The Essay

I killed my X.

It was harder than I thought. (And I promise I’ll do my best to move on to other topics beyond deleting our social media accounts … maybe.)

You hold out some hope that there is utility to a certain platform. That you want to be “discovered” or “findable.” That you need it to be discovered and findable. That you need it to promote stuff or celebrate stuff. But the data stared me right in the face.

I’d put out a tweet with a link in it and it would get 29 impressions from 1,700 followers. What would happen if I became a paying member of the blue-checkmark family? I wasn’t about to find out. X’s algorithm is like, “Well, you can use it for free, but you’ll be invisible. Or … you can pay us and be visible.”

(As an aside, I wrote this essay three weeks ago before X took an even bigger nosedive.)

Um, no thanks.

Tweets weren’t that visible before, but it was far better. Elon Musk rigged the system and changed the rules. That’s the lesson: If you rely too much on a platform and put all your time into it, you’re at the mercy of an egomaniacal billionaire. He has more in common with a Bond villain than Bond himself. And the thing with villains is they don’t see themselves as villains.

But deleting Twitter/X was difficult. I slayed @BrendanOMeara a few months ago and took out @CNFPod on Oct. 1. There’s a strange sense of loss attached to it. Morally, it felt right. I felt mildly lighter. I didn’t feel great. I thought it would feel great. I imagine it will. I still felt the compulsion to check Twitter to see if I got a DM (rare) or to see if someone mentioned the podcast (also rare) so I could give them a shoutout and a thank you.

There’s a phantom limb, a phantom pain now that it’s gone. My only social media footprint is Instagram and Threads (and Facebook for reporting. Facebook is amazing when you traffic in finding Boomers. I don’t post to FB.).

The question becomes: Am I shooting myself in the promotional foot by deleting these accounts? On the surface, yes, but when you look at the data, no. It didn’t matter. It was dropping a pebble into a well. OK, sure, now I’m harder to find, in theory. I have my website, so if you google my name, that pops right up. So does the podcast. Thankfully podcasts aren’t platformed like social media. It still relies on permission. When a new episode publishes, you see it atop your feed. No algorithms. Just the stuff you signed up for.

But with the podcast and a book coming out, was it a dumb idea? Again, I don’t think so. Maybe I’ll miss some book recommendations for the podcast, but I get slammed by book publicists and eager authors every day, so I have no shortage of books or guests. And, I have to believe, that things will come my way in other forms. If I’m meant to find it, it’ll find me. I’ll lean on the recommendations and newsletters of people I like.

As I’ve long maintained, social media is largely meaningless, but we’ve been duped into thinking it’s vital. Hell, agents and publishers still lean on those “follower” metrics and I hope they’re getting away from that.

I haven’t noticed a fall off in podcast attention since deleting X. Perhaps someone out there shared it with their network. If so, great!

As I got ready to delete X, I’d scroll and witness the desperate pleas of people seeking attention (Shit, I’m seeing it like gangbusters on Threads now. It’s kinda sad. I see the 2012-2013 version of myself in many writers on Threads.). CTAs all over the place with barely a like or a retweet. Imagine trying to play by the old rules when they changed the game on you … but they didn’t tell you the whole picture.

I no longer wanted to be complicit in that ecosystem any longer. I’m complicit in another … for now. It’s one little toe hold and it’s likely I and the show will largely be invisible on IG and Threads as well. At least the garden I tend in Instagram feels a bit more savory, but my real jam is this newsletter and the podcast.

Permission assets all the way down.

As you know, this Rager starts here and goes up to 11!

The Books

1. The Battle of Ink and Ice: A Sensational Story of News Barons, North Pole Explorers, and the Making of Modern Media (Viking) by Darrell Hartman

2. The Little Book of Big Dreams: True Stories about People Who Followed a Spark (She Writes Press) by Isa Adney

3. Legacy on Ice: Blake Geoffrion and the Fastest Game on Earth (University of Wisconsin Press) by Sam Jeffries. I helped Sam with this book and I’m super happy for him to see it come out. Sam did the work, man. He’s got a day job, a family, and he found the time to report and write the hell out of this book.

4. 60 Songs That Explain the 90s (Twelve) by Rob Harvilla. This is the “souvenir” book from his hit podcast of the same name. I went to middle school and high school in the 90s decade, so Rob’s work speaks to me. New pod TK. You might want to check our first rodeo about the stealth memoir of it all.

The Other Stuff

5. The Simple (But Not Easy) 3-Step Way to Build a Platform without Social Media. 

6. This list by Ann Patchett doesn’t go up to 11 … it goes up to 10. We don’t hate her for that. After all, only one newsletter truly goes up to 11. Give it up for WordPerfect!

7. My list of peeves is growing, but perhaps it’s the fetishization of morning routines that gets my goat the most these days. Maybe it’s because I used to be SO into other people’s routines because I, like many, was in search of answers to assuage my frustration. Maybe if I do what so and so does, then I’ll be a success! Ursula K. Le Guin’s son wrote, “She felt that too much focus on process was distracting aspiring writers, and that her answers might sustain the distraction.” Boom. Honestly, waking up in the morning is my routine. Getting out of bed is a win. The rest is gravy.

8. Marty Friedman, a former guitarist for Megadeth (some say he has one of the greatest metal guitar solos of all time on “Tornado of Souls,” 3:10-4:10 mark), said in this great interview on the Sweetwater YouTube channel, “Finding Your Own Creative Voice,” said, “That’s the way to have an identity. It’s one thing to practice, and practice, obviously, is extremely important. But at the same time, thinking on your own, ‘Why am I doing this? What am I making music for? What do I have to say? What do I wanna say? What is my expression gonna be?” There’s a lesson there for the writer.

9. This story on Stephanie Land (author of Maid) breaks down what book advances look like (I might break down mine, too, just so you can see). Things aren’t as lucrative for “big time” authors as you think.

10. Thought this to be an insight interview with the filmmaker Christopher Nolan, especially the attention he puts on endings, and how if he has an Act-3 problem, it likely has more to do with foundation work in Acts 1 and/or 2. 

11. How Do I Speed Up My Writing? (You might need to set up a free account with The Chronicle for Higher Education to read this. I did.)

Support the podcast

If you have a few bucks to spare, Patreon is where it’s at. I’ve started a series of “threads” that start with a little video by me then prompting you to talk amongst yourselves. Any tier! Patreon.com/cnfpod

Free ways to support the show? Kind reviews on Apple Podcasts help validate the show for the wayward CNFer.

And, as always, linking up to the show and sharing it with your writer pals is the best way to keep it alive, relevant, and gives it the best shot at growing a bit.

Thanks for reading, CNFers.

Stay wild,

b.r.o.