I hit my daily tweet limit yesterday. I got the message last night as I was commenting on another author’s thread. I was perplexed, as I am not an excessive tweeter. Far from it. So I looked up what the limit was: 1000 (including retweets).
I then counted how many I did: 5
Yes. Five.
Yeah, probably a glitch.
I’ve never been a fan of social media. From it’s earliest versions, I always thought it as an ego stroking platform, with millions of people competing for positive affirmations. It can be damaging for younger users in their mental and personal development. But it is part of the world now and it’s not going away.
There are countless users playing with the Twitter algorithm, jockeying to get themselves more visibility than the next, and trying to gain followers “Follow me! Follow me!”.
I have connected with some wonderful people on the 3 platforms I am on, and I think I have even sold a few books too. But I’m not playing those other games.
You can tell that from the five tweets I sent yesterday.
-Leon
Leon Stevens is a multi-genre author, composer, guitarist, songwriter, and an artist, with a Bachelor of Music and Education. He published his first book of poetry, Lines by Leon: Poems, Prose, and Pictures in January 2020, followed by a book of original classical guitar compositions, Journeys, and a short story collection of science fiction/post-apocalyptic tales called The Knot at the End of the Rope and Other Short Stories. His newest publications are the novella trilogy, The View from Here, which is a continuation of one of his short stories, and a new collection of poetry titled, A Wonder of Words.
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Lines by Leon 
I hear you on the social media issues. I very reluctantly joined TikTok last summer only to cancel and delete the app several times since then. Same with IG. But you know what I discovered? If I’m very selective in what I choose to follow and with whom I choose to engage with, these apps can be a different dimension on my otherwise word-heavy outputs. It doesn’t always work, choosing selectively, because I am sent other info on my timeline that is “suggested” to me, but that’s ok, I learned not to get hooked unwillingly. It works for me for now. For things like my Etsy store, Instagram is working well because it’s highly visual (mostly photos) and for my tarot readings, I use short TikTok videos because that seems to be where I connect with the types of people I want to connect with. Do I convert them to customers? I have in some cases, yes, but I’m not so active that I could say it definitely works.
Meanwhile I do enjoy the visual side of IG and TT, so for now, I use them to my advantage. But I don’t chase the numbers.
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I hear you. Some people complain about all the negativity and misinformation, but I don’t see that because of who I follow.
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Exactly.
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I retweeted this.
Great PostThanks for a great post
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