Over the last few years, I have transitioned away from being an active social media user and advocate, to taking a backseat.

For the most part, social media has become an echo chamber of either toxicity or inauthenticity. It has become tiresome and challenging, and frankly, you have to look very hard to find the good.

The extreme polarisation of political following in recent years has been damaging to society, and social media algorithms must bear a significant responsibility for this. I remember a time where a liberal and a conservative could exist more closely to the centre ground, and would engage positively with each other. Now there's no shortage of people who gravitate zealously to two fairly broad but extreme sides, where no common ground can exist. People don't want to debate meaningfully or constructively anymore, they want to annihilate those they perceive as being their opposition.

Doom and gloom are perpetuated through social media because it fuels polarisation, and it grabs attention. In a system where engagement and attention is the one and only goal, algorithms push and promote controversial topics without any moral or logical intervention.

Facts don't even matter anymore. What matters is who shouts the loudest, and whoever can attract the most attention (and therefore engagement). Conspiracies and lunacy run rife, because there are no guardrails, and hate speech is tolerated as "free speech" (even though the mass-suppression of previously-held ideals is rampant).

All of this leads to anyone engaged seriously online being trapped in a pattern of endlessly depressing doom scrolling, where users become addicted to drama and chaos. I don't think there's a coincidence that the rise of social media has correlated with an anxiety epidemic in younger people, particularly those who have only ever known the social media era.

When I was growing up, the internet (for the most part) felt like a positive community. Without social media, we would chat endlessly on MSN Messenger, post on forums of like-minded people, and play games.

I didn't decide to pull back on social media to be an idealist, but it dawned on me that it wasn't serving a purpose for me, it was a place to waste hours away scrolling. I haven't dropped social media completely, but I have curated it as a more private and positive place, and moved away from overusing it, so I have regained control and made it a much smaller part of my life. I have left in only the bits that were positive and valuable, or at least provided balance.

Mostly, as an alternative, I have embraced following blogs and sites again, and using RSS to subscribe to these blogs and podcasts, and carefully selected accounts to follow.

I use an app called Reeder if you're interested (but there are others such as Tapestry, or online readers like Feedbin).

And that is how this website has come to exist. Like the blogs and sites I follow, this is my space for writing, whether people read or not.