I flew too close to the sun (post-election social media hiatus)
Before the election, I was on Reddit for maybe an hour a day. Mostly in my local sub, r/centuryhomes, r/medaka, r/plantedtank - places I consider safe for my nervous system.
On election night, I refused to look at anything. My life as a public-sector southerner has been completely flipped by this administration: my job funding became unstable, my trans spouse wasn't able to get covered healthcare through state insurance, our state employer (a university) was on a hiring freeze while encouraging students to narc on faculty (me) for mentioning that institutional racism exists in a class about public health. We moved states away for job stability, healthcare, and retirement benefits as public sector employees. We left our aging parents behind.
Everything is better, but there is a grief and rage about not leaving on our own terms.
Anyways, I just don't have bandwidth to watch elections anymore. But once things were clearly Going Well per my spouse, I started looking at Bluesky. And then Mastodon. And then the Big Bad Normie Subs on Reddit.
My screentime has been terrible. It was worth it for a day or two, but now there are diminishing returns. It turns out that these websites are still really disregulating for me even when all the content is what I want to see. I even ended up in some right-wing YouTube comment sections, which is my dark place I justify by "taking the temperature of the people" when I know it's half bots.
So here goes a week without those three sites. I'll be better. There's plenty of websites and blogs to read and Fields of Mistria to play and Outside with Real Friends to see.