I'm leaving social networks

Published by Suisei at 02/09/2019 à 15h45

Hi everyone!

I'm posting this news to let you know that I'm leaving social networks.
I've been thinking about it for months and using them less and less. Today, I am making it official.

Ten years ago, I liked to share on the Internet. I had my own little blog that I could customize at will (it still exists) and that was all. No dispersion. There were some interactions with my family and friends from time to time. It was a pleasure. We were taking our time.

Today it has become a chore. We have to chase after 50 different platforms, all more saturated than the others, not customizable and that decide for people what they want to see. We are submerged with more and more content. And to be visible, we are exhausted producing and posting more and more content that is less and less seen and with fewer and fewer interactions.

The Internet at the beginning of the 2020s: everyone posts but nobody sees anything. A dialogue of the deaf.

I may have bent over backwards to succeed in automating the publication of my news on social networks using the tools they make available to developers, it still remains a black hole of time and energy. We can't leave all this alone. It requires some maintenance.
Twitter, Tumblr and Blogger are ok, their development tools work well. It's been running for two years without me having to do anything. Just check from time to time if there are any comments or not. DeviantArt worked well for 2 years, but they've broken everything recently with their new version. I have to develop it all over again and I don't have time for that. The prize for the most of troubles goes to Facebook, which is a headache black hole.
Facebook's tools change all the time, it's often buggy and unstable and you always have to check if their service has worked well or not. You must constantly monitor to find out what is working or not, what has changed in terms of format, and undergo the removal of features that were very useful.
Out of development tools, we are still more and more users to find that the basic features that made the platform successful are more and more buggy and that instead of repair them, Facebook's developpers are scattered on unnecessary gadgets that will be overused for 3 months and then forgotten.
Their new 3D effect is nice, but I would like to be able to share a publication on my wall without systematically seeing it land on one of my pages instead or see an error popup...
And then this slowness.... It's getting slower and slower to load. I feel like I have a rural connection while I am connected to the fibre optic in the middle of a big city. -_-

In addition, their policy is increasingly hidding artist pages. Now we have to pay for our subscribers to see what we post. We are talking about subscribers, not just any stranger who might go through that. Facebook talks about refocusing on more family use, which says a lot about the relevance of this platform to share your art. Add to that the saturation of content.
Let's not even talk about Instagram which is completely corrupted with bots and fake accounts. That's also painful.

Facebook aside, on other platforms there is always a small feature here and there that is not available to automate. So there's always a little something to do by hand.

In short, there are hundreds of hours of work to take care of your communication on social networks to have the impression of screaming in a cushion. I don't see a sign of evolution, on the contrary, I see a decrease in interaction. In the end, it's no use.

This time and energy, I would like to devote them to focusing on my comics and other creations instead of giving me headaches with social networks. My morale and creativity will be much better, not to mention my productivity. After all, today almost all of my audience is made up of people I have met IRL and with whom I can maintain private contact. So in the end, it's not a big loss for me.

So I decided to move away from all this to refocus and devote my time to what I like to do: comics and games. It will make me more productive.

My automated systems for publishing my news, illustrations and comic pages will continue to run on their own, but I will hardly ever set foot in them again myself. I will no longer maintain them. And the day when some change causes these automatons to stop working, well, it won't work anymore. And it won't matter.

From now on, when I write programs, it will only be to add content to my website or to develop games.

How do we contact you and follow your news then?

To begin, I would like to remind you that there was an Internet before social networks and that people were able to contact eachother.
Good news!
This Internet still exists! :D

To follow the news of my comics or games, there is always my website and its newsletter or my Discord server or even Tipeee and Patreon and my Ulule projects. My old blog is also still running. To contact me there is the contact form of my website and Discord too.

Here is the list of addresses to remember:

My website : https://www.suiseipark.com (Come on, the content loads faster than Facebook! 8D )
My newsletter : https://www.suiseipark.com/Newsletter/
My blog (French) : http://suiseipark.blogspot.com
Tipeee (French) : https://fr.tipeee.com/suisei
Patreon : https://www.patreon.com/suisei

My youtube channel with my process videos or game demos : https://youtube.com/channel/UCa5PWLnqA3g6dzg29cr2LpQ
My Twitch channel for when I'm in the mood to work live : https://www.twitch.tv/suiseikillfaeh

If you read this news from my Facebook page, please note that a link to my website is available on the page.

Now, with all these links, the one who can't contact me or follow my news is someone who doesn't want to. :p (You have the right, but don't say you're fans. Be honest. It's all I want. ;) )

About my artist friends, I will no longer share their work via Facebook, but directly on suiseipark.com. It is the opportunity to write more consistent articles about their work. :p

In fact, all these trendy social networking platforms do not stand the test of time, because they change according to their success, impose more or less restrictive rules on you and finally grow and fade with the times.
So I think that in the long term, you don't just have to be present on these things, you have to have a little corner of your own web that stands the test of time. At least a blog, at best your own website with your own domain name. There are lots of tools to help you if you don't master the technical aspect. If you are only present on trendy platforms, you are like an idiot if this one falls apart while if you have a website, there will always be someone to find you in the storm.

Trendy platforms are a rough sea where it is difficult to navigate and find your way around, your website is your little rock to keep you safe.

On this little metaphor I am going to make all these links to social networks disappear on my website, my pages and my business cards and I will take the time to look after my little home that is suiseipark.com. :p

Have a nice day and see you soon!

Suisei

PS: I invite all friends to put their links to their websites, blogs and newsletters in the comments so that I can follow their work elsewhere than on social networks. And if you don't have one, create one! :p

Categories : News and chitchat,

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