Toxic Twitter

On February 17, 2023 By Mick CanningIn comment, opinion, social media, toxicity, Twitter35 Comments

Twitter can be an absolutely toxic place. Obviously there are plenty of other social media platforms and I’m sure they can be equally toxic. It’s Twitter I’m currently on, though.

Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

It seems to be a continuation of ‘If you don’t agree with me then I will hate you.’ No, it seems more like ‘If you don’t parrot my views exactly, then I will destroy you with vitriol!’ There are apparently countless people whose time seems to be spent searching for posts or comments they can disagree with, and then piling in on them with as much vile rhetoric as they can. And, by coincidence, as I was writing this post, I replied to a vaguely related post elsewhere: ‘I think this is part of the issue around all social media, concerning the perceptions of the person behind the keyboard. We’ve all seen ghastly stuff people will post on twitter or other platforms that they would probably never say in real life, just because it feels as if they can rant into an empty space with no come-back. I post some personal stuff, although not very personal, but before posting anything (or, indeed, tweeting) I find it helps to stop and think ‘would I say this if I was standing on a stage addressing a thousand people in an audience?’ Because that, in essence, is what you’re doing.’ This was written in response to a post about sharing personal information, but it applies equally to posting one’s opinions online.

One inevitable result of this has been to leave me less sympathetic to their cause or point of view, even if it is one I support myself. And I would imagine it has a similar effect on quite a few other people. It also leaves me less inclined to engage with anyone on Twitter, since more and more I anticipate an angry response to something innocuous I’ve put up. I’ve noticed that over the last few months I’ve hardly posted anything on there, and equally rarely commented on others’ tweets. It also made me question my presence on here, although there was never any real chance of my leaving.

And at the moment, I can’t really see that changing. I’m in one of my occasional ‘shall I just leave Twitter altogether?’ moods, although I don’t suppose I will. There are a few (not many, to be honest) people on there I really want to keep up with, and it has been a good source of information about new (to me) books and music.

But I do feel I’m keeping it at arm’s length more and more these days.

Antisocial Media

On September 17, 2022 By Mick CanningIn social media, writing50 Comments

I’m sure I cannot be alone in being unable to decide what I want my relationship with social media to be. One minute I determine I want as little to do with it as possible, then the next I’m commenting on Twitter posts and posting my own. It seems I simply cannot make up my own mind. I list all the positives – getting my work ‘out there’, networking, discovering interesting posts, finding new music and books, then list all the negatives – spending far too much time on there, getting distracted by stuff that doesn’t really interest me or, worse still, makes me cross and encourages me to engage negatively, and determine that yes, I’m going to limit my engagement with said social media to certain times, or types of interactions, but all too quickly I’m wasting hours on there.

So I then determine to have a break from it. Much easier, as it happens, and I enjoy having days when I don’t even open the computer. But sooner or later, for one reason or another, I’m back on there again.

In many ways, I would like to completely withdraw from it, but worry I would lose contact with many people I want to stay in touch with. Because this is the way things work now, I wouldn’t get to learn of so much new writing or music. I’d miss articles I very much want to read. In the past, I’ve written about my books and made sales that way, and should I ever get my act together enough to finish one of my current projects, would like to do so again.

But to many problems, of course, there is no perfect solution. I know I need more willpower, but even so I can never quite make up my mind exactly what I want out of social media. On different days I probably want different things, since on different days different sides of my personality come to the fore. One day I’m reading through my feed looking for posts on standing stones and myths, on another I’m looking at poetry magazines or music. Like all of us, perhaps, to a degree.

I’m not expecting anyone to come up with an answer to this, but if you also find it difficult to strike a balance between endless online trawling and complete cold turkey, just know that you are not alone!

It’s Difficult…

On July 13, 2022 By Mick CanningIn poetry, Work in progress, writing32 Comments

Bits of poems keep coming to me at the moment, but only in the form of phrases or the odd line. And nothing that relates to other poems I might be working on. Then when I attempt to tease them out further, the muse just disappears.

I think I’ve finished with A Good Place (the novel I’ve been working on for the last four years). That’s ‘finished with’ as opposed to ‘finished’. It’s just not a story I feel compelled to tell and on the basis of if you have nothing to say, then say nothing, I see no point in continuing with it for now. Anything I do feel I want to say at present can probably best be said in the form of poetry.

Even if I’m having trouble writing them at the moment.

There is a popular post that crops up on social media, invariably a variation on a photograph of a log cabin somewhere in a wilderness, with a caption along the lines of No TV, no internet, but plenty of books and all the food and drink you need. Could you live here for a month for $10,000? to which most people seem to reply Definitely! or Bring it on! or somesuch.

