Leaving Social Media on January 31 (or a few days earlier or later, depending)

(Amended 28 Jan 18.) (And again on 15 Feb 18.)

Hi Again,

I've decided to take the leap and quit social media. I find it purposeless and deeply banal, a mere dopamine release mechanism. Bonuses: addiction, immense swathes of wasted time, expurgating communication to garner ephemeral approval and skew valorization, staring at one's fucking phone for hours on end. Being a whore, however, I'll not delete my various accounts altogether; they'll rest in a state of deactivation, lest lolling squatters descend.

To offer a strictly static, promo-only alternative, Karl Schmidt has established a Tom Smith artist page on Facebook. It's not much now, just a few bits of information, but it'll be updated on occasion. Go here. It has been taken down by Facebook, at least for now. I can't imagine why, but perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I'm neither a Russian bot nor white supremacist. Those social media faves always seem to survive unscathed.

The lights go out on my public Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts as soon as possible - there's a concert on the 3rd of February I'm promoting (Merkwürdig Riechnerv, with Danish/Spanish collaborative project Paula in support), and as soon as that's done, I'm over and out.

I want to get back to the blog, to unfettered writing, to human contact in the meatsphere.

And so I shall.

Yours spectacularly,

TS

15 Feb: Still harvesting data (addresses and certain posts) from FB. Deleted it, Instagram and Twitter from my devices, however. It's a slog.