Social Media, Social or Orwellian. Preliminary thoughts on How not to use facebook or similar social media.(1)

Preamble: Every baby has to pass the shocking moment of insight that mother is not glued to him and her, and vice versa. This is the moment and the chance where “mother” stops being the only person available for comfort and contact, and the idea of a much bigger world is discovered and with it alternatives. (Not easy, but the pre-condition for personal development and growth. You can call it also emancipation from the threat of total isolation when confronted with separation.) Facebook and other social media platforms have managed to suck us back into this earliest threat of a catastrophic state of total despair and isolation in case we consider not staying permanently connected to “Big Mother”. Let’s not throw out our brains and let’s start thinking of possible alternatives to facebook.
All depends on what we need or think we need.
If you have a business you might need facebook and instagram or other platforms. You can still make sure that you use all the possible tweaks to protect your privacy. Still, you might want to consider if you want to mix business and private.
If we do not suffer (too much) from social bulimia and digital narcissism, there might be quite a few different options to satisfy our needs for communication, sharing and connectedness. If we do not think we need to be seen and read by the whole world, we can start selecting with whom we want to communicate. We are in the position of choice, and free from the tyranny of permanent inundation of everything available and possible.
Social media platforms offer easy communication but they “offer” so much more we do not need and we do not want. Can we create our own social platform(s)? I do not have any answers to that, yet, but I have started to roam and here are some preliminary thoughts.
If we have already our own website, even in its most simple form, or/and if we run a blog we are connected to the world. Website and Blog are potentially our pin boards and pin walls, where we leave and receive messages and can share whatever we want to share. Website and Blog are platforms of our own making and it is up to us how and with whom to use them. This means, we have to decide, select and make choices. Creating my own website, www.christophhering.ch, with an integrated blog page, was already based on and driven by those ideas. More work, however, is needed and I will keep you posted about further results and developments. Till soon.