Actions have motivations. Some are so primal or obvious as to be undiscussed. Building a website to share pictures and words probably deserves one, so it makes sense to use this first post as an explanation. 

If you’ve found your way here, you probably know me. On the off chance you don’t – I’m Rockne. Besides my day job as a community news editor and podcaster, and being a husband to my favorite person ever, the description at the bottom of this page is fairly comprehensive. It’s the last item in that list that really brings me here. 

I don’t like social media. I haven’t for a while. I had made my peace with its role in my life, though. I had cut out or ignored the parts that I considered truly awful and tried to carefully monitor my relationship with those that I chose to engage with. 

Then I read a piece on Conscientious Photography Magazine titled “Photographers After Social Media” which included the following:

“It’s difficult to remember or imagine this now, but social-media platforms used to be fun…. While this was more than enough for its users, it was not enough for the people in the background, the people running the sites. The form of capitalism we live under decrees that only growth is good. Consequently, social-media platforms had to grow. How do you grow something that is fun? Why, of course you make it more fun!

“The only problem with this idea is that the people who had set up the platforms were (and still are) intellectually and morally not very well suited for this endeavor. They embraced the simplest idea they could find — let’s give people more of what we think they want, and they ran with it: enter what we now call ‘the algorithm.’…

“Making sure that people had “more fun” resulted in, for example, Instagram turning from what was a convenient and fun photo-sharing platform into whatever it is now. I don’t even know how to describe it other than maybe an advertising platform that consists of previously incompatible pieces created by plundering other platform’s ideas.”

I started using social media in college, back when Facebook was the only game in town and you still needed a .edu email address to create an account. It’s evolved dramatically in every way – its user interface, its content, its role in our lives and its role in our society. Very little of it has been for the good. 

I was able to notice when spending time on social media platforms was starting to affect my mood and how I looked at the world, and took measures. I saw when then-aspiring tyrants took over platforms for their own purposes and fled. But this piece, and the circumstances that spawned it, made me stop and really think about two questions:

“What am I getting out of this experience that is truly irreplaceable?”

and

“Is that worth the trade-off of participating in what Instagram has become?”

The answer to the first was, initially, that I used Instagram to follow the careers and goings-on of a handful of professional bike racers. For pro cyclists, especially the ones in the American off-road endurance scene that operates outside of pro racing’s typical team structure, social media is part of their job. I don’t envy them for that. But I enjoy seeing what they’re up to, and their riding inspires my own. 

But I eventually realized that for the nuggets I was enjoying, most of it was videos of them out on rides or ads for their sponsors. Other than that, I wrote in a recent (as-of-yet unpublished) piece: “I don’t have a sprawling network of friends I keep up with on Instagram because my circle is pretty small, and I can keep up with most of them in other ways. I no longer have to worry about promoting my business on social media. And I don’t feel the need to post constantly about my life for anonymous strangers to see – a recent incident in a friend’s life reminded me of the perils of such sharing.”

This helped me answer the second question with a resounding “No.” Rollbacks in community standards on social media platforms will merely enable more of the toxicity that has been the calling card of online interaction and is sloshing over into offline interaction. Social media platforms are, I continued, “becoming more and more overrun with AI-generated trash, endless time sucks, and abject bigotry.”

It’s worth remembering, in this moment, a now-famous quote often attributed to Andrew Lewis but of disputed origin:

“If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.”

These aspirant oligarchs built platforms that may be more addictive than cigarettes. They profit off my attention, and I get very little out of it besides my time wasted and my attention span eroded. What do they do with those profits? Make the world worse for everyone but themselves. 

Time to draw the line in the sand. 

Let me take this opportunity to say that I do not cast dispersions on those who chose to draw their line elsewhere, or to draw no line. Your life is different than mine, your motivations and goals are different than mine. Do what works for you.

This is what works for me.  

The problem is, I’m someone who likes to make things. I get paid to make a newspaper and a podcast, but I like to make other stuff, too. Pictures, videos, paragraphs, occasionally music. I want to share that with people. Things made not for engagement, but enjoyment. 

That’s why I’m here.  

This is a platform for my photography, documentation of my adventure-ish cycling escapades, stories of the other fun things I’m doing in my life, and just a wee bit of navel-gazing like this. I’ll try to keep it to a minimum. I’ll try to also keep the selfies to a minimum, because this isn’t social media, but I am a millennial, so a few are de rigueur.

I hope you enjoy what you find here. I tremendously enjoy making and sharing it with you.