The last Christmassy thing I drew this festive season, right at the end. Not a lot to be festive about now is there. These little holly berries are another Jellycat thing, we have a few of those now. Sometimes, little things with smiles on them can cheer you up. The internet isn’t going to do that, social media isn’t. Social media. This phase of human history has been a bit of a social experiment, hasn’t it, and maybe it’s time to evolve again. I stopped posting to Facebook a long time ago, except when making Let’s Draw Davis events (which I haven’t organized since October, I have become a bit shy on that front). I stopped posting to Twitter (‘X’ is a stupid stupid name) due to the increasingly awful richest man in the world owner; a shame, as it used to be quite good. I’m still using Instagram despite the terrible shift in the owner, mostly because on the whole it’s been a good place, but I’m stopping using Threads because rather than being a ‘nice’ version of Twitter, for me it’s become an exhausting app full of posts I really don’t want to see but are which are designed to just draw you in and exhaust and frustrate you, and not even from people I follow. Threads might be my least favourite of all, I’ve decided. Look, if anyone follows me on there, all I do is complain/cheer about Tottenham, I don’t really post my sketching stuff there. I don’t interact with people, I follow accounts about sketching or football or history, and I don’t look for engagement either. Yet because the app defaults not to the ‘following’ list but the dreaded ‘For You’ list, I get pulled by gravity into looking at posts either complaining about the afore-unmentioned billionaire and whatever stupid crap the other one who shall not be named has said or done today, or it’s really mind-numbing engagement posts that for some reason the algorithm has decided I should see, such as “I don’t understand, why do the British have a different accent from me?” or “Can someone explain, why do the British eat baked beans, what are they?” or “Can someone explain, what is the difference between Britain and Ireland?” followed by frankly hundreds of stupid responses either actually explaining it or having a go at them for asking it. For a while most of the posts that showed up for me were along the lines of “Hey! I’m new to English Pre-Meer League, what team should I support?” as if they actually want a real answer. But of course they don’t. All of it, or at least 99% of this all, is just bait, we live in a world of endless click bait. And we all know who the master baiters are. Now even my phone is at it, I have been getting a lot of texts lately from spammers and scammers, I delete and report every one but it’s like Space Invaders, they keep coming. But Threads, sorry, it ain’t working out between us. I always preferred being petescully to ‘pwscully’ (that was always going to be my novelist name, but I couldn’t think of any good stories). So, I’m doing the latest New Twitter Replacement, Bluesky, which does seem nicer and easier to use without getting so much of the distracting noise (ironically, just like how Twitter worked for me, before every other post became an ad for whichever right-wing SuperPac paid whats-his-face the most money). I am ‘petescully‘ again at Bluesky, and sure half of my posts will be drawing related, half will be me moaning about Spurs, and the other half will be… until I’m bored of that. It’s almost exciting, like back when we were all doing MySpace and LiveJournal and something new would come along. To be honest, I’ve never been interested in big followings like some sketchers get, or being part of any global conversation, or even engaging in debates with people online who I do not know. I am one of those who just likes yelling at the void. I just like to draw, and look at the world and draw, and then ramble about whatever in this place, the good old sketchblog. This predates all the social medias that have caused so much of a headache, and a lot of people gave this sort of thing up for the instant expansion all that short-attention-span social media offered. I’m still here. I hope you like the berries.
petescully 
I do like the berries. I had forgotten about Jellycat until you mentioned it in a previous post. My youngest siblings (much younger than I am) went through a big Jellycat phase in the 1990s. I always liked the designs so I am glad to learn they are still popular and still creating.
I have only every had Facebook and Instagram as far as social media goes. I gave some thought to leaving both but the former is useful for keeping informed about what is going on in the lives of my far-flung family and friends and the latter I have successfully trained to (mostly) just fill my feed with art and creativity and feel-good stuff so it still feels like a positive place to connect with other artists. I am, however, being conscientious about reducing my engagement still further and being especially vigilant about not doing anything that contributes to revenue. That is my compromise for now. I too, however, have created a Bluesky account just in case I rage quit Meta platforms altogether. I don’t know how active I will be there since tweet-style isn’t really my bag.
It is a tricky thing, I’ve enjoyed the community building aspects of social media, but in the end, it feels like it’s all burning. Something better usually arises. When I look at Facebook the algorithm shows me nothing of my family or friends, except the odd one who might repost something bleak, the feed is all garbage, I mostly just use it for Messenger now. Instagram is mostly ok except every other post is an advert for guitars, just because I looked at the Guitar Center once (ok more than once). I just like my blog, and my Flickr, it makes me feel like I’m old-school, like one of those people who never stopped playing vinyl or still uses a film camera.
I like the berries too. I had a sketchblog once upon a time, perhaps it’s time to resurrect it