Why no social media?

Most artists of any stripe maintain an active presence on social media. This is the way they announce events, provide updates, and show images or videos of their work. But you won’t find me there. Why not?

When I ran a company (Exponential Audio), I was very much present on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on. I also participated in a number of product-oriented forums. It was an absolute necessity to be there. But I grew very uncomfortable with what I saw and what I learned. Frequent incivility should come as no surprise to anyone. Monitoring conversations to keep them on-topic was a big job for my company and removing bots and trolls was an unfortunate part of that.

I also didn’t like my interests and conversations to be shared with advertisers, political groups and malevolent state actors. Running a social media site is certainly costly and users must realize that they’ll pay for the service in some way. But I simply don’t like the way it’s done now. Catching up with friends and family is great, but the price is simply too high.

I hope that—whether through some regulation or the arrival of new media outlets—I’ll again be able to participate in the better parts of social media. I would pay for a service that didn’t sell me as the product. But that’s not what we have right now. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

I’m glad you’ve found my little website and I do hope you’ll share it with others. Reach out to me on my contact page if you like. Word of mouth is always the best way to do anything. Thank you.