Digital cleanup
Given the continuing collapse of social media, I finally deleted Instagram and Twitter over the past few days. Felt great! Also deleted Spoutible, Pinterest, Spore, Project Mushroom, Grainery, Vero, Artfol, and MySpace. Yes, MySpace was still kicking around. Now it's not!
The immediate impulse was to disassociate myself from services controlled by far right ideologues. But I got into a kind of Marie Kondo vibe and started junking anything that I wasn't using and didn't need. It's a mind-clearing exercise that frees up psychic space to focus on more important things. And it's good digital security - I now have a dozen or so fewer places that could leak my data.
I've kept Bluesky and Mastodon and I'm testing out Pixelfed, Cara, and Pillowfort to see if any of 'em can step up as an Instagram substitute. Feels manageable and makes sense. So good for me!
But then I got a little wild tonight and set up a second Bluesky account for just work-related posts -- so folks who just want to find out about my comics, books, films, and photography have a place to go. I don't really know how necessary it is and it's a little confusing even to me. But I had fun setting up the new account with my gregpak.com work website as the handle -- gregpak.net is my everything Bluesky account and my personal/political blog.
The big thing I've been aiming for with this digital cleanup kick has been simplicity and clarity. Is this part of that? I don't know. It was fun to get it set up tonight, and I'm billing it as a straight up experiment, and if it feels too weird after a week or so I can always delete it. We'll see!