Anti-social Me on Social Media

Today I woke up to an alert that I completed 16 years on Linkedin!

It got me thinking about my relationship with Social Media (SM), which can be describes as “It’s complicated”.

I was one of the early adopters of various SM platforms. I joined Twitter in 2009, when it was not so popular in India. I joined FaceBook in 2007, again when there were hardly any Indians there; Orkut was more popular in India back then.

I didn’t know when I joined Linkedin, but got to know it today. If my memory serves me right, there weren’t many Indians on Linkedin too in 2007. Even before all these, I have been blogging since 2004-05.

However those know me well would say that I’m anti-Social person, or maybe “selectively social” person. I’m not comfortable being part of large groups and multi-pronged interactions. I prefer smaller groups and more intimate, personalised interactions, discussions, debates and sharing.

None of the SM platforms are actually good for that. So I find blogging more suitable for my nature/temperament. I call my blog “Notes to myself”. It’s mainly a place for my future self, to read through my blog after 10-15 years. Along the way there are few people, subscribers who have been regularly visiting this blog. Some I know; many I do not know.

But I prefer such interactions. I do not like to be very active on SM for social networking. And yet I spend a lot of time on SM. The reason is that once you view SM differently you can find a lot of alternate benefits. Twitter is my best source of news, information and knowledge. It’s also my source for finding book recommendations, new interesting people (dead or alive), leads for exploring new topics. Linkedin is good for professional networking, keeping in touch with eminent people who I worked with, or those who I would like to work with.

I have deactivated my FaceBook account since 2012 because it was getting too trashy. I have not deleted it yet, and maybe I’ll reactivate it some day.

I was not as active on Linkedin till 3-4 years back. But now I’m much more active and hope to grow my professional network even further.

My relationship with SM will still continue to remain “It’s complicated”. But I’ve graduated from being anti-Social to “differently social” 😋🤗