Delete Yourself

And so, I did.

Today is day 140 since I deleted my social media accounts. I left Twitter last year and Instagram on January 1st. My attention span had deteriorated over the past few years, and I wanted my time back. Being unable to focus or complete a single task within a reasonable timeframe meant simple chores were taking me almost twice as long to finish. I have consulted a medical professional to address my needs. Do not be concerned, Reader.

That first morning of 2026 began by deleting Facebook, Instagram, and then LinkedIn. I didn’t have any other platforms on my phone for the past year, and I couldn’t remember or care to check for others. I worried that I’d lose contact with many people—and I have. Yet, it was those very people and their stories that compelled me to use social media in the first place.

In the late 1990s, I spent a lot of time chatting and messaging on AOL and ICQ. In the early days of Gay.com and Manhunt, I was a social media native. But constant access to the internet didn’t truly take over until at least 2008. Before then, I spent more time reading than interacting, following blogs like Wonkette, Gothamist, Gawker, io9, and the projects that grew from them. Living in Hollywood, I randomly blogged about flying across the country to meet a boy I’d chatted with for six months, or about the time I drove five hours nonstop to Las Vegas, only to wreck my car and spend the next two weeks crashing with another boy who had been my penpal for a year.

Toward the end of my time in Hollywood—the best place to live in your 20s—I wrote about being a patron at Cherry, one of the most electrifying dance clubs of the 1990s in Los Angeles. I lived on Wilcox at Franklin, right off the 101. I shared a duplex apartment with an old high school friend who always went by her full name in our circle of friends. We lived together on and off for many years until I finally moved to Pasadena to work full-time.

Living in Hollywood was grand. My bedroom had two large walk-in closets on either end, and the room itself was big enough to split in two; I created a small living space with a couch, TV, and stereo on a colorful rug. If that couch could talk! This is not a JD reference.

One of those closets became my office, the very space where I first became engrossed by bloggers and early social interactions.

Then in 2002, Friendster launched. It was downhill from there.

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