Leaving aside the interesting point that so many people say they would welcome that situation, it is certainly something that speaks strongly to me. Well, more than ‘speaks strongly’ – it jumps up and down waving its arms in the air and shouting ‘Oi! Look at me! Over here!’ Nothing seems to hold my interest at the present; I just feel I want to disappear into the wilderness and walk and walk and walk.

Maybe I’ll come across my muse there.

It’s the incessant noise as much as anything. Traffic. Aircraft. People talking or shouting into mobile phones in the quiet of the woods. Chainsaws, drills, and hammering. Unless you’re in the middle of Dartmoor or the Cairngorms, there’s no escape. And no guarantee of it even there.

It’s Been A While

On July 28, 2020 By Mick CanningIn blogging47 Comments

A few weeks, anyway. Over the years, most of you have probably got used to me just disappearing every now and again. There comes a point where everything seems to get too much for me and even reading and commenting on posts becomes too difficult and challenging. I ignore social media except to check occasionally to see if I have any notifications, and whether these can just be ignored. As for writing a blog post, my mind just goes blank.

No snidey comments, please…

But I have been reading – reading voraciously, book after book, for a week or two. Comfort reading, for the most part. Books I know I enjoy and which are not too demanding of the reader. In between times I have made good progress with my novel A Good Place, so I’ve not just been feeling sorry for myself, staring morosely into space, and eating too much.

I’ve done that a bit, though.

I’ve even managed, finally, to take my first visit to the South Downs since the pandemic began. I took a bus down to the East Sussex town of Lewes, and from there spent a few hours walking a big loop up onto the Downs, along the top for a few miles, then back to Lewes. It felt as good as a holiday.

I’ve written a couple of new blog posts, too, at long last. Well, it’s a bit of a cheat, really – they’re actually a couple of extracts from a travel essay I’ve been writing. I’ll put the first one up in a day or two. But I still feel I need a lot of space to switch off and think, so I apologise now if I don’t do a great deal of visiting other blogs.

If I do visit, of course, I’ll be socially distanced and masked up, so you might not even notice me there.

A Re-vamp

On January 19, 2020 By Mick CanningIn blogging, break, writing

I’ve had a bit of a tidy up on here, the better to reflect where I am at the moment. Don’t worry, it’s quite safe to come in! I won’t ask you to grab a broom or a dishcloth or anything like that, although if you’re any good at writing advertising blurb, I’ve a couple of books here that could do with some professional input!

I’ve updated the My Writings and About pages, and added a page for My Published Books.

You may also notice I’ve tidied up the sidebar a little.

This has nothing to do with spring cleaning or new year’s resolutions, it’s more about attempting to present a reasonably professional impression to any new visitors to the site, as well as to my regular follower, of course.

And now I’m going to take a bit of a break from all social media for a little while. Hence I’m turning comments off for this post.

Storm Light

On December 18, 2019 By Mick CanningIn blogging, poetry, writing32 Comments

It’s time for me to take another of my breaks from Social Media. For my sanity, as much as anything else. I’ll leave the comments open, and promise to answer anyone who leaves a comment, sooner or later.

I will not be idle! I have some work to do on this site, as well as a lot of writing to catch up on, but I need to find a bit of time for life in general, too.

I’ll leave you with this poem.

Snapshot.

Thin, wind-threaded branches:

Spilled black ink against storm light

Rook-song echoes from cold rocks

Patches of rain-lain foot-snaring nettles

In wind-rolled grass

My luck,

Emerging from the holloway just then,

From beneath wind-whipped trees

Into involuntarily sucked breath of

Wind-ecstasy.

My luck.

If you liked this poem, you may like the poems in my new collection The Night Bus, available here.

Blogging vs Other Social Media

On September 26, 2019 By Mick CanningIn blogging, Facebook, Goodreads, LinkedIn, social media, Twitter47 Comments

It’s a fight to the death!

Well, okay, not quite that, but bear with me for a bit longer.

The other week I gave a short talk to my writing group on reasons a writer should be on social media and, more importantly, why they needed a blog. I’m not going to go into this in any detail now, but I promised I’d summarise what I said in bullet points, and then thought it might be worth putting up here to see if anyone felt like adding anything to it.

So…

Why?

