Two Years. No Likes. Any Regrets?
I quit social media exactly 2 years ago today. I wanted to take a moment to have an honest conversation with myself and share with you what that changed for me, and what (if anything) I miss, what it did to my journey as a photographer and whether I regret it.
Did it change me?
In short, Yes - and here is how: I found the kind of peace and inner calm that I knew I was yearning for. I used to constantly stress and worry about what I was not doing, how many (or few) likes my photos got and how much better everyone else was doing. Instead of being on a journey of inner discovery, of listening to my inner creative voice, of finding my own visions, my head was filled with a million impressions of other people’s expressions.
I also found it hard to truly enjoy those special moments, trips I took and locations I discovered, because I was always busy creating some content for Instagram at the same time. It’s like my mind was always also in this “other place” where I needed to show everyone else what I was seeing and experiencing.
For what though?
Honestly I think I was caught in the rat-race for external validation.
Since quitting social media, I now have much more vivid and visceral memories of places I have been to, experiences I have had and trips I have taken because I was present in my senses to experience them. Sure, I always carry my camera with me, but taking photos heightens my sense of seeing instead of distracting from it by being concerned with sharing my experiences with the world.
I feel so much more content with my life because I am not constantly reminded of how much more successful, handsome, rich and happy everyone else apparently is. Instead of encouraging you to ask yourself what success looks like for you individually, it provides constant generic envy of whatever someone else has decided your ideal life should look like. With that removed, I decide what my ideal life looks like, what makes me happy and what success looks like for me.
It turns out, envy and FOMO are just noise, drowning the voice inside you
that is trying to tell you what your happiness look like.
What do I miss?
Honestly: F**k all! Nothing. Nada. Not even a little bit. It added nothing to my life, whilst robbing me of hours and hours of my precious time.
I was worried I would lose inspiration and ideas from other photographers but what I realised is that this constant influx of other people’s styles and ideas and “this is why your photos suck” kinda content just paralysed my inner creativity and created a constant state of “not enoughness” and was just in the way of finding my own creative voice and my own viewpoint.
I also realised that, looking back at my favourite images now, those were of moments when I saw something through my own eyes, something maybe only I saw, not when I was emulating others.
Did it affect my photography?
Everything changed for me when I started slowing down and started looking inward, started listening to my inner voice. This started to happen organically soon after quitting social media. Not having that immediate gratification of posting photos on social media also forced me to look at other ways of enjoying and sharing my work in more meaningful ways.
This in turn brought me to think about some long-terms photographic projects I am now working on which I will look to share as collections here on my website and in analog ways such as print, book, magazine etc. These may take years to produce and collate and I may scrap some along the way and other ideas will pop up, but this is why I am doing this - for the journey and the process. I love photography for the process and the creative journey itself as much as the result of printing a photo and looking at it.
I realised that this way of working towards collections that tell a long-term story
gives me much more meaning for my work instead of “chasing bangers”.
Do I regret it?
Absolutely definitely, positively not! I can honestly say that I cannot see a world where I will use social media again. First and foremost because it’s not social. I believe social media is a race to the bottom, because it’s a race for attention instead of connection, for likes instead of trust, for emulation instead of creativity. Most of all, it’s so much noise in a world that’s already noisy enough. Today, when I see someone standing at a beautiful spot and instead of being present and seeing, they reach for their phone in order to be seen,