The Upside of Social Media

People love to shit on social media. It causes anxiety. It causes depression. It causes teenage girl suicide. It causes political polarization and hatred. And on and on. Much of this is true; some of it is exaggerated. I can tell you that my life has been enhanced by social media—once I learned to use it properly.

We’ll start with Facebook. Facebook is for Boomers, they say. Well, not really—it is for Xers. Generation Xers love Facebook—it is the place to hang out online and post pictures of your stupid kids and your stupid pets and your stupid memes. It’s a time suck, for sure. I have about 1,200 friends on Facebook, and I personally like most of them. I am interested in the stupid kid pictures and the stupid pet pictures (especially cats—I always like pictures of cats). I like to see what is going on in people’s lives, these people I went to high school and college with and the reprobates from my hometown, and wouldn’t have the foggiest idea of what they were up to if it weren’t for Facebook. I will tell you that I didn’t know some of them very well before becoming Facebook friends, and now I know them a lot better—and it’s nice. I didn’t know them before, and I like them now. Other people I liked before, and I like a little bit less now. Facebook is supposed to be the happy place, where you can celebrate your stupid kids and stupid pets, and the weddings and the achievements and the grandkids and the funerals, and share your life with other people. For a while, I thought the only people not on Facebook were dead or in jail. But yes, there are some people who refuse to join Facebook. I would say that they are missing out.

If you’re not on social media, your life is pretty small. You go to work and come home and you have a tiny circle of close friends, and things can get pretty claustrophobic after a while. But on social media, your life is so much bigger—you’re connected to people all over the world. It’s that connection that Zuckerberg talks about all the time—bringing people together. Facebook is probably a runoff business at this point, once the Xers all croak, but it will be fun while it lasts. Besides, all my pictures are on there. But for the people who are not on Facebook, they might lack a sense of community. I can tell you that when Uma passed, I posted about her regularly for a week, and the outpouring of love and support I got really kept me going. I posted about my graduation from SCAD, and got an outpouring of love and support. I post about my books, and people mostly don’t give a shit. That’s fine. Facebook isn’t the best place to sell stuff.

I mentioned that social media is good once you learn how to use it. Well, the wrong way to use Facebook is arguing, especially about politics. In fact, arguing of any kind should be done in person, rather than online. A lot is lost in translation, and you lose that sense of empathy that you would ordinarily have when you are arguing with another human being, face to face. For a few years, I was using Facebook to score political points, and it greatly increased my stress level. Facebook causes me zero stress these days, and not only does it cause me stress, it is a source of happiness. And I keep abreast of what is going on in places that I care about. That is when you know you are doing it right.

Facebook used to be good for other stuff, too, like organizing parties, but people don’t really respond to Facebook events anymore. For a while, I had a lot of traction promoting my DJ parties on there. Some people use Facebook Marketplace to sell shit. I have never tried, but some people are really good at it. I do have a fan page on Facebook, which has a mere 1,500 likes, and I haven’t really gotten the hang of that, either. I’m not so good at producing viral content, unless it’s on Twitter.

Yes, I have a fairly big Twitter presence, with 78,000 followers. Not as big as some, but bigger than most. I have a theory on this—some people have a lot of Twitter followers for the things they do off Twitter. Some people have a lot of followers for the things they do on Twitter. I am a combination of the two. People read my books and see me on TV and they follow me, but I am also good for the occasional riposte that goes viral and picks me up a few hundred followers. By the way, “riposte” is such a good word that applies directly to Twitter, and is very underused. Twitter is a place for the exceedingly glib. It is also the place for extreme personalities and the criminally insane. Outlandish behavior attracts attention, and the algorithm amplifies it. Getting back to the correct way to use Twitter, the goal is not to get sucked into the extreme behavior. The goal is to exchange ideas, and the platform is pretty good at doing that, especially in the financial world. I have told people a bunch of times that I’d rather give up my Bloomberg than my Twitter. I can make much more money off of Twitter than I can off of Bloomberg, and I’m not kidding. I wouldn’t kid about something like that. I could run a hedge fund using Twitter as my only sensory input. And it’s not because I’m getting ideas from the smartest financial minds in the world. Actually, it is because I’m getting ideas from the smartest financial minds in the world. If you know what I mean.

It seems as though the entire purpose of Twitter is to make you angry. I have a piece of advice for you—don’t get angry, and whatever you do, don’t tweet when you’re angry. I have regretted every angry tweet. See my previous essay about not getting angry. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t provoke an emotional response—some of the best information you get is when you provoke an emotional response. But don’t be a bomb-thrower. Some people will block you and some people will mute you, and that’s okay—that’s why the word “social” is in social media. You’re not going to be friends with everyone, and you’re not going to please everyone. The people that try to please everyone are like a mayonnaise sandwich—appealing to precisely no one. Have opinions, make them count, make friends, make enemies, but under no circumstances should you let anything on Twitter ruin your day. I’ll add that you can make money off of Twitter. You can run a business of Twitter. If you could have either 700,000 Twitter followers, or a million dollars, which would you choose? I’ll give you a hint—the answer is not a million dollars.

But Twitter is undoubtedly a good thing, on balance. I’m pretty amazed at the politics people, actually—they’re articulate and funny, in a way that I could never be about political issues. I’m consistently amazed by everyone on Twitter—everyone is good at something. I’m good at my thing. Again, you’re bringing people together from all over the world, and connecting them in a way that they can share their best and worst ideas. Sometimes they put up their dukes. I saw two finance guys put up their dukes this morning. I ain’t got no dukes.

As for the other social networks, I never got much traction on Instagram. I’m old, fat, and ugly. For a while I was using it to promote music stuff, but nobody really cares about that. I actually have a cat Instagram account that gets a lot more engagement than my main one, so if you want to follow @thedilliancats, I would be much obliged. And I have zero experience with Tik Tok, but I can tell you that I have no desire to give my biometric information to the Chinese government, so that’s a no-go for me. I guess SoundCloud is a social network to a certain extent, and I’m coming up on 2,300 followers there, which is pretty great in SoundCloud-world, so I do have a community of people who are interested in my melodic DJ mixes. And Substack is trying hard to be a social network, but I really wish they would just focus on newsletters.

One of the downsides of all of this is that these social networks also connect you with assholes from around the world. I’ve blocked people on Facebook. I’ve blocked over a thousand people on Twitter. I’ve blocked people on Instagram and Substack. I’ve even blocked one person on SoundCloud! Before the advent of social media, if someone wanted to call me a dildo, they’d have to do it to my face. Now they can do it from their dungeon. You grow a thick skin and move on.

Life is better with all of this stuff. It really is. I wouldn’t want to go back to “the old days,” before I signed up for Facebook 15 years ago. I kind of feel like life has gotten better in the last 15 years, and social media has been a part of it. And the ads for dick pills on Facebook have mostly disappeared.