Senseless Sunday Sarcasm : Social media

There are around 7.7 billion humans crowding Earth.  Someone out there has to want my books.  But how can a writer with a total net income below the poverty line advertise?

SOCIAL MEDIA!

Unfortunately, I had to be dragged into social media kicking and screaming.

My son, sister, and daughter were on Facebook, so I joined.  My sister and daughter rarely go on FB anymore, but that’s how I keep in touch with most of my acquaintances and friends from years ago.

I refuse to join Instagram.  My best-friend-when-I-was-a-child likes to share her Instagram stuff on Facebook, and it’s always worth sharing, but…

…every time I want to hit the share button, Instagram won’t allow it unless I sign up.  My answer is, “No, you greedy b@$t(%ds!”  If I look hard enough (which I do sometimes, just out of spite) I can find the original non-I source. 

Instagram’s kind of “If I can’t have you no one will” nonsense pisses me off worse than having a cartload of groceries and being stuck behind this:   

My best friend set up our blog and practically had to drag me to the computer to do my first post (which, by the way, was published 9/9/2012 — 2247 posts ago).  I went from, “OMG, I can’t reveal that to ANYONE,” to “Hey, this exceedingly embarrassing moment would make a great post!” less than a year after that.

I just received a notification from Google+, a social media site I signed up for only because…you guessed it!…I was trying to sell books at the time.  I never did like the format.   

Obviously, I’m not alone:

“In December 2018, we announced our decision to shut down Google+ for consumers in April 2019 due to low usage and challenges involved in maintaining a successful product that meets consumers’ expectations. We want to thank you for being part of Google+ and provide next steps, including how to download your photos and other content.

As early as February 4th, you will no longer be able to create new Google+ profiles, pages, communities or events.”

I’m not sure which public restroom wall they wrote that announcement on, but I never got the memo.  Nothing like having a one day notice, is there?  Fortunately, there’s not a single thing on that site I’m interested in saving.

A good friend set up my Twitter account, which I rarely checked until recently. Facebook is easy to use, and Twitter finally got the idea that having posts fly by at the speed of light is frustrating for me the tortoises among us.  I’ve used Twitter more in the past month than I have in the past 5 years.

As most people know all too well, Maxine and I have a lot in common.

I think that’s the key to social media success:  You don’t keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.  That’s the definition of insanity failure.

Google+ is not alone in its failure; it joins the ranks of Myspace, xanga, Ello, Digg, Pownce, Friendster, ConnectU, Ping, Y!Buzz, and at least 6 more. 

I’m wondering if the fate of social media sites is on par with everything else:  99% of all the species that have ever lived on this Earth are extinct.

No, I’m not hoping that a law is passed declaring social media sites to be a “people.” That’s the type of insanity that drives species to extinction.