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Social Media Is A Graveyard Part 2

Social media is a graveyard.

That’s what I told myself when I decided to delete Instagram. I was ready to wash my hands of it. Completely done.

Even though I was in the middle of book promo. That was the only thing keeping me tethered to the idea of staying.

Then—boom. Threads showed up, batted her eyelashes at me.

I should’ve never made eye contact.

And to add insult to injury, I couldn’t delete Instagram without sacrificing Threads anyway. So… why not give it a shot, right?

At first, I made the same mistakes—tried to apply the same tired social media templates. And got the same hauntingly familiar results.

CRICKETS.

So, I had to ask myself—what was I doing wrong?

I wasn’t being me.

I didn’t even know what that meant because I had spent so much time doing everything but that.

I ignored the social media advice. No more trending audio. No more hashtags. No more trying to game the system.

And then…something amazing happened.

Threads became fun. Discussions were happening. Authors were celebrating wins. I found my tribe. The content I actually wanted to see was all in one place.

I leaned into my personal interests, and people connected with me.

Most importantly? I love that I can come to my bookish corner of the internet and feel right at home.

There’s no pressure. It’s just… fun.

And the moment it stops being fun? Then I know I’m doing myself a disservice.

I’m not a content creator. I’m a curator—someone who gets to be completely unhinged, talk about tacos, and nerd out over Robocop.

And I’ve made some genuine connections along the way. Met some really talented people.

Speaking of talented people—one of my Thriends (yes, that’s what we’re calling it) encouraged me to give Instagram another shot.

Begrudgingly… I went back to the place I swore I’d never return to.

But this time, I made a change.

I focused on making my time there meaningful. I actually tried to connect. I engaged with people. And most importantly, I had fun.

That’s my foundation now. Fun.

Sure, there’s business to handle, but if I’m not enjoying myself, I will unplug if I need to.

At least now, I know I won’t waste my time on BlueSky.

But that’s another post for another day.

Thank you for reading.

Humbly,

Marc Avery

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Social Media Is A Graveyard

Posted on March 10 by Marc Avery

Social media is a graveyard.

That’s what I told myself.

My content goes there to die.

My biggest waste of time? Twi— I mean, X. I wasn’t an early adopter. The blue bird launched in 2006. I joined in 2009. And I never found my footing. A lot of that was probably my own aversion to social media. When you constantly hear that social media is “useless” or a “waste of time,” that message sticks. It poisons your thinking. And for years, it poisoned mine. I didn’t know what to post, so I copied what I thought worked.

And the results?

Unsurprisingly terrible.

Looking back, my content was all over the place. The algorithm had no idea where to send my posts. And honestly? I’m just not good at doing what everyone else does. Sure, it’s useful to see what people respond to, but only as a reference point. And X? X was especially cruel. My engagement was nonexistent. When I did get a comment, it was from a bot named L0oKaTME26. In fact, when I finally audited my account, I realized most of my followers were bots. I was wasting my time. So, I shifted my attention to Instagram. Again, not an early adopter. The app launched in 2010. I joined in 2014.

Sensing a pattern here? I’m always late to the party.

But after years of trial and error, I finally found a rhythm. At first, I was remixing content, sharing other creators’ memes. But as you can imagine that process eats up time. And more importantly? It wasn’t my content. If I’m researching memes, I’m not writing. If I’m not writing, I can’t finish my books. If I can’t finish my books, I can’t sell them. And if I can’t sell my books… I can’t make any money.

Faced with that reality, I still didn’t want to give up.

Then Instagram Reels exploded in popularity. And total transparency? I didn’t adapt well. Just when I thought I had found my groove, my engagement tanked. No one was paying attention. Reels were like a Rubik’s cube, and I couldn’t get any of the colors to match. That’s when it hit me—like a lead pipe to the chest. It was time to go dark. I deleted X. I had already abandoned Facebook years ago. But I was still stubbornly trying to breathe life into Instagram, a platform that wasn’t working for me anymore. I deactivated TikTok (LOL). I was ice cold from a content standpoint. I didn’t know what to post. And as much as it hurt to pivot, I had to stop banging my head against the brick wall of social media.

So, I made a decision.

I was going to delete Instagram.

TO BE CONTINUED….