Social Media Fatigue: Also WTH is Happening?

 JENN McKINLAY: That's it! If Chrissy Teigen can leave Twitter, so can I. So I did. Last week, I deactivated my Twitter account. When I go to log in, primarily out of habit, what greets me is this:

Reminding me that I no longer belong to Twitter like 80% of the population. Do I miss it? The place where I used to virtually shake my fist at my local politicians and get all in a tizzy? Surprisingly, no. I don't miss it at all. Huh. And here's the important point -- you don't sell books on Twitter. I don't think anyone on Twitter ever went and bought one of my books because I called my representative a moron, so really, what is the point? 

The toxicity is, I daresay, worse than the pandemic. Why would I want that in my life? The truth is, I don't. If I ever go back to Twitter, I will start from scratch and it will be a positive vibes only situation. I simply can't deal with all of this negativity (of which I am also culpable) all of the time. Truly, I think it's making my hair fall out!

But it's not just Twitter. Social media is changing, y'all. The kids who are now in their teens and twenties are all Snapchat and TikTok. Instagram seems to appeal to all ages but is owned by Facebook. Facebook is and has been, by and large, for middle-aged/old people, and Facebook's verified pages have just become a bloody mess. I'll explain.

In December of 2020, I had 14,000 people who liked and followed my professional page. Fast forward to March of 2021, and I have 14,500 people who like my page and 45,000 who follow the page -- where did those new 30,000 followers come from? Did I get elected to office? Win the lottery? Become a movie star? Nope, nope, nope.

Seriously. What the heck happened? I have no idea. My publisher has no idea. And Facebook has no idea. Here's what I do know. Those followers are predominately men from Russia and Africa and South America (assuming their profiles are legitimate) and they like to spend their time replying to the women who comment on the posts I put up on my page with little gems like this: 

Argh! Same dude hit at least four women who commented on a picture of cake (it's always cake) on my page. I thought it might just be me. Like maybe I clicked on some random ad, probably for cake, that opened the trolling male hellmouth and unleashed it on my page. Nope. I checked out other authors' verified pages and they're getting slammed, too. Our Rhys has also seen the weirdness. I then checked out some celebrity pages and the same nonsense is happening on their blue checked pages.

Frankly, social media is looking a lot like the mouse plague in Australia! 

Then my Facebook page got duplicated and the hacker was sending out friend requests using my pictures, bio, and name and offering free books of mine (insert your credit card number here -- but free books!!!! ACK!). Facebook insisted there was nothing wrong. Mother of pearl! You have got to be kidding me. 

My publisher reached out to Facebook and their response was essentially a shrug and a head scratch and a mumble as they exited the room. Really? You can write an algorithm to make sure an ad for dog booties pops up in my feed every three posts, but you can't write one to weed out the trolls? Huh.

All of this is to say, there is some weirdness afoot and I don't think it is going to end well. And because the momentum of social media is like that of a shark - it must stay in motion or it will die - there is now a thing called #BookTok (like #Bookstagram on Instagram) where authors and readers promote books on TikTok and I just have to say...I can't. I just can't. 

You know, I've heard for years that blogging is dead, but I have to say that compared to all of the insanity I am witnessing out there, I love this safe, positive, interesting, funny, charming blog of ours with all my heart. 

So, Reds and Readers, chime in! What weirdness have you seen out there? What sites do you trust? What do you think the future of social media is?

Lastly, please be careful out there! 

Passion, revenge, sex, money, desperation!

HANK PHILLIPPPI RYAN:   Whoo. Have we got a good one for  you today. Nothing better than a brand new author, right? And today, we are thrilled to introduce Ray Daniel…a longtime friend of the Reds, whose new TERMINATED is out this week (yay!) from Midnight Ink—and is already wowing thriller readers across the country.

I love TERMINATED. I think it’s sort of Spenser meets Hackers meets Topper.  Think about what that might be…and yup, you got it.