As a writer, you need to have a social media presence to sell books, to get known. Even if you are a published author.
On a social media platform, you are aiming to get shares for your posts. The more shares, the more people will see them.
It’s all about engaging with customers, fans and critics.
There are a huge number of platforms, but just a few examples that I have experience of:
Facebook is the biggest, and the most active, with a high rate of engagement. Having an Author Page is a good way to engage through backstories, questions, surveys and daily updates (yours or your work), ‘Behind the scenes’ articles.
Linkedin has many users, but a low rate of engagement. A business page can be useful.
Twitter is short and succinct. A sort of ‘Marketing Lite’. Posts appear fleetingly and then are essentially gone, though, unless they generate lots of likes and retweets.
Goodreads is like ‘background’ media – people need to seek you out to find you.
But the number one way to be found is through blog posts.
Like all good social media, blogs encourage visitors to return. Unlike ordinary websites, they are updated regularly and the reader can be alerted to each new post.
There are many other reasons to blog, viz:

Teaches you to write more professionally – you have an audience
Discipline
Practice
Feedback from people outside your usual circle
Networking with others
You can upload links to other social media
There is space to write more in-depth than on other social media
To review work for other writers
To explore ideas and get feedback on these

A blog is simply a website with posts being regularly replaced, although the old ones are still on the website to read.
There are many blogging platforms, but I use WordPress.
One advantage of WP is the ease by which readers can see you have a new post.
Whichever platform you choose, it should have clear instructions and / or tutorials to help you set up.
It should also allow you to block spammers, remove adverts (by upgrading), monetise your site, and change the layout. In other words, have as much control as possible over its appearance.
It can be really helpful if the platform provides diagnostics on data such as page views, visitors, likes, comments, and links to and from your site. This helps you plan and refine how you run it.

How?

Purchase your own address! It is not very expensive, but it makes your blog more personal, more professional, and the address more memorable. And the host cannot arbitrarily close it down, which might happen with a free site.
Start by going and looking at other blogs, to find what you like and might work for you. then use your Site Builder Tool to create your site.
Once you begin writing your first post make sure you are using a clear font that stands out.
Keep the post around 500 words, certainly under 1000. When you have a decent following, you may get away with more, but new readers will be put off by longer ones. (As a guide, this post has 945 words).
Add a picture or two to help it stand out and look less daunting, but not too many. And not just dozens of selfies, unless you are an established celebrity. It’s a real turn off.
Make the post interesting! Put some good stuff in first, to get the readers’ attention. And don’t save all the good stuff until the end, as readers might not otherwise get there.
Use categories and tabs on each post to help new readers find them.

Issues

Don’t feel under pressure to post to a fixed schedule.
Don’t be afraid to change the subjects you post about – it’s all under your control and there are no rules on it. Let it develop organically.
Don’t be afraid to take a break if you need to. It’s very easy to get into a mindset where you think you need to do all these things to a rigid schedule.
Don’t obsess about the number of followers you have or likes / comments you get. Chasing them is counter-productive.
Find some blogs YOU like, and follow them, commenting when you have something to say. That way you will begin to get visits in return and then, hopefully, follows back. It is pointless following a blog that doesn’t interest you, just hoping to get a follow back. You want followers who will be interested in what you have to offer.
And on that subject, if a new follower has a site that doesn’t interest you, there is no obligation for you to follow them back.
And don’t feel obliged to comment on / like / or even read every post on blogs you follow.
Do remember that copyright law applies exactly the same on the internet as it does in the real world. If you copy a photo or article from the internet without permission and post it on your blog be prepared for possible legal unpleasantness. I always use my own, just to be safe. I think it looks better, too.

The Great Disconnect

On August 24, 2019 By Mick CanningIn birds, butterflies, environment, natural world, The Lost Words, trees, wild flowers, wilderness, woods50 Comments

There is a huge disconnect between the human race and the natural world. This is nothing new, of course, it is something that has gradually been developing ever since man first discovered farming and began to live in settled communities rather than living a nomadic existence. But it has accelerated rapidly since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, until we passed the point where for the first time there were more people living in urban areas than in rural ones. That may seem an obvious fact to many in the Western World, but that statistic is a worldwide one. 55% of the population today is urban, but the spread is very uneven. In North America, for example, 82% of the population today are urban, whereas across Africa as a whole it is only 43%.

This creeping urbanisation has had many obvious consequences, such as the growth of villages into towns, and thence into cities and finally into super-sized metropolises covering hundreds of square kilometres with hardly a tree or a bird to be found in some parts. Such as whole villages being abandoned as the population move to towns to find work, partly due to the growing mechanisation of farming and the demise of traditional rural industries. Such as a rapidly shrinking amount of land that can be thought of as wilderness. Even those areas that are not now covered with an urban sprawl may well be covered with farmlands or plantations, or large areas devoted to leisure activities such as golf courses which as far as wildlife and plant diversity are concerned, are little better than deserts.

And such as a growing and deepening disconnect between humans and the natural world.

In small part, this is natural and necessary; it is a process that is inevitable as we evolve from a species indistinguishable from the other great apes in behaviour and purpose, into a species able to pursue activities unrelated to simple survival.

Of course, we have also become a species capable of wiping out our species and all other species, too.

But this trend seems to have accelerated at an alarming rate over the last thirty to fifty years. Of course, urbanisation continues to be a growing trend, the growth of technology continues to feed into areas such as farming, where we now have huge farms that can be operated by a couple of people alone, which might have required a labour force of maybe a hundred once, and we have social media and computers and gaming and thousands of on-demand TV stations.

