I can’t remember what made me dump Facebook. The only reason I had one was a couple of friends that wanted to play games there. Marvel avengers alliance in particular, but a few others.

Once MAA shut down, I wasn’t really using it for much other than family, and it wasn’t necessary. We all have other ways of keeping up. Once smart phones became ubiquitous, and group messages with it, it became an afterthought to even look at FB. But one or another of their bits of fuckery made me delete the account. Maybe it was the Cambridge Analytica bullshit, maybe it was something else.

I was never on Twitter. Had an account to try it back when it was fairly new. Didn’t like it, never went back.

Now reddit? That was my thing. Mid length commentary available on niche subjects all in one place? Semi anonymity with the ability to just switch to a different user name if need be to avoid bullshit. If they hadn’t gone apeshit shitting on the users that made reddit worthwhile in the first place, I’d probably still be there. Mind you, I’m actually happier on lemmy, but that’s a separate issue.

Never did Instagram at all. I think maybe my best friend’s husband set me up an account one night so I could follow him, but I never used it, and I had a drink that night, so I’m not even sure if he did, or if it was a joke. In any case, he never sent me any info on the account, and he’d had more than a few drinks, so I doubt he remembers lol.

Honestly, the idea of being that public skeeves me out. Always has. I’ve been careful since I first used the internet, there’s no pictures of me online unless they were put there by someone taking pictures in public and I’m at the edge or whatever. I had one asshole pull some shit back in the day, after I used my real name as a moderator of a small forum. Showed up at my house, and that was all it took for me to never use my real name again, even for the Facebook account I used for games and family.

I really don’t want to have to kill some motherfucker because they have beef over some internet bullshit.

So, yeah, I never really trusted any of it much, so I was a light user at best.

Hell, even under my pen name, I didn’t use social media at all with the corporate stuff. I use Mastodon for that, but it’s a recent thing for me, like right before reddit pulled their shit. I got a burst of people that found copies of my stuff on soulseek, and sent me emails. I figured a Mastodon account would be more convenient for notifying anyone that was interested, and it has been. But I keep that separate from everything else. No links to this account or user name, nor my backup under this name, (though I do have an account for that pen name) nor my one lemmy alt for accessing beehaw without registering there. Never use that one tbh.