Nope. Too old, too learn new tricks. Hitting the like button is one of those things I almost never do. Commenting is something I'm trying to give up, and I limit subscribing to YouTube channels. I'm just too old for all these newfangled things. And, I guess I was a decade or more ago when they first began to appear.
Perhaps the main reason I've never to those things, is that I've (almost) never been on social media, other than this blog. If this is considered social media. I'm not a social person, so social media never appealed to me. A blog was considered a must for authors back in the day, which is why I'm here.
My wife signed on to Facebook when the kids went away to college, and she's still on it, playing Scrabble and Words With Friends with sisters and friends. But the only social site I've tried, for half a year, was Discord. I signed on to two servers, one for a SF blog to discuss SF, and the other by an fantasy author who wanted to create a community of writers. I thought that the fantasy author's Discord server might be a way to talk about writing with other writers. It was, but not in any very deep, consistent or satisfactory way. Discord is a product of the time - of smartphones, texting and such, where short form content, a sentence or two is the rule. That is alien to me. I like words. Lots of words. I found interacting with people on these servers too disjointed to conduct any sort of satisfactory discussion. I simply could not get my head around short statements, often separated by hours if not days. No doubt regular uses of social media would have no trouble with this. But I did. So I quite Discord.
Likely, because I don't do social media, the concept of "liking" is pretty alien to me as well. Not only am I not in the habit of "liking" everything I read, but I must admit that I don't really see the point of doing so. From my personal point of view, I put this piece out for others to read, knowing that some will like it, others won't, and I'm cool with both. Likes really mean nothing to me, so I really don't use it. It's not that I don't like things, it's that I don't feel the need to click "Like" for everything I read.
As I mentioned, I do subscribe to a number of YouTube channels, but I've never seen any reason to subscribe to blogs. I just bookmark the ones I like to visit, and leave it at that.
Comments is the area that I am trying to work very hard on, as in not commenting. Why? Because I often regret the comments I make. The thing is that words are flat. When I write a comment, I am putting down the words I would say face to face, without all the intonation and body language that would add nuance to what I'm saying. Without those nuances, what the words say to the reader is open to interpretation. When I read them back, it often seems to me that my comment is always about me. Rather than contributing to an ongoing conversation, I'm just using the video or post to talk about myself. I fear that I'm tone deaf when I writing it, and only afterwards do I question what I was doing. This is especially true since it seems that most comments are just complimentary, praising the presenter of the video or writer of the blog for their insights. And like "Like" button, I don't feel the need to always compliment the presenter. Not because I don't like their work, but because I assume that they're not producing their content just to get compliments and/or likes. Rather they are presenting their thoughts for our consideration and/or our entertainment, and having done so, are content. So, given my past regrets about comments, I'm resisting putting my two cents in on the comment sections of videos and blog postings, though, with only partial success. I just don't trust myself to express myself the way I would want to. And who needs my two cents anyway? If you want my two cents, you've found the place where you can find it.
While I don't plan on getting up on my soapbox here every week, I will, as I have in the past, share my views on various subjects related to writing and publishing. Some of them perhaps inspired by blog postings I've read or videos I've watched. Here I have all the time and space I seem to need to set out my views. I always need a lot of time and space to do so. Your comments, however, are always welcomed.
Stay tuned.
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