So how in the world would an author be able to concoct a story like that?  Can real life sometimes be more outlandish than fiction? That’s what we asked Ray. And his answer is fascinating!

RAY DANIEL: Passion, revenge, sex, money, desperation---these are only a few of the reasons that I chose to write crime fiction based in the world of high tech.

After all, they tell us to write what we know.

I’ve been in the high-tech industry for over twenty years, and when the time came to write a mystery I needed look no further than my own small software industry for inspiration.

First, and most obviously, was the story of a company named Avant! that burst upon the software scene and upended the industry leader Cadence Design Systems (a company I’ve worked for three times…but that’s another story).

Avant!’s rise was an inspiring story of David taking down Goliath. Inspiring that is until it was discovered that Avant! had stolen the code for its software from none other than Cadence Design Systems. The copying was so complete that the spelling errors Avant!'s product matched the spelling errors in Cadence's product. It was literally bug-for-bug compatible, because it was the exact same program.

The theft was the first inspiration that became Terminated, but the next story sealed the deal.

WOW! Ray with the crowd at the TERMINATED launch party! 

A CEO in our industry was worried about an upcoming patent trial that would render his product worthless, so he did the following:

•   He forged a notebook to make it look like his company had invented their product first.

•   When the notebooks came under suspicion he staged a break in of his car to get rid of the evidence. He was caught and charged with obstruction of justice.

•   He tried to flee the country to avoid the charges but was captured at the airport with an illegal passport and a pile of cash.

•   While in jail for the illegal passport and obstruction of justice charges he'd been arrested for, he was caught trying to hire a hit man to murder the judge.

•   He claimed that he'd tried to have the judge murdered because he had psychological problems, but he had left a trail of evidence of his research on how to feign psychological problems.

•   He was convicted on all counts.

•   In the end the notebooks were never needed for the patent trial.

This happened in March of 2005. I started work on Terminated in June of 2005.

Terminated, of course, is not quite as outlandish as real life, though it does give us a chance to see the passions of high tech and the desperate things people do when they see their dreams slipping away.

And this is the line to buy TERMINATED!

HANK: Yes, thinking about motives! I remember once,early on, I said to Jonathan--there aren't really that many reasons why someone would kill another person. War and self-defense and defense of another aside--there's greed, and power. Revenge and..well, what do YOU think, Reds?  And computers, too, give us a good topic--can you remember life without yours?

And of course we're giving TERMINATED to one lucky commenter.

And here are some more of your nightstands!

Tilia Klebanov Jacobs (very organized!)

Jack Hrusoff (tall!)

Bernie Bro Brown (okay, this is a SHELF!)

Jaymie Brooks Dieterle (good luck with this, sister..)

Susan Felbush Braun ( I spy Linda Fairstein! She'll be thrilled.)

Chelsea Lowe (very mysterious...)

More to come tomorrow!
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Ray Daniel writes first-person, wisecracking, Boston-based crime fiction about Tucker, a hacker whose inquiring nose, smart mouth, and inability to use a gun get him into, but rarely out of, trouble.

Daniel’s spare style and page-turning storytelling have created award-winning short stories. The Tucker short story, Give Me a Dollar, was a Derringer 2014 finalist.  Also Daniel's Driving Miss Rachel was chosen as a 2013 distinguished short story by Otto Penzler, editor of THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2013.

TERMINATED (August, 2014) is Ray Daniel’s first novel and the first book of The Tucker Mysteries. Born in Boston, Ray graduated with honors from the University of Massachusetts with a degree in Computer Engineering and a Minor in English.

About TERMINATED:

Uber-geek Tucker and his beautiful wife, Carol, developed controversial security software together until the day he was fired and she was murdered.  Now, six months later, another software engineer is dead, bringing new clues to light in Carol's cold case.  

Haunted by the memory of is wife, Tucker is determined to track down the truth behind the killings.  He pulls strings to get hired back into MantaSoft, but office politics turns deadly as Tucker takes on the FBI, Russian mobsters, and a psychopath known as the Duct Tape Killer.