. We are story-making creatures. An algorithm might be the opposite of a story.

I also don’t understand much about fluid dynamics, but I do know that water follows the path of least resistance. It will not defy gravity if there’s a gently sloping stream available. Water, or any other fluid, won’t go up unless it’s under incredible pressure.

Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash

If our creativity is like a fluid, the same basic principle applies. Say, for example, I have an idea. An image. A sentence. A melody. I could do the hard work of sitting down with that idea. Drawing the image. Writing the sentence. Composing the song. Or I could put it on Instagram or Twitter, which isn’t zero work, but is a hell of a lot easier than, you know, writing this essay. Or painting a mural. Or building a sculpture. Or getting a group of people together to make the idea a reality.

Social media is the path of least resistance. It is the sloping stream. Or more like, the leaky pipe. Writing a novel takes months or years and in the meantime, there is no feedback. No affirmation. You are alone. So much of art is like that. But write a witty Tweet and there’s instant gratification. Instant love. A closed loop—idea + audience = fleeting satisfaction.

That’s all fine if the flow of creativity is infinite, but I don’t think it is. Every minute I spend scrolling or writing the perfect Tweet is a moment I am not writing. Or dreaming. Or just, for fuck’s sake, being bored and staring off into space, because from boredom so many amazing things have been born.

Social media is a big fucking leak in the flow of creativity. The math doesn’t matter. There will always be math. Apparently, there will always be algorithms, too (even on Substack). But at least let there will also be stories. I’m much better at those, anyway.

Since I’m taking a break (maybe temporary…maybe permanent) from IG, I was so excited to see

Paris by Mouth - Where to Eat in Paris

is on Substack! All the Paris! All the time!