Has anybody noticed that organic reach has completely been destroyed on Social Media? At one point in the early days you could post a photo on Facebook or Instagram and it was all the buzz. Now, due to algorithms, you are lucky to have your creative works seen by 20 people. 

The new thing is reels. Both platforms want you to do more video, and that's ok if you feel like doing video, but what if you don't want to do video. 

Well!!!! To bad. It is a must, and its because the platform designers said so. 

I have tried a couple of times to put up a short little post about Facebook on facebook but for whatever reason it does not want to post. I am sure because it does speak to the negatives on both platforms, however it does bear some questions regarding the use of Social platforms. I wanted to know if you as an individual or business could survive if you never had joined or used social media to stay in touch with friends. I mean back in the day that was the whole purpose right. Connect with friends family, and follow things that may interest you. I feel quite confident in saying that 98 percent of the content of what we see in our feeds is add based, and unless you purposely go to a persons page, you will never stay update to date with the content of someone's life, and this is all based on Algorithms. What kills me is the fact that now we have fact checkers who purposely block content of put false information flags on peoples post because it goes against the political agenda. It's called censorship, and it is not legal, not to mention it goes against a persons constitutional rights. Not to mention, we have a ravage of people stealing or copying people's profiles to send spam, scam, or information collecting messages to people who are on your friends list. I myself was a recent victim on such a situation. I received several messages from friends asking me if I was hacked or did in fact send the message. This brings me to a very interesting point. The majority of messages I received were text messages from phone numbers ( not chat apps) from people that I am truly connected with, and not the fake relationships that come from being on a social platform. In fact nothing about social media is really social at all. I like to call this false interaction, KEYBOARD CONVERSATIONS. It poses the questions, could you in fact step away from social media, and not use it. I for one do not log in as much as I used to on either platform, because I just don't care to see the adds. A case in point. A person I knew in real life and was connected to on Facebook recently passed away. I found out about two weeks later and it was only because, a mutual friend posted something and that post showed up in my feed. Being pretty floored by the news, it made the light bulb goes off in my head and say, what face book was to what it has become is simply not what we all signed up for. 

In short, I often ask myself, I wonder if I ran into this person on the street if they would say hello or just walk on by. It also makes you question if this person would even know you if you did run into them. You also have to ask as well, why the fuck am I connected to this person in the first place?

Over the past few years, I have removed so called friends from my social platform, because it made me realize some things. Why would I be connected to someone I went to school with but never really had a friendship with, or was just an asshole to people in general. Hey maybe that person is different now. Well whopta fucking dee. Coming from my world, I learned that a zebra does not change its stripes, so that is always a consideration. 

As this trend in social media continues, I think it bears consideration to at some point to say enough and that is about where I am at. 

DO I need it, No. DO I want to use it, not really. Should I shut it down, I am considering it. 

I wont lie, I have made some pretty cool connections of the coarse of this, and some of these connections I have solid relationships with, One thing is for certain. Anybody that I really care about, I have their phone number and can call at any time. Its also a vice versa thing. In my eyes, that's more social than this entire online world of social media, which should be called advertising media, cause that is in fact what it really is. 

In closing I recently spent some time doing some traveling for work, and during those long rides 12 plus hours in fact I caught up on some podcasts that I subscribe to, and one of the talking points was to ask the opinion of some high profile photographers their thoughts on social media and the direction it was heading. They all agreed that social platforms and the algorithm's in place are not very friendly to photographers. In fact they stated they note that the engagement they see with content they create and share has been reduced to almost nothing. In addition they also state that the only way they can remain relevant is to produce a short video, also known as a reel, to help promote their content. One last point, some photographers do not like to produce video largely in part is because they like to keep their lives private and only share the content they create. They really dont want the world knowing when or what they dine on or what their travel plans are. That is understandable. However, you either embrace the direction or fall in to the social shadows. Like cattle to the slaughter.  I know that those that care about you will stay in touch or reach out from time to time, but those people are what is considered friends, Not facebook friends. Two totally different worlds. 

Please share your thoughts or comments.