Posts that essentially boil down to “I’m Leaving [insert site name here] And Here’s Why You Should Care” are the very worst kind of egocentric narcissism, as most of you probably know. This is because they usually amount to someone attempting to attract attention to themselves flouncing off in a huff after they feel they’ve been slighted, only to return a week/month/year later to repeat the cycle anew. If you’ve had the patience and willpower to follow Fez developer Phil Fish over the last couple of years, you’ll have witnessed this action firsthand.

And yet here I am making a largely similar post, and not for the first time. I shall try and keep the egocentric narcissism to a minimum, however — though I’m making no promises.

This post is about two things: 1) why I don’t intend for Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to be part of my daily routine any more, and 2) how you can reach me if you’d still like to talk to me online — because despite the things I’m going to say under heading 1, I can’t deny that I’ve made a lot of good friends across all three networks over the years, and it would be a shame to abandon that completely.

To begin at the beginning, then. There are a lot of words ahead, but I would appreciate you sticking around to read them — particularly the last section about keeping in touch.

Why I don’t intend for Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to be part of my daily routine

Those of you who have been following this blog recently will know that I decided to subject myself to a voluntary social media blackout this week. Specifically, I logged myself out from Twitter, Facebook and Google+, deleted the relevant apps from my phone, ensured that anything that might bug me with notifications from them was well and truly switched off and finally settled down to a week of peace.

It’s now a week since I started that blackout, and the time at which I decided I was going to review whether or not I needed social media in my life any more. And the conclusion I’ve reached is that I don’t think I do. I opened Twitter earlier today to see how I felt, and felt no urge to scroll down to see if I’d missed anything — I closed it straight away without even scrolling off the first page of tweets. I didn’t even feel the urge to open Facebook or Google+ at all. I have broken the “habit”, it seems, and I don’t feel like I “need” to develop it again.

Because it is a habit. It’s compulsive behaviour — at least it was for me. You may do it yourself without realising it; you reach a quiet moment in the day, and out comes the phone or up comes the web browser, and you do your “rounds” of your social networking sites of choice. You scroll through the reams and reams of content the millions of members of these sites worldwide have made, rarely taking anything in, rarely stopping to appreciate, say, the composition of a photograph on Instagram, or the witty headline that someone came up with for a news story on Facebook. It’s page after page of noise, little of it meaningful, all of it vying for your attention with equal fervour. And yet still around and around and around you go.

Some people deal with this noise better than others. Some people can discipline themselves to set aside a little bit of time to check their networks, then put them aside for hours or even days at a time. That can be a valid strategy, but with the speed at which modern social networks move, if you’re not there when something happens, your contribution to the “discussion” — and I use that term loosely — is likely worthless, since conversation will have moved on by then.

This matter of “discussion” is worthy of consideration, so let’s ponder that a minute.

One of the things that drove me to start my week-long blackout a couple of days earlier than I intended was the whole #GamerGate thing on Twitter. For those who don’t follow the video games field — or those who simply aren’t on Twitter — in simple terms, this was an argument between video game journalists (particularly those who err on the “feminist” side of the sociopolitical spectrum) and those who self-identify as “gamers”, i.e. people who play, enjoy and are passionate about video games and would rather not be told they’re awful people whenever possible.

I don’t really want to get into the details of the events surrounding #GamerGate as that would be long, tedious and, more to the point, has already been summed up in a great amount of detail elsewhere on the Internet. (As always, note that there are two sides to every story — something that both sides on this particular argument have been guilty of forgetting.)

Suffice to say, however, that #GamerGate brought out the very worst in a lot of people. It brought out some of the most unpleasant trolls the Internet had to offer, who, predictably, went after a number of people who — let’s be honest here — often court controversy to make a point. On the other side, those loud-voiced members of the press and their numerous sycophants continued down a path that I’ve been unhappy to see them proceeding down for the last year or two: belittling, ridiculing, publicly shaming and even outright insulting the very people they are supposed to be writing for.

Whatever fair points both sides had — and make no mistake, both sides had fair points — were lost amid the noise, and discussion never got anywhere. It was frustrating to watch; I tended not to participate as much as possible as I learned a while back that any attempts to call for moderation in such matters tended to result in accusations of “tone policing” — which, ironically, is itself a form of deflection attention away from a point being made — rather than genuine attempts to calm down and discuss things like rational adults. And thus nothing was ever resolved.

As I said above, different people deal with different things in different ways. My frustration with these endlessly circular arguments — in which no-one was really listening to anyone else and in which any fair points were inevitably lost in all the blind anger and insults being thrown in both directions — manifested itself as anxiety, stress and depression. I was genuinely afraid to contribute to these discussions for fear of attracting the wrath of one, the other or both of the angry mobs involved. And it was having an effect on my mental health.

