Six Months without Social Media

Rain, Hudson River · 2026 It's been good. To be specific: I mean Facebook and Instagram. I still have a YouTube account, though I never comment there. I also love Foto, but that's a niche app for getting feedback on my photography from other photographers. It barely counts. I'm not looking for engagement, I'm looking for guidance, and I pay for it. The main thing — and the funny thing — is that I don't think anyone on Facebook or Instagram has noticed I'm gone. And that's perfectly fine with me. It confirms what I suspected: it was never really social. It was performative. Here on BearBlog, I briefly turned this into a social experiment with the GitHub comments plug-in. On seven posts across two weeks, one person commented, so I've turned it off, and I doubt anyone will notice. That feels right, too — it suits the vibe of this place. BearBlog isn't a social media platform designed to sell us to advertisers. It's a self-expression platform — no ads, no algorithm — that some of us pay…