I'm no longer using the M word*
I've moved house, so to speak, and this entry is about my move to platforms where I read content more than I watch it and ethically connect to people without using *M3ta.
I have to start by saying, whilst sketching last night, I received my subscription to Kameelah Janan Rasheed (KJR Studios) and was incredibly inspired to improve my ways of describing and existing within my practice. I have long been excited by Rasheed’s practice and their way of sharing their practice and so with that in mind, I am challenging myself to use Substack (and maybe Bluesky) more regularly and as a place with some structure and rhythm that allows you to engage with a myriad of content including visual art, writing, research, text experiments and sometimes just nonsensical autism-coded special interests.
This morning, I, in the words of a lover ‘went dark on socials’, deactivating my instagr@m and deleting my whats@pp account (I do not have a fac3book account). I took the leap and left my most used social media platforms as I attempt to try new ways of sharing, connecting and learning that doesn’t rely on M3ta.
♥ Goodbye instagr@m
As an artist whose output is mostly visual, to leave instagr@m, a picture-based platform, felt like a silly move. There were a few things I had to acknowledge as I made this decision:
Fortunately, I am at a point in my career where I do not need it to market myself as much as I did a few years ago. I recognise this as a privilege and hope to get to a place where I don’t have to rely on any digital platform for people to stay connected to my practice, but maybe this is naive.
There are two of my (Black, Queer and Disabled, it feels important to specify this for reasons I hope you already understand) friends who are not on the platform and who are still very successful, well-known and connected, despite not having the app. This is encouraging.
For me, the literal exposure was damaging my self-image and impacting my sleep. I felt - well I felt exposed. And even though my account was private, it never felt private enough.
The conflation of personal and professional identities became a bit overwhelming and was causing people to become overfamiliar with me and/or my practice in ways I wasn’t enjoying.
So, I departed from instagr@m, and while I am sure I will see impacts on my personal and professional life, I hope that these impacts are more positive than negative and my audiences trust me enough to enjoy my work in other forms and in some cases, follow my practice offline.
♥ See you later whats@pp
Deleting whats@pp, was a much easier decision to make, that I have longed to do simply because of how overwhelming I found having so many on going conversations stacked atop of each other and the immediacy at which responses were expected. I recognise the benefits of group chats, broadcasts and so on and I am sure I will want to use these functions at some point in the near future, but for now, I just need a bit of quiet.
One of my difficulties in leaving whats@pp is my connection to my Jamaican family and friends. I am reminded of the benefits of whats@pp in that I can speak ‘freely’ to people across the globe (who of course, also have to have the app and have access to WiFi). For this reason, I can see myself re-downloading the app at some point next month as I will travel to Jamaica for my Birthday and need to speak to my loved ones there.
♥ Hello to stumbling upon things in the wild again
I wasn’t just using M3ta applications as a platform for output, but one I used to input information. By that I mean, I used the apps as a place to educate and inform myself as well as share things. Do I think there are some educational things on instagr@m? absolutely; some of my favourite thinkers exist on instagr@m but I also found that using instagr@m as a search engine was making me, I lack a better word right now, lazy. I found that I was going out less and looking less because I was already seeing so much online, I sort of stopped trying, I stopped actively going and searching for information in other ways and stumbling upon people’s practices as a form of discovery. I was so exhausted by the information, I became too tired to actually attend an opening night, or go to a spoken word event. My capacity for processing, socialising and digesting information is already impacted by autism so experiencing things online, began to reduce that capacity even further.
In no longer using the M word, I have found that talking to me has to be a bit more intentional. What I mean by this is, conversation will not just happen because you saw my story, or was scrolling and saw a post I made, my phone won’t buzz as a byproduct of a group chat message to all. By not having these apps, it means you weren’t ‘just in the neighbourhood’, instead you would have to actively go out of your way, possibly even inconvenience yourself in order to initiate conversation with me. I don’t know how I feel about this just yet but I am sure my relational communications will evolve accordingly.
I would be lying if I said that my main reason for deleting all M3ta applications were because of the behaviour of the company and owners. The politics and ethics and behaviour of all monopolising figures is always on my mind, but I have to be honest and say that my reasons for no longer using the M word were much more selfish with the added bonus of withdrawing my support from Zuckerb3rg and co.
To those of you reading this, I hope you have enough faith in me to keep returning to this platform to engage with my work and still trust that I will be the tender, queer, and thorough, creative I have shown myself to be.
Here I’ve linked a comprehensive piece of writing I feel expresses many of my current thoughts relating to the impact of social media on (my) art practice.
Omg!!! So excited to see you on your new journey and new platform!!!! I think you will storm higher through your writings and future ventures platforms….so excited to see and read more on what you have in store…🤩