Fuck Social Media.

I remember the early days of social media; I remember signing on to myspace.com and there he was - my one friend - Tom. Tom was my only friend for a very long time.

Looking back though, there was definitely something special about only being a loser from the hours of 7:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m., Monday thru Friday. Before social media, I could get up, sit alone on the school bus, get thrown out the window of my earth science class by my "friends," sit alone at lunch, then sit alone on the bus ride home. That was it. I only had to think about my place in the world for seven and a half hours a day. Life was good.

Because once I got home from school, I had dogs. I had woods, swamps, and creeks too. And me and my two dogs would just go run, get dirty, catch frogs, and chase rabbits and squirrels until the twilight of night arrived.  

Dogs are special; there's something about "man's best friend" that - as I've aged - I've really come to appreciate and understand. To have a dog - to have your dog - is to have someone who is always "on your side." Even when your dog takes a shit in the house or gets into the trash in the kitchen; even when you hoot and holler at the dog to "go lay down," your dog is still there. No grudges are held; no love is lost; to that dog, you're its best friend and very little can change that in the dog's heart.  

I like dogs. I digress.

Anyway.

So yeah, before social media, adolescence was bucketed. You had your school bucket and then you had your home bucket. That was pretty much it. You were able to turn things off fairly easily - or at least I could. Getting shoved in a locker, gum thrown in your hair, or having your crush walk by you in the hall, look at you, and say "yuck," always came with a bell at the end of the school day that told you "its over for today."

I wouldn't go home and ruminate. I'd go home, get my dogs, and go play in the woods.  

Then this thing called "the internet" came along.  And with it came the merging of all one's worlds into a single, never-ending fuckin' assault on the soul and the ego.

For those who weren't there, the late 1990's and early 2000's had a lot of weird sounds. The sound of dial-up internet; the sound of "America Online." The rhythmic sounds of the boybands (note: BSBs are superior to N'SYNC in every way. I will die on this hill). The sound of porn, with out the sound of a VCR sucking in said porn tape. And then there was the sound of my soul crumbling, crushing, and imploding every time I signed on to MySpace when I got home from school, only to see that fucker Tom was still my only friend.

There I was, all the fuckin' time, walking through the front door, dodging my dogs and heading right to the computer to see if any of those dudes with the lettered jackets, or the ladies that I admired in the hallways, had "accepted" me as their "friend" in the virtual blackhole of cyberspace. I'd sit there - sometimes with a tear in my eye - curious as to simply why no one fuckin' liked me. And upon reflection, my true friends were always sitting right behind me, wining for my attention and wagging their tails. Dogs are better than people.  

However, overtime things leveled out with myspace. For all its faults, social media also allowed a loser like me to share the things about my life that nobody at school ever knew. From time-to-time I'd be in the woods with my dogs and my mom and pictures would be taken; pictures of me wrangling a big ole' rat snake; pictures of me climbing up and over boulders and ledges; pictures of me swimming in the creek with my dogs - who knew I was tan and shredded like a young Schwarzenegger? Once these pictures hit the myspace account, a few friends started to appear; Tom was getting bumped!

Turns out other dorks at school idolized Steve Irwin or liked to run and play in the woods with their dogs. This would ultimately lead to a bit more of a social life whilst at school. A few myspace friends became real friends.

Regardless of my outstanding bod though, the ladies were still elusive. But that was okay! What began as a 24/7 depressive loser-fest created by having but one friend on MySpace - that fucker Tom - had ultimately become a blessing in disguise. I was able to share parts of my life that were more interesting than my scratchy voice and pimpled face; people at school saw me for a bit more than that now. And some people liked it.  

Looking back 20+ years later now, I believe that myspace was peek social media. It wasn't all that demanding. My profile, my pictures, a song that I could change whenever the fuck I wanted. Fuck, I could even rearrange my top friends. Sometimes this led to drama, but it also symbolized the very real-life fact that as one gets older, friends do come. And friends do go.  

But as time went on, social media aged like swamp ass. What began as a bead of sweat, slowly dripping down between my butt cheeks to the dark undercarriage of my taint, morphed into a rampaging red chapped and chaffed crotch, festering with the stench and stinging of a bucket full of bees and hot vomit.  

And here came all the other social media behemoths. Myspace was left in the dust by things called Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Reddit. All things - that in my mind - were also a lot more technically complicated. And all things that implicitly challenged you to get as many of some bullshit as you could; Out was the simplicity of connecting with who people were outside of a certain environment - like high school - and in was the prestige of how many "likes" you got on a post, or how many "followers" - not "friends" - your account had.  

And bullshit just...got. Worse. From there.

Social media morphed from a  "popularity contest" into a weapon; a weapon used to influence culture, to influence businesses, and to influence politics. And it began to polarize its users; it began to polarize entire peoples and communities. And worst of all, it began to be used as a tool and format, not for youth to "get to know one another" on a level outside of the classroom, but instead to terrorize and bully one another 24/7; and sometimes to horrible and sad conclusions.  

And this is why the entirety of Hatchet Primrose Worldwide, LLC. has absolutely no social media presence. I write this blog, and we run this empire on our own terms. Not for "likes," not for "followers," and not for any other reason than for ourselves. If you like it, you can visit us anytime, or you can come here once and never visit again. Not everyone likes the fuckin' bullshit we do here and we're okay with that.