This last phenomenon I think is mainly the cause of what appears to be an especially severe disconnect between the natural world and the younger generations.

Now before everyone rushes to tell me of wonderful younger folk who love the natural world and who actively fight to protect it citing, perhaps, the incredible people who make up Extinction Rebellion, obviously there are many exceptions to this. But it is a trend. Before I retired, my job was teaching outdoor activities such as climbing or navigating, and I worked with many children and young adults. The environment in which I worked, of course, was the natural world. And although many of the youngsters who came along lived in towns or cities, there were also many who lived nearby, in a more rural environment. And what shocked me, was that so many of them had no better understanding of that environment than those that lived in inner cities.

I met country children that couldn’t recognise an oak tree or knew what an acorn was. Country children who couldn’t recognise a kestrel. Country children who had no idea what wild garlic was.

As a kid, I lived on the edge of London. I don’t think I was in any way exceptional, but I would spend as much time as I could playing with friends in the woods and fields I could walk to or get to on my bike. We splashed around in streams and climbed trees, learned what different butterflies looked like, found stag beetles and slow-worms, caught minnows and sticklebacks, and absorbed a lot of knowledge about trees and birds and insects and mammals from books and TV programs and just being out in the country.

I assumed it was what all kids did.

But this seems to be no longer the case. I have already written about The Lost Words (here), the book written by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris as a response to learning that supposedly common words such as conker and kingfisher and acorn are words that the majority of children today are unfamiliar with – something that would once have been unthinkable. And this disconnect seems to me the saddest thing. So much of our very rich heritage has a rural background, be it music or literature, architecture, leisure activities, or traditional crafts. And the same is naturally true for most countries and societies.

But to return to the reasons for this, I feel the rise of social media and on-demand electronic entertainment has been the largest single influence on the younger generation, especially, to the point where to the majority of them, pretty well all their leisure time is taken up with these things and there is no desire to explore the natural world at all.

Sometimes I think the electronic world is more real to many of them than the real world is, anyway.

Sigh. I’m off to check the vegetable garden.

The Joy of Unknowing (1)

On July 9, 2019 By Mick CanningIn England, footpaths, Shropshire, travel, UK, walking42 Comments

We have just returned from a few days away in Shropshire, which is one reason you haven’t heard from me recently.

We were incredibly lucky with the weather, and spent the time walking and reading and mooching around towns and villages. And finding time for the occasional meal and cold beer, of course.

Yes, we did some lovely walks. And I find it a natural thing to be constantly identifying and photographing whatever I see when out for a walk. I have always been interested in all aspects of the environment, be it the plants and animals, the geography and geology, the weather, or the historical impact of people on the environment in forms such as old trackways, deserted buildings, or ancient boundaries.

And we have spent several fantastic days surrounded by an environment rich in all these things, as we have walked through woods, fields, and open hillsides, seen ancient settlements, butterflies, birds, and many wildflowers, and all this in an area of some of the most complex geology in the UK.

But sometimes I feel myself tiring of the constant need to identify and record everything; it is really a way of trying to own them.

And when you post on social media too, it can feel at times a little like a competition to put up the best pictures of this or that wildflower or bird or mountain, which naturally need to be identified and named. Especially on Twatter, whose format seems to encourage this.

So, on our first morning away, as we walk up a track heading into the hills above Church Stretton, under early morning blue skies with the air crystal clear and beautifully cool, I decide that for now I am just going to exist in the moment.

Because by doing this, I am relieved of the constant necessity of deciding whether this bird is a rook or a crow, or whether that flower is greater stitchwort or lesser stitchwort.

Because it doesn’t really matter.

And for now, instead of having to always know whether it is this or that bird singing, I can allow myself to simply think there is singing. There is birdsong.

Or, even better, there is a sound I find melodic, and it pleases me.

By doing this, I can relax and centre myself, which is something I feel has been badly lacking in my life recently. I have struggled with social media in any case, feeling a huge pressure to post new material and to read the many I follow, even when I don’t feel up to it.

It feels like a return to a much simpler time in my life. I can enjoy the views of the hills, the sounds of the streams and birds, and just concentrate on being.

This must have been part of the pleasure I felt as a child on every occasion when I could roam outdoors. Certainly, I was curious about what I saw, but since I knew so little about them, there was always an openness to the experience and the excitement of discovery. I would see butterflies I had not seen before, and I would just get the thrill of seeing them without having to know anything more about them. I would see wildflowers I didn’t recognise and just enjoy the shapes and colours.

Naturally, you cannot really unknow things in that way, just as you cannot really return to that point in your childhood, but it is possible, even if for only a short while, to let go of the need to identify and quantify (and therefore own) everything, and simply exist in the here and now.