Social media - What's the point?

Wormwood Saga: Aiōn Chapters 16-18

I first got interested in social media in 2007 when my job required me to launch a Twitter account. A few years later in the mid 2010s I garnered a decent following on Instagram with content I was sharing on my blog about life in Japan. It never made me any money. Rather it was a way to drive people to my content and by default a way for my ego to get a little boost.

To be honest I’ve never really gotten social media - it all seems like an exercise in futility but I played along because everyone else was... After an hour of doom scrolling on *insert social media platform here* I never had a thought like “Remember forty five minutes ago that funny video of the dude tripping and falling into a lake off of the dock during his wedding photo shoot?” No. Instead it was just an amalgamation of arousal, disgust, laughter, and boredom coalesced in my mind as a giant waste of time.

Threads was a little different. I enjoyed the long form content, which had a point beyond entertainment. It seemed to be more knowledge acquisition or informational in nature. Then Zuckerberg fell in line with Pumpkin Spice Palpatine and I couldn’t jump ship fast enough.

I don’t remember exactly how I found out about Substack. I do know though that I immediately fell in love with it. What I love most about Substack is it’s a community of writers, artists, pundits, politicians, journalists, and scientists who enjoy writing and reading long form content. People come here to learn, to grow, and to be inspired. I want to be a part of something like Substack. I’m not interested in another sound bite awash in an ocean of mindless chatter coming from people who are all there to boost their egos, escape reality, or both.

In 2010 I started writing a novel. During the subsequent decade and a half that one novel grew to three… and then it ballooned even further into a universe. So, what does that have to do with Substack you might ask?

Glad you asked.

I launched this Substack to be an outlet for my more bite sized chunks of writing. I share random thoughts, or perhaps a quote from my Buddhism studies, or maybe I’ll get really brave one day and share some of my water color paintings (the above image is a photo I took with a watercolor filter). The whole point of this Substack is to build a community of readers immersed in the universe I’m creating. I am publishing a few chapters a week (all for free) and ‘advertising’ about it here on Substack.

I chose Obsidian.md to be my publishing medium because I specifically don’t want to track readership, hearts, shares, or comments. None of that matters to me. Sure I’d love to make a little money at it, but that’s not why I started writing my novel in 2010 and kept chipping away at it for a decade and a half. I write because I love to and if one person or a hundred thousand people get something from it, than that is all that matters to me.

So, if you’re still here reading this head on over to Wormwood Saga and check out the latest chapters that I published this past week 16,17, & 18.

Namaste 🙏🏼