Not having social media

I have no social media to advertise my stock photography.  No Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter.  They’re all pretty useless as far as I’m concerned.  They’re all full of fake news, frauds, con artists etc.  Facebook pretty much spies on you 24/7 and sells your data to pretty much everyone.  Google is censoring everyone who they disagree with.  If you have wrong thought, you are pretty much banned and making any money on their platform.  I come from a communist country and this is exactly how the communists acted.  Put everyone who disagreed with them in reeducation camps or goulash.  Patrion, PayPal are pretty much the same.  All of these California type oligarchy, communist, crony capitalist are all the same.  You and I are just peons in their little game.

No social media

So I basically shuttered all my social media accounts a few months back.  Not that I was ever on Instagram, Twitter for long.  I was on Facebook for a long time but about two months ago, I closed my Facebook account for good.  Of all the “friends” I had on there, only two noticed.  Only two besides my girlfriend and her sister.  No one else noticed except for a photography friend and one guy that I worked with and remained friends with since 2014.  But people I’ve known since high school and college did not notice.  I don’t think any of them cared.  We didn’t talk daily, weekly or even once a month.  A few I’d talk to maybe a few times every couple of months but other than that.  No phone calls, no texts, no emails.

I’ve also noticed that since I’ve shuttered my Facebook account, I’m getting less and less job offers for photography and my full time IT job.  My day job as a matter of fact.  The red tape in government now, especially in Canada is amazingly bad.  A decision that could take half an hour now takes weeks, if not months.  As an example, I was notified a month ago that a company submitted my resume for a position that I’m extremely capable of doing.  My resume has wast on someones desk in Procurement for a month now.  The company cannot get a hold of the person in procurement for a status update.  Apparently my resume has been under review for that month.  Now, my resume is about 4 pages long.  I can read 4 pages in a few minutes.  This should take about 10-15 minutes for review.  Maybe half an hour to an hour max.  But four plus weeks.  I tell you, when people tell you government is inept, believe them.  Ninety five percent of the people working for government do not live in the real world where results matter.  When I have a client, I communicate daily with them.  If I run into any trouble, I let them know and most people understand.  Governments are just inept and they will fall under their own crushing weight and mismanagement.  

No Social Media

I finally shut off my Facebook account today.  Instagram and Twitter were completely useless as far as marketing my services go.  Never ever made money with social media.  All I got was trolls and spam email and requests to send money to someone in Nigeria.  

Those platforms never really did work as I only upload my photography and footage to sites like Shutterstock, Pond5 and Videoblocks.  I've recently started to blog in the hopes people find my photos and footage appealing.  I think it also helps people to know me a little better.  

Facebook and Twitter for me were very polarizing.  Especially over the past decade or so with what's come out about Facebook and Twitter, with what they've being doing and trying to do in recent elections.  There is a lot of fake news and a lot of propaganda which is dividing people against each other which does not help.  I don't want my blog to be about politics, censorship or anything of that nature.  I want my followers to be constructive when criticizing my photographs or videos.  Don't make hateful or offensive comments.  It does not add to the discussion but rather detracts.  I am open to ideas.  Good and bad.  I am willing to help and learn.  I want to teach what I know.  I want to learn from other people.

I find social media makes people very anti-social.  Smart phones are making people not so smart.  Growing up, we did our own research.  We did not have Google.  We actually read books.  That's where we learned from.  Now you can find everything on Google or YouTube.  Well almost everything.  I hope that people actually use less and less social media.  I hope people instead go for walks and drives out into the country.  Take their cameras and camcorders with them.  You actually have a device that fits in your pocket that does both.  Actually talk to each other.  More importantly listen to one another.