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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Oh my god, yes, Ruben! Preach! I was thinking this morning before I got out of bed how much more quickly first drafts of stories and novels materialized before 2020 when my attention span really started to suffer due to covid and all the sheltering in place that led to waaayyy too much screen time. I did leave X the night of the shameful 2024 presidential election.
On the verge. Seriously. I have reclaimed most of my early mornings though. Thanks for this.