Lighten your load: The power of treating social media posts as ephemeral
A social media post's window of relevance is extremely short. But being hoarders by nature, we have a hard time letting go of our post history — much to the delight of AI scrapers and enshittificators. Here are a few thoughts on the benefits of traveling light.
ephem·er·al / ɪˈfɛm ər əl / Adjective · lasting a very short time · being of temporary value or passing interest
Like many fellow humans, I have a little memory box I call my “treasure chest”. (No, not the one with the old computer cables. The other one!) I use it to store precious keepsakes like photos, doodles or concert tickets.
For many years, my social media profiles served as a non-curated digital version of such a box. My Twitter timeline consisted of ten years worth of everyday rambles, art posts and rants. If you wanted to get to know me, you'd just have to visit my profile and scroll back a few weeks. Sounds easy enough, right?
Sure... except that that's not how people actually use social media.
Facing the facts
Be honest, how much time do you spend scrolling down your home feed compared to actively navigating to specific pages like user profiles or hashtags? I'm gonna go so far as to say: Unless we fall down a rabbit hole or are looking for something specific, passively consuming our home feed is more than enough for us. After all, a low-threshold, endless source of fleeting entertainment is exactly the right thing for winding down after a long work day.
We, as a species, are inherently afraid of insignificance. This most likely stems from primal needs for recognition in social groups to ensure survival, and contributes significantly to modern anxiety and depression. The thought of being mere, short-lived speckles of dust on a 4.5 billion year-old wet ball floating in the vast emptiness of space is so scary to us that countless artists, authors and movie directors have dedicated their lives to telling existential horror stories about it throughout the centuries. Their legacy? Their bestsellers, probably. But what is yours?
You are the main character. Your treasure chest full of keepsakes — physically or online — is a love letter to yourself, your life, your story. Your digital legacy.
But here's the thing: I, too, am the main character. And so is that guy over there. Everyone is the main character of their own story, and no one's treasure chest matters nearly as much to them as their own.
My point being: The only people who will actively scroll that far down your social media profile are you, malicious actors in search of age-old cringe posts to use against you, and AI scrapers looking for training material.
Is it really worth it?
My personal takeaways
If the constant onslaught of major historical events over the last half decade has taught me anything, it was to make peace with my insignificance in the grand scheme of things and use that for good. I've switched from putting myself “out there” on an eternal quest for validation from strangers, to focusing on my myself and my inner circle (y'know, the people who actually know — and genuinely cherish — that I exist, and for whom I can make a difference).
The absence of pressure to maintain an exhaustive documentation of my online life has filled me with serenity and clarity. A clarity that helps me distinguish between what's worth keeping and what really doesn't need to remain out there for generations to come who will surely spend hours scrolling down my profile to reminisce about me, the Main Character™, right? ... Right?
Just like its physical counterpart, the content of my digital treasure chest hardly matters to anybody but myself — and thus exactly fulfills its purpose. Why would I put it out on the street for strangers to rummage through?
A creative's perspective
This is not a plea to post less, mind you — many creatives depend on monetizing their crafts to survive, and building a sustainable network through regular engagement on social media can be a viable way to do that if you have the patience, resilience and marketing skills. But it is a plea to be mindful of what you leave out on the street unsupervised.
To finally draw the line back to the average social media user: The times where your followers would actually, regularly, actively hang out on your profile page are long gone. In fact that was over 20 years ago and called MySpace. In the age of fast scrolling and infinite loading, the vast majority of your followers will consume whatever happens to pop up on their home feed, scroll on and immediately forget it ever existed.
Sounds disheartening? It doesn't have to be! The entire point of social media is short-lived snapshots in time. Think of it as a very slow group chat. Make peace with your posts' ephemerality and use it for good. If you are a creative looking to get more eyes on your work, you absolutely have my blessing to delete old stuff and re-post it some other time. Nobody will notice that your post from two months ago is gone. I promise.
And just between us: There’s hardly a worse place for a permanent gallery than a microblogging platform like Mastodon, Bluesky or X. They're full of distractions, and if your profile happens to have a media tab, people need to dig through your selfies and reaction GIFs to get to the stuff they actually came here to see.
My recommendation: Maintain a static portfolio site somewhere separate for easy access, and utilize social media to keep people updated on new creations, promote your commissions, and actively build a relationship with your community (people are more inclined to buy from you if they care about you), because that's where the power of social media lies!
What's in it for you and your community
In the age of LLMs, AI and deepfakes, an active but lean social media profile is your best bet at a compromise between visibility and protecting your content. What doesn't exist can't end up in training databases during scraper attacks.
Your platform of choice was bought by a questionable third party and no longer feels like home? You no longer feel comfortable on your Mastodon server? Moving somewhere else is much easier if you're not weighed down by a massive post history only you care about. (By the way, did you know you can move your followers between Mastodon accounts? Here's a tutorial!)
Regularly deleting old posts also comes with an indirect benefit: If you're on a Fediverse server like Mastodon, there's a very good chance that it's a labour of love, run by someone who pays for hosting and server storage out of their own pocket, often supported by donations from other community members. Regularly freeing up space is a great and effortless way to support your server admin even if a donation is not an option, as you contribute to keeping hosting costs low and thus help ensure the server's continued existence. Win-win!
Mastodon makes it easy to automate old post deletion, and if you have some absolute bangers you don't have the heart to let go, worry not! Mastodon provides various customization options for you to make sure your most treasured posts remain intact.
Sounds good?
If you want to give it a try, here's how:
- On Mastodon's web interface, navigate to “Preferences” → “Automated post deletion” and tick “Automatically delete old posts”. (Don't worry, the settings aren't applied until you hit “Save changes”.)
- In the nearby dropdown menu you can choose an age threshold from one week up to two years. Feel free to start with a longer period and work your way up to a shorter one that works for you over time.
- In the “Exceptions” settings below, you can opt to keep pinned posts and direct messages, posts of your own that you favorited or bookmarked, polls and posts with media attachments (the latter obviously defeats the purpose if you're looking to protect your images from AI ingestion or to free up space). You can also make exceptions for posts with a minimum amount of boosts or favorites of your choice.
- Hit “Save changes”, lean back and enjoy the liberating feeling of losing dead weight.
So, who's up for some spring cleaning? 💪