Corporate social media is bad for your health. Not only have I been mentally healthier since I stopped using them, I’ve also been a better, kinder, more patient person to others and to myself.

I’m skeptical of how much positive work can be done on corporate platforms. In the past, I have been informed by radical tweets, etc. But these themselves have not radicalised me—just gave me ammunition and incensed me.

Arguing directly, one-to-one with a person is not going to change their mind. Online or offline. To reach people, you need to persuade them, which requires them to be in a receptive state of mind. That’s not possible when people feel attacked and get defensive. You can overcome people’s defenses. But it takes work and requires an environment in which they’re willing to lower their guard. These corporate platforms are instead designed to keep you arguing, antagonistically, with limited possibility of reconciliation.

On corporate online platforms, you are also contesting with the following:

• you aren’t friends with or close to your interlocutors, rarely will you even have a relationship beyond a few posts
• if you are talking to people you have existing relationships with, the incentives are perverse because strangers are able to disrupt things
• the people you argue with have no motive or even the opportunity to come back to you and build a relationship
• the format of online communication is determined – and re-determined at a whim – by the owners; and they pay more to psychologists and spooks to craft a certain discourse than you will ever earn in your lifetime
• that format is actively hostile to creating lasting, meaningful relationships, of the sort that people feel so invested that they are willing to change to fit in
• written communication online can involve:
• • language differences
• • cultural differences
• • ‘playing to the crowd’ mentality (i.e. simply assuming/imagining that onlookers who agree with you are watching and supporting you, making it hard for people to back down)
• • lack of ‘tone’, body language, expressions, etc, to soften the message

Many of these problems are surmountable. I think we do a good job of things on Lemmygrad, for example. But the environment here has been carefully constructed to facilitate good faith conversation. The opposite is true of Facebook, Twitter, etc.

There are also minor exceptions to the above problems with the big platforms and some methods of escaping the traps. One of which is organising with others. In general, working alone, you’re starting with too many disadvantages. The odds are stacked against you.

I know why you’re disenchanted because I’ve been there before. Give yourself a break. Go back in a month’s time to see how you feel. Give yourself another break, etc. Then decide whether you want to keep using those services, with some fresh perspective.

That’s it. Many people would be glad to work their way up from an entry level position that doesn’t need years of higher ed and a pricetag of $000s. Those jobs just don’t exist unless you’re connected. And if you’re connected, you’re not really working you’re way up, anyway.

What if they’ve been here, asking all along, and we’ve been shoo-ing them off as libs?