Performative cruelty

Adrianna Tan, originally from Singapore, whose blog Popagandhi I have followed since college, writes about leaving Twitter and shares her thoughts on social media in general.

I am done, I think, with the performative cruelty of early social media. No more dunks, no more subtweets, no more yelling. If I am angry about something, and there are many things to be angry about, I plan to log off and count to five and go for a walk and write about it later if I am still angry about it.

Her term, "performative cruelty," hits it right in the spot. When Twitter and Instagram were starting, I found myself in a growing crowd of excited users. I itched to update my feed constantly. I followed writers, famous people, and random people I shared common interests with. But getting older has allowed me to gain better insight and to appreciate the value of restraint and privacy. I decided to "log off and count to five and go for a walk" instead of living my life online. I rediscovered the joys of keeping personal journals that nobody else will read. 

Since then, I haven't been around social media that much. My Facebook is deactivated most of the time. I only log in when I need to buy used inks on the fountain pen group on FB Palengke. I'm still on Twitter, a mere passive observer. The most I do these days is to "like" tweets in order to bookmark them for later. I archive my photos on Flickr, and write here when I feel like it.