Sometimes it feels like we’re living in a dystopian world–and social media doesn’t help. Like any communications channel, it can be used to spread good messages or bad. In my day job as a journalist, I’ve been writing quite a bit about attempts by government policymakers to try to make social media a safer space. However, there doesn’t seem to be much consensus on how to get this done.
In the meantime, we can try to control how social media affects our own mental health simply by choosing what platforms we use ourselves.
You’ll see from the social icons under my name at the top-left of this website that I’m on a bunch of them. As an indie author, I’ve often felt that I have to be in many places in order to (hopefully) find potential readers and communicate with current fans. But let me tell you, it’s exhausting to be everywhere at once, and I can’t say for sure I have accomplished my goals.
I told you a while back how I decided to get off Twitter (I did it before the name change!) and move to Mastodon. Well, Mastodon is a fine Twitter clone, and people do seem nicer there, but honestly I don’t feel passionate about tooting (ew gross). Lately, I’ve been spending more time on Bluesky (follow me: @adambenderwrites.com), another Twitter clone. It’s got some cool features, too, like using your web address as your username.
However, one thing I’ve never liked about Twitter–and it’s the same on Bluesky and Mastodon–is that certain users tweet/toot/post extremely frequently. Much more so than others. As a result, my feed ends up being dominated by one or two users. It’s not that I don’t want to hear from these people–I did follow them, after all. It’s just that I don’t want to hear from them this much and I don’t want them to always be drowning out the other, less chatty folks I’ve followed. In addition, the people that talk the most–at least in my feed– seem to be the ones who most make our world feel like a complete dystopia! So much bad news and cynical humor! I tend to leave the site in a bad mood as a result.
I think that’s why a Wired article caught my attention yesterday. The headline was “Maven Is a New Social Network That Eliminates Followers—and Hopefully Stress.”
Yes, please!
The platform eschews likes and follows in favor of letting pure chance play more of a role in what appears in users’ feeds … On Maven, you don’t have followers, so you don’t have to worry about what your followers want to hear from you, or how to gain more of them.
Wired.com
This idea of getting rid of likes and follows struck a chord with me. What if I didn’t have to choose people to follow? What if I didn’t have to worry so much about likes and retweets? That sounds like some sort of utopia!
I signed up yesterday. Uh, I’m not actually sure how to link to my own profile or if that’s even possible. But that’s OK! Maybe that’s even the whole point! I hope we connect serendipitously!
So far, I’ve had a couple friendly chats with folks that weren’t stressful at all. Will I stay on Maven? Who knows! It’s early days and I may lose interest like I have on other networks. That said, it’s exciting to see a new approach to this idea of social media — one that seems to consider users’ mental health as a core value. That’s why I’m rooting for Maven — or other platforms with a similar mantra — to disrupt what has become such a negative space.
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