I’ve always thought of hermit crabs as having a solitary existence, true to the name, as loath to hang out with other crabs as they are shy of other animals. I also believed they routinely killed snails in order to steal and inhabit the softer creatures’ shells. Actually, hermit crabs are both less aggressive and more prosocial than I imagined, although they’re hardly angels. Faced with an attractive vacant shell in a situation of scarce resources, hermit crabs will occasionally fight to the death to procure it for themselves.
This is the metaphor that springs most readily to mind when I think about my social media presence for 2023. I’m giving myself the next twenty-five minutes to free associate on this odd linkage to try and understand why. (Pomodoro timer on.)
I think my retreat from social media was already underway to an extent, but it became more pronounced after a conversation with my daughter, then aged nine. She revealed she had always disliked my posting about her on social media. Having asked how she felt about it, I could hardly deny her wishes when she made her request: she wanted me to take down all past material and not post about her anymore. Save the occasional fleeting reference to parenthood in general, that’s what I did.
This new prohibition was a disruption to all the automatic behaviours I’d fallen into around social media, not just posts about my kid. I began questioning everything I put out there, noticing every time I felt the impulse to share a photograph I’d taken or a thought I’d had. What’s my motivation? What itch am I scratching? For a handful of years at least, posting on social media and interacting with others’ posts had been organic, and it wasn’t anymore. My conversation with my kid had troubled me, made me second-guess things, particularly when those posts involved other people. I wasn’t sure about what personal rules I wanted to set and follow when disclosing information about my child or anyone else, so I withdrew and lapsed into reticence.
The unintended effect of this was that when I did post on social media, it was always about me: something positive, an achievement, usually in the professional realm. When I’m having a conversation with someone that’s unmediated by social media, I don’t think I’m a conversational narcissist. But on Facebook and Twitter it’s not give- and-take. I wrote something. I published something. I was on TV/radio/Netflix. Click the link. I spoke at a big conference. I’ve been honoured. I’m rarely vulnerable and only infrequently reveal much about what’s happening personally.
I also haven't been commenting or interacting much with other people’s posts. I’ve had so much going on that I haven’t had the time to check in or keep up to date. Lately, it’s pretty much just an occasional poking out of the head. Here I am. Here is my shell. My fancy shell.
I have a book coming out in 2023. It was hard to write. Usually I thought it would never happen, sometimes I thought it would kill me, and still I worry it will fail. Be that as it may, written it has been and published it shall be.
Make no mistake. Modern authors have to do a hell of a lot of self-promotion if they want to be visible and sell their work in a saturated market. When you first publish a book via the traditional route (i.e., not self-published), you harbour comforting fantasies that the publisher will take care of everything for you. You hear that you will be assigned a PR person or even a PR team, and you think, ah, luxury! I’ll let them guide me. I’m in safe hands.
But it’s not true. Don’t get me wrong, your publisher will help, but mostly it’s on you. You have to get out there. Don’t like it? Tough. Post on Twitter, be active on Instagram and LinkedIn, blog like your life depends on it, hire an SEO professional to drive traffic to your website - have you updated your website? Update your website. Hustle, hustle, hustle. A popular guideline for social media engagement on Twitter and LinkedIn is the 4-1-1 rule. For every self-serving post, you should share one relevant bit of material and - most importantly - ‘share four pieces of relevant content written by others.’
Oh, dear. According to that rule I have been super selfish on social media. But all these promotion and engagement directives make me want to curl up in my shell and die. It’s not that I’m not interested in other people’s work, not keen to lift them up, not caring about them. One to one, offline or off. my relationships and conversations have both emotional and practical reciprocity. People help and listen to me and are interested in me. I help and listen to and am interested in them.
On social media, on the other hand, I suspect I come off like a self-centred asshole, but it feels forced and calculated to 4-1-1, to interact in a colour-by-numbers way. Some folks seem to do it so naturally. The fact that I don’t…well, I’m not sure what it says about me. Maybe it’s just from lack of practice.
On the BBC Earth YouTube channel, there’s a video depicting a cluster of hermit crabs on a beach. All these crabs need the same thing - a new shell - so they work together. Gathering on the strand, they organise themselves into an orderly queue, rank ordered according to size. Once the chain is complete, as if on cue, they all move at once, each clambering to the next size up. Everyone goes away happy.
So hermit crabs are self-interested but not entirely selfish shellfish, at least not when there’s opportunity for everyone, enough shells to go around. They’re prosocial, collaborative. Nurturing these qualities always results in better outcomes, whatever your species.
I want to figure this out. If I don’t give more, I know I won’t get more. If I don’t promote others, I can’t expect to be promoted. I suppose on some level it’s inevitably a quid pro quo. But I want to find a way to be more real and genuine on whatever online interactions I have, even if there’s always a kernel of self-interest at the heart of them. If I have to do more social media - and this year I suppose I do - I want it to be authentic as possible, not just nakedly calculated.
In 2023, I’ll try to be crabby in the best possible way.
Thanks for writing so beautifully about this. It's something I wonder about and second guess all the time. Recently started reading Garbage Day and have realized I've been looking at social media the wrong way for the past decade. So maybe 2023 is about offering something of value instead of the more self-interested side of social media? Anyway, love your Substack :)