If you can take yourself out of a situation that is causing you problems with your mental health and not cause yourself further problems, you should do. So that’s exactly what I did. I extracted myself from the whirling miasma of rage, quietly slipped away for a while to reflect, contemplate and heal — and now, here I am, a week later, with no desire to jump back into the fray.

This isn’t to say that Twitter, Facebook and Google+ are nothing but whirling miasmata of rage and other negative emotions, but frankly, the other stuff there has seemed of little value to me for some time, too. There’s only so many “You Won’t Believe What Happened Next!” videos you can take seeing before you just don’t care What Happened Next; only so many “adorbs” pictures of cute things you can see before you never want to see another squirrel again; only so many baby photos you can scroll past before your only reaction to a friend enjoying a new addition to the family is… well, nothing.

It’s all noise to me, in other words; an overwhelming swathe of constant content; a never-ending stream of consciousness in which meaningful life events are ascribed equal importance to a video of a cat drinking water from a squirt bottle. I don’t need that. I’ve always been one for social anxiety, but right now I’d rather hear important things from the lips of the people involved rather than read it on Facebook or Twitter; I’d rather actually hang out with friends than hope I get more than a couple of “Likes” on the picture of the bag of chips I’m about to eat, or a couple of comments on a post I made about how much I’m enjoying Tales of Xillia 2.

I’m not saying there’s no place for these sites in society at all — clearly a lot of people get great joy, excitement and enjoyment out of them. But for me, their value has dwindled significantly over the last year or two, so it’s starting to make sense to cut them out of my daily routine and instead seek other means of staying in touch with the people I actually care about.

Which brings us neatly on to the second part of this post.

How to stay in touch with me

I’m not retiring from the Internet altogether. Rather, I’m being more selective with how I communicate and with whom. Consequently, I’m focusing on ways of communicating that allow me to take more control over my online presence, and which are more inherently personal than just shouting into the void of social media.

Note that I’m not closing down my Twitter, Facebook and Google+ accounts — they’ll be used to broadcast these blog posts — but I won’t be actively checking any of them, so please don’t @mention or comment via any of those means if you want a reply from me.

Here are the main ways through which you’ll be able to contact me in future:

• This site. I post one blog entry here every single day, and have done for the last 1,699 days. Leaving a comment on my most recent post is a good means of getting a message to me. I’ll try and be better about replying than I have been in the past!
• Email. Close friends probably already have my email address. I don’t mind sharing it, but I’m not putting it out in the open on this site. If you’d like to chat via email, you can start a private conversation via the contact form on my About Pete page and, assuming you’re not some sort of crazy stalker, I’ll probably get back to you.
• Google Hangouts. For real-time chat, I use Google Hangouts almost exclusively. I don’t do voice and I don’t do video, but text chat is something I’m happy to engage in with you, assuming I know who you are before you just pop up saying “hi” and nothing else. If you don’t already know my Google Hangouts info, drop me a message via the aforementioned contact form.
• The Squadron of Shame forum. Most of my “public” conversations — “broadcast-type” messages, I like to think of them as — will now be found over on the Squadron of Shame forum. Although the Squad was originally set up as a small but well-formed group back in the 1up.com days, the modern Squad is very open to new members, with the only requirements for membership being that 1) you’re interested in games, particularly those a little off the beaten track and 2) you’re respectful to other people’s tastes in games, even if they don’t coincide with your own. Come and sign up and say hello, since that forum is where I’ll be spending most of my online “social” time these days.
• Final Fantasy XIV. If you happen to play Final Fantasy XIV and find yourself on the Ultros server, look up Amarysse Jerhynsson and say hello.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post; I appreciate it. To those of you that I’ve only interacted with on social media in the past: I’m sorry to leave you behind just as, in some cases, we’re starting to get to know one another (I’d like to give particular, specific shoutouts to @FinalMacstorm and @SonyofLastation here, both of whom I’ve very much enjoyed talking to recently) — but I hope you’ll consider staying in touch via one of the means above, and I hope you understand my reasons for wanting to eliminate stressful, anxiety-inducing and unnecessary noise from my personal life. To those of you who are already firm friends beyond the boundaries of social media — well, the same, really; I hope you’ll respect my decision here, and that you’ll stay in touch via other means.

Onwards to a brighter future, then: one largely free of pop-up notifications, pointless arguments and unnecessary stress. I’m looking forward to it very much indeed.