#oneaday Day 1022: Am I kidding myself with social media?

I've mentioned a number of times on here that I only keep Twitter around because I feel like I "have" to. I feel like I "need" it to promote my work. But let me give you a run down of my day on Twitter.

I have 3,553 followers on Twitter, for context. That number has actually been pretty stagnant for a while, which has been quite noticeable, and when I consider the "engagement" (ugh) the things I've posted today have had, it's sort of understandable.

This morning I shared a post from a visual novel developer who is localising an Alicesoft game — something which should have been of interest to a significant number of those 3,553 followers; the majority of them would have followed me in the first place because of MoeGamer, and as such can reasonably be assumed to be Japanese gaming fans.

That post got one reply, three retweets and 16 likes. By far my most successful post today, and also not coincidentally by far the most low-effort one.

Next I shared a post I'd written on Rice Digital about Alicesoft's music being available on Spotify. Three retweets, seven likes, no conversation.

Then I shared a post about a horror game suitable for Halloween week — topical, you'd think, huh? One retweet, two likes, no conversation.

Next I shared a video I'd made for the Rice Digital YouTube channel, which related to a post that did quite well last week — it was about the upcoming horror game Project Kat: Paper Lily Prologue. One retweet. From me. No likes. No conversation. (Oh, and the video got a "dislike" within two minutes of it being uploaded.)

Then I shared a post I'd written for Retrounite about the value of the Nintendo 64 games that are coming to the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack. No retweets. No likes. No conversation.

And finally, I shared a review of Neptunia x Senran Kagura, a relatively "big" game in the otaku community. Five retweets, nine likes, one comment telling me (I can't tell if jokingly) to "stop lying".

At this point, I honestly don't know why I'm bothering at all. My one reason to keep social media around is to promote my work — and given that my livelihood is at least semi-dependent on ensuring that people read what I'm writing, it is something of a concern — but it just seems to be a complete waste of time.

And most frustratingly, I can't tell if people aren't responding to anything I post because Twitter is deliberately hiding them (I've heard unconfirmed stories from people that Twitter deliberately buries tweets with links that go off-site) or simply because people are scrolling past and not giving a shit.

If it's the latter, I don't really know how to go about things any differently, because as you can see from the links above, I make a point of sharing things with a "human" comment to make it clear that they're written by a person, not churned out by a content farm. I make sure my comment is phrased in a way that could potentially start a conversation or encourage someone to share.

And still nothing. Piss in the wind. Absolute complete and utter fucking waste of time. I am the closest I've ever been to simply deleting social media altogether. You may feel free to attempt to convince me one way or another if you so desire.