I think I’m “over” social media. Allow me to clarify that bold statement, however, as it’s perhaps not entirely accurate as is. I think I am over social media as it exists today — a sprawling, disorganised mess of ill-defined concepts that contribute very little to the people’s understanding of one another, and more often than not is about vanity rather than actual socialisation.

In other words, I yearn for the days when social media was simple and straightforward — when its sole intended purpose was to allow people to stay in touch with each other and perhaps, occasionally, share a photograph or two with them.

Looking back on this blog, I see I have written about this subject at least twice in the past, and my disillusionment with it has only grown over the last year or so — perhaps due in part to the fact that as part of my job I come into contact with some of the most utterly pointless examples of social media that I’ve ever seen.

These days, there are social media apps to share anything you can think of. I mean, there are literally (YES LITERALLY) apps and services that allow you to share anything you can think of. There are also more specialised ones with questionable usefulness to society as a whole. I reviewed one recently where the entire purpose was to share what your current mood was — you couldn’t add any text explaining said mood, only an emoticon — and another where you could share the weather in your local area, then “like” or comment on the weather in other places. Another still allowed you to send a video or photo to someone, but they were only allowed to look at it for ten seconds, after which it locked itself and became useless (I swear I’m not making this up).

The trouble with these things is that despite their pretensions towards being “social media,” they’re not actually all that social at all in terms of the way in which people use them. They’re a means of broadcasting things and seeking approval of other people rather than a means of actually engaging in conversation with anyone. Take a look at the average comments thread on an Instagram picture of a moderately-attractive person (usually a woman) and you’ll see what I mean. No-one’s actually talking to each other — everyone’s just dropping an asinine opinion bomb and then never coming back. The poster of the selfie is seeking approval from commenters telling them how attractive they are; meanwhile, the commenters are seeking approval from the poster and hoping that their specific compliment is the one that will get them some specific attention.

This isn’t the case universally, obviously. There are still some actual conversations that go on on Facebook, for example, but these can easily be lost in the torrent of people resharing crap from pages like “I fucking love science” (do you? Then go do some rather than recycling endless fucking memes) and “LIKE AND SHARE!!” (NO!!). Twitter is a reasonable platform for discussion at times, but conversations are easily derailed and, as has been proven hundreds of times in the past year alone, 140 characters is really not enough to make a coherent argument about a complex issue. It’s also incredibly easy to be taken out of context on Twitter.

Google+ perhaps fares the best out of all of these services in my experience, though even that’s variable. Join a good, small community that has a clear focus and whose moderators keep a tight leash on discussion and you’ll have a good experience chewing the fat with people who may well become good friends. Follow Felicia Day or Wil Wheaton and you might see some interesting content, but the quality of discussion goes out of the window. Follow Google+’s own page and all you get are blithering idiots making ill-informed political rants any time the team behind the page even dare to mention the President.

I think the thing that’s been striking me most heavily recently is “do I really need to share this? Do people really need to know this?” And more often than not, the answer is “no”. I don’t feel the need to collect an arbitrary set of “Likes” with services like CircleMe or GetGlue. I don’t feel the need to “check in” to places with Foursquare. I don’t even really need to use stuff like Raptr to broadcast my gaming activity, but that has, on occasion, sparked some good discussions — as, I’m sure, the other services do in some cases. Just not mine. Not any more. Perhaps once in the past — I met some good friends through Foursquare’s now-defunct competitor Gowalla — but not now.

Consequently, since quitting Twitter a while back (and not really missing it, to be honest — though I do miss some of the people) I’ve been paring back my personal social media use hugely. I’ve closed my Tumblr account — I never really understood the point of that site, and these days all it seems to be used for is white people shouting about how guilty they are about being white and how we should all stop being such racists/misogynists/fedora-wearing perverts — and I’ve unistalled the vast majority of social apps from my phone, including Twitter and Instagram. Facebook made the cut, because as much as I dislike it at times, it’s still a good way of staying in touch with a lot of people, and Google+ also survived, as it’s the new home of the Squadron of Shame and serving our needs well.

Obviously this blog is still going, too (and will be for a long time to come, hopefully!) and I still comment on friends’ blogs — but I don’t really count that as “social media” in the same way, particularly as the discussions had tend to be (for the most part, anyway) wordy and thought-provoking rather than inspiring little more than a knee-jerk “lol”.

Everything else, though? Out the window. And life is much calmer and more pleasant as a result.