ANTI-SOCIAL?

I’m beginning to wonder if blogging is starting to fade away. 

Very few people seem to say ‘I’ve written this, follow this link to my blog’ any more, when I scroll through Facebook or Twitter in a free moment. I don’t do this very much either, just now – perhaps my latest faux-pas is managing to cancel my own attempts to write. 

Writing my blog was, for a very long time, my outlet. I wrote, therefore I was. It happened, therefore I wrote about it. I had some pieces published a little bit more widely, others were just on my private blog which only a few people bothered to read. I enjoyed it; it was a challenge; it was a way of reflecting on everything going on in my own life and beyond. 

Lockdown seems to have locked away my words. And that’s quite odd, because the Covid crisis has enriched our vocabularies so much: social distancing, maskne, covidiot, ‘stop the spread’ – the words and phrases associated with this pandemic are just as pervasive as the endless use of hand sanitiser. There’s the rebellion, too, often expressing itself verbally, whether it’s the dismissive theory of the ‘plandemic’ or the lyrically questionable protest songs written by Van Morrison. And yet I don’t want to write about any of it. It’s as if I’m masked. Muffled. Silenced. 

Instead, I’ve been posting photos from my regular or occasional walks on my various social media pages. The same but different; the same walk in different lights, weathers, at different times of day. As September darkens and the weather forecasts grow less promising, I’m going to stop that too. I’ve been questioning, these last few days, why anyone would ever want to see what I’ve seen on my walk. And I’ve been thinking about why I’m posting it: am I really so insecure that accruing ‘likes’ for my seascape or sunset photos makes me feel better about myself? I hope not, but social media is a seductive trap that can entice us all at a weak moment. 

And I’ve seen the darker side of social media too. Throughout the lockdown months, I saw continual, relentless teacher-bashing, especially on Twitter and in the nastier end of the national press. Teachers were lazy. Selfish. Cowardly. Pathetic. Somehow the Centre Assessed Grades debacle was all our fault – because we were simultaneously too generous to some of our students, and too mean to all the rest. The algorithms of our own twisted, inept, unprofessional brains somehow dealt a wrongly-judged result to every pupil in the land. Now that schools have been open again for almost a month (longer here in Northern Ireland and longer still in Scotland), it’s a new term for the teacher-bashers too. We are spreading Covid-19, allegedly, by teaching all week and partying all weekend; we’re powerpoint-reliant automatons; we’re weak and lazy and cowardly once again, and the teaching Unions, the only thing worse than teachers themselves, are gearing up to enforce another closure. 

I’m loving being back in school. I missed the buzz of the classroom and, even though I’m very anxious about the Covid risk, I’d rather be in school, teaching for real, than sitting at a computer, staring at the screen until I can hardly see, and typing until my hands turn into claws, as happened from mid-March until late June. It’s exhausting, though, and I do wonder what secret to eternal energy the alleged majority of teachers have, who are partying all weekend. So far, it’s been as much as I can do to stay up until my bedtime. 

Over the years, including recently, I’ve experienced the microscopic cruelties of social media on a more personal level too. The person who ends a lifelong friendship over a political disagreement – cancel culture in the full glare of your public timeline. The tiny, triumphant chorus when you’re slower on the draw than someone else with an attempted witty riposte (including evidence, time-stamped), because clearly the ‘great minds think alike’ concept is not allowed. The withholding of likes and the grandstanding of better photographs, better social lives, better everything. Filtered takes on reality which still needle, even though you know that filtered take means fake. 

As a friend at work would say: I’m done. So done. 

There are rumours, this weekend, of a two-week ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown sometime fairly soon, to attempt to slow the Covid-19 second wave. Perhaps that’s what I’ll do with my use of social media. Lock it down for a while. Break the circuit. Slow the spread into my thoughts. Wrap myself in a protective cloak of privacy as the nights draw in.

So, if you notice that my posts don’t appear on your timeline any more, and if you miss my photos or my mistimed, inauspicious ironies: I’m sorry. I’m sure that, like the Terminator, I’ll be back. But just for now, I think I need a break. 

If you need me, I’ll probably be reading.